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!

I can’t tell you how excited I am that it’s Friday! Mostly because I have a three day weekend and, after a week of a ton of overtime, I definitely need it. Today has been so relaxing, with lots of reading and chilling and delicious breakfast sandwiches. Perfect way to kick off a holiday weekend, haha. Now, it’s time for another First Lines Friday post!

The book I’m featuring today is one I’m reading with the Middle Grade Marvels group. I literally just started it today, so I don’t have much of a feel for it yet, but I’m looking forward to continuing! Now, let me share the first lines and see if the pique your interest.

The Line(s):

“Tonight is the darkest night of the year.

It is so dark, you can barely make out the stone cottage sitting in front of you. It is the only building in the valley. A path runs right from the fields to a red front door, framed by the remains of a rose bush. In summer, when the days are long and warm, the roses flourish. But there are no roses now. It is the dead of winter and the dead of night. The door is surrounded by thorns.”