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!
Hello, reader!
Happy Friday! I’m about to get ready for another day out with visiting family, but I wanted to sneak in a quick First Lines Friday post. This week, I’m featuring a book I’ve wanted to read for awhile and was recently picked as a book of the month for a Goodreads group I’m in. Perfect excuse to finally pick it up!
Now, here’s hoping the first few lines make me even more excited to give it a go.
The Line(s):
“The Greer mansion sat high on a hill, overlooking the town and the ocean. To get to it from downtown, you had to leave the pretty shops and creaking seaside piers and drive a road that wound upward, toward the cliffs. You passes the heart of Claire Lake, the part of town where the locals lived and the tourists didn’t usually go.”
The Hints:
This is a thriller that was released this year.
The main character is a true crime blogger.
The author has another book about a possibly haunted motel I really want to read.
The Reveal:
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James
Click the cover to be taken to the Goodreads page
Goodreads Synopsis
In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect–a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.
Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases–a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes.
They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she’s not looking, and she could swear she’s seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn’t right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?
A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel.
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!
Kerri McBookNerd 