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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The day my life changed began like most mornings–with a judgmental cat spirit.

That t-shirt makes you look like an eggplant, Miv said. Despite being a tiny black kitten, he had a lot of opinions. He sat on my dresser, his round eyes watching me get ready for summer school.

Most people would agree that having a talking sprit for a best friend is pretty strange. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve seen spirits.

by Lori M. Lee
ASIN/ISBN: 9781368068246
Publication: August 7, 2021

Pahua Moua has a bit of a reputation for being a weirdo. A lonely eleven-year-old Hmong girl with the unique ability to see spirits, she spends her summer days babysitting her little brother and playing with her best friend, a cat spirit no one else can see.

One day Pahua accidentally untethers an angry spirit from the haunted bridge in her neighborhood–whoops. When her brother suddenly falls sick and can’t be awoken, Pahua fears that the bridge spirit has stolen his soul. She returns to the scene of the crime with her aunt’s old shaman tools, hoping to confront the spirit and demand her brother’s return. Instead, she summons a demon.

Thankfully, a warrior shaman with a bit of an attitude problem shows up at the last minute and saves her butt. With the help of this guide, Pahua will have to find her way through the spirit worlds and rescue her brother’s soul before it’s too late. Little does she know she’ll have her own discoveries to make along the way. . . . (from Goodreads)

It’s publication week for Pahua and the Soul Stealer! Woohoo! This is one of my anticipated reads, and I’m about a quarter of the way through. Miv is the Hmong word for cat, and Miv is also the name of the cat spirit…heh. Miv with his sarcasm is definitely my favorite character right now. I hope you all get a chance to check it out!