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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Is it normal to think about gaps? About the distance between two shirt buttons? About what’s behind them? About what it’d feel like to slide your fingers into the space between a couple of buttons and feel what’s underneath?

by Lily Baines
ASIN/ISBN: 9789655991840
Publication: March 26, 2020

The one person she wants is completely off-limits to her…

Chicago detective Rose Harper prides herself on her professionalism while on duty—despite secretly being in love with her partner and best friend, Eithan Reed. Even though they’ve worked together for a decade, Rose has managed to hide her feelings for Eithan, terrified that he doesn’t return them. After all, he’s been married since they met, and she’s married to her job. And cops don’t date their partners.

But her desire won’t go away, and now Eithan is single.

To further test her resolve, they’ve landed their biggest case yet, and the addition of a beautiful FBI agent into the mix only makes things worse. Rose must navigate the complications of the case and her romantic competition to save not only the victims, but her partnership—and hope her heart survives the hardest trial she’s ever faced.

Lily Baines wrote one of my favorite books last year so I’m ready to read her other offerings. I was hoping I wouldn’t hate Eithen Reed as much as I hated Luke in You Didn’t Love Me Then, but I’ve had to put it down several times for fear I might rip it to shreds. I only thought I hated Luke. It’s nothing compared to how I feel about Detective Eithen Reed.