How to Stop Time by Matt Haig – Let’s review a couple of lines, and I think you’ll see what I mean.
Page one: “I often think of what Hendrich said to me, over a century ago, in his New York apartment. ‘The first rule is that you don’t fall in love,’ he said.” The narrator has a rare condition that makes him “old in the way that a tree, or a quahog clam, or a Renaissance painting is old.”
I knew in
the first five pages that this book promised to feed my craving
for a guided tour through history. And the narrator’s voice was smart and fun.
And, the narrator wanted desperately to find someone about whom he cared.
Stolen Beauty by Laurie Lico Albanese – As if the metallic gold, textured cover
and the endpaper just inside—bearing a woman’s portrait—weren’t enough to suck
me in, the prologue transported me. On page one, readers are treated to the
author’s lovely sensory detail as a 1938 party revs up in a glittering Austrian
ballroom. But by the end of the page, news that Hitler’s army is on the way
changes everything. Rarely have I read opening pages so filled with tension,
dread, action, and fear, contrasted by such beauty.
Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel – The story opens in
1976 with saltwater and sailboats and pies and muffins. There’s children in
shorts and sailor shirts, and their mom and their dad who are ready for summer.
By the fourth page, we learn the wife’s parents have died. Then,
‘“There’s no more money,’ she said to [her husband] through the wind.
‘The money is gone.’ It was like announcing a death. The long-ago earning of
that money—slaves, cotton, rum—and the spending of it, were done. The money had
lived its own life, like a relative.”
I couldn’t wait to see how (or if) this couple who had lived off the fat of their family survived this blow. Add to that, I wanted to read more of this author's fascinating prose.
The Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes – In 1886, a Chinese girl’s father
pushes her off a boat into the icy Puget Sound waters of the Washington
territory. “Do not disappoint me, Daughter.” She has a mission for her family.
Why? I had to know.
By page three, we open to
modern day Washington State, and a woman on a ferry. She’s in route to a place
she hasn’t wanted to see in years—the estate built by Duncan Campbell, her
lumber baron great-great-great-grandfather.
How are the two stories
connected? I had to know.
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum – The prologue begins with the funeral of Trudy
Swenson’s father in the bitter cold of Minnesota. I’m hooked by Blum's vivid imagery and the dysfunction
displayed with Trudy’s mother of German descent—and when, upon returning to her
parents’ home, Trudy discovers her father’s clothes are already stuffed into
garbage bags. By the end of the chapter, there’s another surprise and I cannot
stop reading! I have to know the horrible secrets that Trudy’s mother, a survivor
of WWII, has never spoken of.
BONUS! Blum's books have amazing first chapters, and also amazing last chapters. I highly recommend her latest novel, The Lost Family. The final five pages made me cry . . . and I love when endings make me cry.
BONUS! Blum's books have amazing first chapters, and also amazing last chapters. I highly recommend her latest novel, The Lost Family. The final five pages made me cry . . . and I love when endings make me cry.
What
novels grabbed you in the first five pages?
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