"You had me at Hello."
How many of you have heard that line? If you haven't, it basically means that someone captured your heart from the first word they spoke to you. Like, right from the start, they had you.
Books can be like that. Sometimes they hit you with their opening line and you just know that this is going to be something special. Some of these books grab you and don't let go - the middle and ending are just as good as the beginning, making the book just as good as you anticipated it would be. Some books, however, will suck you in, then chew you up and spit you back out, leaving you wondering how something so promising could go so wrong. Other books will sweep you off your feet, and then the fire sort of dies and, although the rest of the story isn't bad, it just doesn't live up to that first impression. The magic fades, so to speak.
There are, of course, some books that take a few sentences or a whole paragraph to hook you, and those are sometimes just as or even more awesome than the single sentence openings, but that's not what we're talking about right now, folks.
I just read another book with a great opening line, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite ones with you (regardless of whether the book turned out to be a dud or not!):
"I've confessed to everything, and I'd like to be hanged." - Chime by Franny Billingsley
"First thing I did was, I stole a body." - Repossessed by A. M. Jenkins
"This is the story of a bloodstained boy." - Railsea by China Mieville
"She grabbed the hilt of her knife and scrambled backward into the darkness, holding the baby close in her arms." - Prized by Caragh O'Brien
"I was born invisible." - Invisibility by Andrea Cremer & David Levithan
"I was supposed to die at 5:57 a.m." - Mortal Danger by Ann Aguirre
"We found the monster on a rocky ledge high above the lake." - This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel
"I did the unforgivable the day my mother died, and for that I've been punished every moment of of my life." - The Shadow Prince by Bree Despain
"They built it out of stone - dark gray stone, pried from the unforgiving mountain." - Asylum by Madeline Roux
"Anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Anything at all." - Abandon by Meg Cabot
"Even the dead tell stories." - Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick
"I guess in the old days, in other places, boys like me usually ended up twisting and kicking in the empty air beneath gallows." - The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith
"I think I killed a girl who looked like this once." - Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake
"I'm the lucky one; or at least that's what they say." - The Creeping by Alexandra Sirowy
"Miles had been dead for one hour." - Until the Beginning by Amy Plum
"It was the last day of our old lives, and we didn't even know it." - Fair Weather by Richard Peck
"The first thing you need to know is that my brother Clive is a nutcase and the second thing you need to know is that I sometimes help him out when he's busy and when he can't manage all the nutcasing on his own, which isn't often." - Sea Legs by Alex Shearer
"We were watching telly the night Nan burnt the house down." - Into the Grey by Celine Kiernan
"My brother's heart was heavy in my hands." - This Monstrous Thing by Mackenzi Lee
"If you had been there that night, the night it happened, you might not have even noticed." - Strange Sweet Song by Adi Rule
"I should probably start with the blood." - The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
"It all began with the aurochs." - The Paradise War by Stephen Lawhead
"The first time I died, I didn't see God." - Fracture by Megan Miranda
"I'm a loaded gun. Henry knows. He thinks he and Jesus can save me from myself." - Stone Field by Christy Lenzi
"When you've been struck by lightning as many times as I have, you start to expect the worst pretty much all the time." - Struck by Jennifer Bosworth
"I died on a bitter, cold night." - Through Her Eyes by Jennifer Archer
"Tonight at supper, over capon and relish, my father ruined my life." - The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats
"I am where dead children go." - The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco
"If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it." - The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck
I am aware as I step into the common room that the majority of people here are almost dead, including me." - Solitaire by Alice Oseman
"Jeremy DeGroot was determined to die gloriously for his country." - The Storm Before Atlanta by Karen Schwabach
"Once upon a time, fairytales were awesome." - A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz
"My name is of no importance." - The Iron Lance by Stephen Lawhead
"The hope was all used up; all we had left was superstition." - Mistwalker by Saundra Mitchell
"I try not to think about it, that time I killed a boy." - The Killing Jar by Jennifer Bosworth
"I am a blood-soaked girl." - The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
"There was something wrong with the dog." - Insanity by Susan Vaught
"A secret is a strange thing." - The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
"The people of Bone Gap called Finn a lot of things, but none of them was his name." - Bone Gap by Laura Ruby
"Strange things had happened at Innisfree before." - Tennyson by Lesley Blume
"Grandpa Craven kicked it the day I was born." - Behold the Bones by Natalie C. Parker
"Blood. There is blood everywhere." - The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis
"The dead girl hung upside down over our kitchen table." - Blood and Salt by Kim Liggett
"You will love him to ruins." -The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkins
So I do realize that a lot of these have something to do with blood and/or death. I guess it's not so hard to come up with a great opening line for a horror novel, even if it isn't so easy to make the rest of the book great. Of course, probably about half of the above lines that mention blood and death aren't even from horror stories, so maybe mentioning them is just a good way to grab the audience's attention. Hey, it works for me, anyway.
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