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!

Hello! I hope you’ve all had a lovely week so far. Mine’s been a little hectic as we’ve been having a couple of issues with our broadband, so I’ve been having to do the majority of my blogging at work! The book I’ve chose to spotlight this week is by a favourite author of mine who, over lockdown, decided to start a pick your own story fantasy on twitter where her readers voted for what would happen to the characters next. It was super fun to take part in and now it’s being released as a full book that I can’t wait to read.

“The Forest comes for the boy on his thirteenth birthday. He is not the first to catch the forest’s notice. He will, however, be one of the last.”

How good does this sound! I might have sneakily read the rest of the first chapter and had to force myself to put it down. Ready to find out what it is??

Hemlock Falls isn’t like other towns. You won’t find it on a map, your phone won’t work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.

Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie’s town—and the rest of humanity—from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.

Ever since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal—and restore her family’s good name. Or die trying.

But in order to survive, Winnie enlists the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie’s ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for.

Not all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark.