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!

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Gloom cluttered the whole of the tower, and within its dark folds stood a magician. She wore a grim smile and an ink-black suit. Both cut severe lines, softened only by the tendril of fog that plumed from her mouth.

The magician swirled her hand through the air. The fog tightened and heavied, it twisted and reshaped, and at last, it settled around her shoulders. The smokiest of magical cloaks. One that held close the quiet.

But it was not enough.

by Heather Kassner
ASIN/ISBN: 9781250764003
Publication: August 3, 2021

In order to survive on her own, twelve-year-old Rooney de Barra collects precious moonlight, which she draws from the evening sky with her (very rare and most magical) lunar mirror. All the while she tries to avoid the rival roughhouse boys, and yet another, more terrifying danger: the dreaded thing that’s been disappearing children in the night.

When Trick Aidan, the worst of the roughhouse boys, steals her lunar mirror, Rooney will do whatever it takes to get it back. Even if it means leaping into a pool of darkness after it swallows Trick and her mirror. Or braving the Plentiful Darkness, a bewitching world devoid of sky and stars. Or begrudgingly teaming up with Trick to confront the magician and unravel the magic that has trapped Warybone’s children.  (from Goodreads)

Doesn’t it sound so good? I’ve heard so many great things about Kassner’s books. The first lines hooked me already. I’m excited to see where it leads.