Opening Lines

"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.

What I've Read Lately - April

The month of April came in with a whimper (mine), but, luckily, went out with a bang.  By this I mean that, after reading a whole handful of not so great books in the first half of the month, I finished things off with three really good ones.  This cheered  me right up, and now I am ready to tackle the six random books that are still waiting on my bookshelf.

Blood & Salt by Kim Liggett, is another book about cults (which I hate), but it was supposed to have this interesting twist to the whole cult thing, like a horror mystery twist, so I decided to give it a try. When I was about half-way through reading it, I was wondering what I would possibly say about it.  There were parts I really liked (backstory, plot, characters, writing), and parts I really did NOT like (backstory, plot, characters, writing).  Then the parts I didn't like pretty much took over and choked out the parts I did, so by the time I was finished, I'd have to say that I was pretty much disgusted with the book.  It was like the author had a great outline, and then she filled it in with a whole bunch of crap (sorry, Mom).  The last four chapters were the absolute worst.  Apparently there is going to be a part two.  I will definitely not be reading it.

The Sin-Eater's Confession, by Ilsa J. Bick, is kind of a murder mystery, except that by the time you finish reading it you realize that the author never intended to tell us who done it, so I guess it isn't really.  It is also kind of a coming of age story; I mean, it has all of the elements in place, except that by the time you finish reading it you are still not sure quite what sort of  'adult identity' has been formed by the main character.  It is almost more like he has decided to just run away from everything or something.  It is quite vague and a bit convoluted at the end.  But aside from the difficulty with its genre identity (ha ha), it was a nice average book.  (Reading Level: 5.0/Upper Grades)

Blackwatch, by Jenna Burtenshaw, is the sequel to Shadowcry, which I read years and years ago.  The books are about a girl who can enter the veil between the living and the dead, and some kind of soldier/assassin guy she somehow gets linked to.  I had the sequel on my list of books to read, but never picked it up (for years and years), and now I think I know why.  This book was JUST. SO. BORING.  I made it through page 182.  Out of 310 pages.  That's more than halfway through.  As a general rule, if I make it halfway, I just keep plugging away and finish the darn book.  But this time I couldn't.  The book spends way too much time describing things, and even the suspenseful parts are written in a way that is just plain boring.  And nothing had even really happened by page 182.  I kept waiting for things to pick up and get going, but I was starting to think they never would and I just couldn't slog through it any more.  So.  Another book abandoned.

Suspicion, by Alexandra Monir, is supposed to be a mystery/thriller, but it is far from thrilling.  It is about a girl whose entire family dies (suspiciously, of course) across a seven year period, leaving her to fill the role as Duchess.  I really didn't like it.  The writing was mediocre at best (I'm being generous with that statement), the timeline makes most of the story utterly ridiculous, and the mystery (mysteries, actually) get investigated and summed up in a fraction of the book, so there really isn't much to the suspense part.  I had a feeling after the first few chapters that the book was going to be a bust, but I had already abandoned two books this month so I thought I'd stick with it.  I regretted that decision again and again as I read, but by the time I got so disgusted with it that I could hardly stand it, I was much closer to the end than the beginning (or even the middle for that matter), so I finished it.  Save yourself the torture and choose something else instead.

I made a special trip into the library, just hoping this book was on the shelf, because after five books in a row ranging from just okay to I-couldn't-get-past-the-first-chapter (I didn't even bother to mention that one), I needed a book that I knew was going to be good.  The Beauty of Darkness, the final book in a trilogy by Mary Pearson (see my mini-review of the second book here), was just what I was hoping it would be.  Which is a good thing, because it was ninety chapters.  677 pages.  It was maybe not quite as good as the second book, which usually seems to be the case with trilogies, but it was still packed with all the great stuff, and absolutely nothing that I could complain about.  The best part, for those of you who haven't read the first book, The Kiss of Deception, yet, is that all three books are out so you can read them right in a row without forgetting all the details from one book to the next.  (Reading Level: 5.4/Upper Grades)

So, I read the first book in this series by Michelle Hodkin back in November (see mini-review here), and I remembered that there were some things I loved about it, and some I didn't care for that much. Part two, The Evolution of Mara Dyer, was the same.  It picks up only a few hours after the first book ends, so reading one after the other is a good idea (and possible, since all three books are out already).  I still loved the banter between the two main characters, Mara and Noah, and I liked the way the author chose to reveal the back story as a means to understanding what is happening now.  What I didn't really care for is how long it took (most of the book) for them to search for answers and basically come up with nothing.  It was like, if you're not going to give us anything, don't take so long in getting there. The author does give us an exceptional cliff-hanger at the end, leaving anyone who even half-way enjoyed the story frantic to find out what happens next.  (Reading Level: 4.3/Upper Grades)

Seeing as how I was so frantic after finishing The Evolution of Mara Dyer, I jumped in my car and drove to the closest library (thankfully less than three miles away) and checked out the final book in the series, The Retribution of Mara Dyer (thankfully it was on the shelf at that branch).  I am pretty much as conflicted about this one as I was about the first two.  I really liked the direction the story went after what had happened in the second book.  I really hated that Noah wasn't even in most of the story, since he is what makes this series so fantastic.  I didn't like the way Mara seemed to be turning into a bad guy, but I did like the ending.  It was unexpected, but appropriate, and pretty much answered all of our questions.  This was another page turner - a great romance with mystery and intrigue and action thrown into the mix - so I would definitely recommend that you read it (after the first two in the series, of course). (Reading Level: 4.6/Upper Grades)