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?

• 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
• Finally… reveal the book!
• 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
• Finally… reveal the book!

Happy Friday! For the next few weeks I’m going to be showcasing the first lines of some of my favourite reads of 2021. First up is a book filled with an intricately built fantasy world, unforgettable characters, brilliantly written plot twists and wondrously descriptive writing.

“After fifteen years of handling the Traementis house charters, Donna Traementis knew that a deal which looked to good to be true probably was. The proposal currently on her desk stretched the boundaries of belief.”

I adored this book when I read it earlier in the year, and an eagerly anticipating the sequel out in December. Ready to find out what it is?

Ren is a con artist who has come to the sparkling city of Nadežra with one goal: to trick her way into a noble house, securing her fortune and her sister’s future.

But as she’s drawn into the elite world of House Traementis, she realizes her masquerade is just one of many surrounding her. And as nightmare magic begins to weave its way through the City of Dreams, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled…with Ren at their heart.