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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He sat on the hillside and waited.

Another day, another job. Before him, rusting tracks disappeared into the depths of the tunnel mouth. In the gray gloom of the cloudy day, the light barely penetrated beyond the stone arch of the opening. His eyes never left the entrance. He was expectant but jaded.

There was no thrill of excitement or flicker of interest.

He had long since ceased to be curious.

by Claire NcFall
ASIN/ISBN: 9781536218459
Publication: October 12, 2021
First Published: March 1, 2013
Series: The Ferryman #1

When Dylan wakes up after her train has crashed, she thinks she has survived unscathed. But she couldn’t be more mistaken: the bleak landscape around her isn’t Scotland, it’s a wasteland–a terrain somehow shaped by her own feelings and fears, a border to whatever awaits her in the afterlife. And the stranger sitting by the train track isn’t an ordinary teenage boy. Tristan is a Ferryman, tasked with guiding Dylan’s soul safely across the treacherous landscape, a journey he has made a thousand times before. Only this time, something’s different. The crossing, as ever, is perilous, with ravenous wraiths hounding the two at each day’s end, hungry for Dylan’s soul. But as Dylan focuses her strength on survival, with Tristan as protector, challenger, and confidant, she begins to wonder where she is truly meant to be–and what she must risk to get there. An international bestseller with a phenomenal following, the award-winning Ferryman (with its sequels Trespassers and Outcasts) is in development to be a major motion picture. (Goodreads)

It was first published in 2013, but only just published in the U.S. for the first time. I read a review from a bookstagrammer and was immediately intrigued by it. Have you read it? Does it sound like something you’d want to read?