First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?  If you want to make your own post, feel free to use or edit the banner above, and follow the rules below:

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first (I cheat a little bit here *cough*)
• Finally… reveal the book!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

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Hello, reader!

Friday is, once again, upon us and I’m getting into that weekend mood! Why not kick it off with another First Lines Friday post? The book I’m featuring today is one I picked up from the library. I may or may not also have a e-ARC on Netgalley that I’ve been meaning to get to for ages *cough* Finding it at the library will, hopefully, be the kick in the rear I needed to finally read it!

Now, let’s see if the first few lines can make me even more eager to give it a go.

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The Line(s):

“Droplets of blood pat the blue carpet, turning from red to black as they soak into the fibers. The drops come slow at first, before turning into a trickle as the bones of my skull squeeze like a hand around my brain. My body years to release the tensions in my shoulder, to let the pressure off my knees, to lay down and go to sleep.

Except it won’t be sleep.”

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The Hints:

This is sci-fi mystery…

… that includes time travel…

… and perhaps a bit of murder.

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The Reveal:

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

Click the cover to be taken to the Goodreads page

Goodreads Synopsis

An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake.

January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.

Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.

Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.

None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.

On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.

January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.

There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.

But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.

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Did that first line capture your attention? Did it make you want to read the rest of the story? Let me know in the comments!

And, as always, happy reading!