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 donโt give anything else about the book away just yet โ you need to hook the reader first
- Finallyโฆ reveal the book!
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 dutyโdespite secretly being in love with her partner and best friend, Eithan Reed. Even though theyโve worked together for a decade, Rose has managed to hide her feelings for Eithan, terrified that he doesnโt return them. After all, heโs been married since they met, and sheโs married to her job. And cops donโt date their partners.
But her desire wonโt go away, and now Eithan is single.
To further test her resolve, theyโve 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 partnershipโand hope her heart survives the hardest trial sheโs 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.
4 responses to “First Lines Fridays: Is it normal…”
Wow! I’m expecting a somewhat steamy book from that first line.
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It’s somewhat steamy but mostly pain-inducing and frustrating. I liked the book a lot. ๐คฃ
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I love this tag so much because it gives me a better feel for the book than just reading the back cover!! this looks like it will be ~hot~
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I like it the meme too! Reading first lines from blogs has led me to many impulse buys that turned out great. ๐คฃ I really like Lily Baines. I loved the book, even though it was frustrating and made me mad.
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