Welcome back to Book Break! We are playing another game today. This is the first sentence challenge.
It's pretty self-explanatory, I've got a quiz here with 10 first lines from books written down,
I don't know what they're gonna be but they are all books that haven't been published,
and they're all books that are on this shelf. That means they are all books that I have read at
least once in my life, so it's going to be pretty embarrassing if I can't identify the first lines.
If you want to play along at home you can either literally just try and race me and see if you can
figure it out before I can, or pause the video after I read out each line and then give yourself
time to guess it and then see if you got it right, or if I got it right! Who knows what'll happen?
Whichever way you play I would love to know in the comments how you guys did compared to me.
OK let's give this a go. I don't think i'm gonna be very good at it. Line number one. "Dear you,
it's exactly 19 years since that luminous morning when we smiled and said goodbye."
What is that?! "Dear you", so it's something written as a letter. I have a feeling that that
could be The Man Who Didn't Call. It's not all written in letters, but there are letters in it,
and they are very key to the plot and the twist. The Man Who Didn't Call by Rosie Walsh. The first
line of this is "Dear you, it's exactly 19 years since that luminous morning when we
smiled and said goodbye". Smashed it! This is a really good book, I really recommend,
it's like a romance thriller mystery with a really good twist that I did not see coming.
OK number two. "The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored." What on earth is that?
"The king stood in a pool of blue light", that makes me think on stage. It could be Station
Eleven. Station Eleven opens with a performance on stage and then the lead actor dies of a flu
which turns out to be this big pandemic, very relevant right now. Let's see if it's that.
The first line of Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel is "The king stood in a pool of blue light,
unmoored." I'm doing well so far! OK number three. "It's you or me next, Rene said to get a laugh."
I have no idea. "It's you or me next." And who's Rene? I don't remember a book with a Rene in it,
or Renee. "It's you or me next", that kind of sounds to me like it's at a wedding,
saying like it's you or me next to get married, or a funeral it's you or me next to die.
Shotgun Lovesongs is at a wedding. This is Shotgun Lovesongs by Nikolas Butler,
and the first line is "We invited him to all of our weddings, he was famous." No so I was wrong,
I knew this was a wedding though. "It's you or me next, Rene said to get a laugh." What is that? Is
Rene a boy Rene or a girl Rene? Who is Rene? Oh i'm completely stumped. Does this have a Rene in
it? It's about a brother and a sister, one of them could be called Rene. Oh my god Rene and Leon,
their names are Rene and Leon. This is The Distance Home by Paula Saunders and the first line
is "It's you or me next, Rene said to get a laugh." Got there in the end! This is a really
good, really sad book about a brother and a sister who are both dancers, both want to be dancers,
and the sister is really praised for that but the brother is not, and so the brother ends up
becoming more and more troubled, and they're these two siblings that kind of should have been best
friends, but life tears them apart so much and it's very upsetting. And very good. OK line four.
"My mother used to say everyone has secrets." Ooh that's gonna be like a fun thriller. "My mother
used to say everyone has secrets." What could that be? It could be Our Dark Secret by Jenny Quintana.
Was her mother around in the story? "My mother used to say everyone has secrets." I'm gonna try
Our Dark Secret. Here it is. And the first line is "I met Rachel in the summer of 1978, the year
before they found the first body." That's a very good first line but not what I was looking for.
Could be like any thriller! Can I come back to it? We're gonna come back to it. Line number five.
"What would happen if I wrote some pages for you?" I know that one. That's gonna be Pages For You. I
will be so surprised if I'm wrong here. This is Pages For You by Sylvia Brownrigg, and the first
line is "What would happen if I wrote some pages for you?" This is another book that I absolutely
love. It's a love story between two women, and it's about them meeting and falling in love,
and then the relationship falling apart, and it's just heartbreaking. Line number six. "Something,
way out in the white dark." Oh okay so it's something creepy. "Something, way out in the white
dark." I can't think what that is. So it sounds like something really spooky. Is it White is for
Witching? That's spooky. This is White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. And the first line is
"Miranda Silver is in Dover, in the ground beneath her mother's house." Creepy but not what I want.
"Something, way out in the white dark." Is that what it was? Wilder Girls is another one that's
creepy and strange, so maybe the white dark could be something mysterious from there.
That's Wilder Girls by Rory Power, and the first line is "Something, way out in the white dark."
Yes! This is a really fun weird book. It's set at this boarding school on an island where the
girls have all been infected with this mysterious illness that is kind of transforming their bodies,
and they get sent rations from the mainland every week, but there is something else,
there's like some bigger mystery going on, of why they're being kept there, and it's bizarre and
brilliant. OK line number seven. "Mary Foxe came by the other day," I know what this is, "the last
person on earth I was expecting to see." So Mary Foxe is a character in Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi.
I know this is the second time I've tried a Helen Oyeyemi book but I'm pretty certain about it this
time. First line of this book is "Mary Foxe came by the other day, the last person on Earth I was
expecting to see." This is another very strange book about a writer called Mr Fox and his muse
Mary Foxe, who kind of challenge each other to a writing competition, but it's very surreal,
you never quite know who is writing what, and their characters will appear in each of
the stories. It's unique, definitely unique. OK line number eight. "So how shall I begin?" Oh my
god that's even harder than the one about the secrets. "So how shall I begin?" I don't know!
"So how shall I begin?" So that's one with like a very obvious narrator telling the story.
"So how shall I begin?" Makes me think it's gonna be historical. "So how shall I begin?" That one's
hard, that one's really hard. We're gonna skip that one as well and go to line nine. "Sometimes
it seems like all I ever do is lie." Oh my goodness, I remember that, I recognise that
so much. "Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie." I think I've read this quite recently.
What is that?! "Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie." I think it's a young adult story,
sounds like it, like "Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie." So it could be Love is
for Losers, this is my proof copy here, this is a hilarious book, does she lie? I don't know. So
Love is for Losers, the first line of this book is "Did you know that you can marry yourself?"
I should have known it wasn't the one about lying, this book is hilarious start to finish. "Sometimes
it seems like all I ever do is lie." I think I've just read this! Let me get the book I've literally
just read. This is the last book I finished, People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd, a book that's
coming out next year, it's a thriller, you're gonna love it. The first line is "I think it
is possible that I am dying." No it's not that either. Oh my god. I know what it is! I know
exactly what it is. It's The Princess Diaries. It's the first Princess Diaries book. The Princess
Diaries by Meg Cabot. I read this entire series in 24 hours. And the first line is "Sometimes it
seems like all I ever do is lie." I knew there was a reason I knew that so well. OK the final line,
line number 10. "The man looked across the room at his son who lay shivering on the hard couch." What
is that? "The man looked across the room at his son who lay shivering on the hard couch." Oh boy,
what is that? I don't even know where to begin. I'm trying to think what has a man and his son
and the son is unwell at the beginning. So I'm missing three lines. "My mother used to
say everyone has secrets," "So how shall I begin?" and "The man looked across the room at his son who
lay shivering on the hard couch." And I don't know about any of them. OK I'm gonna say I get to pick
one book from these shelves for each of those lines, and then those are my final guesses.
OK I've picked my three books. So for "My mother used to say everyone has secrets,"
I've chosen Little Deaths by Emma Flint. This is about a woman accused of murdering her children,
and it's about the secrets that the investigators think she is hiding. And the first line is "On the
rare nights that she sleeps, she is back in the skin of the woman from before." That is wrong,
that is not what I was looking for. I have the answers here, and the answer to that one is
A Simple Favour. I so nearly picked A Simple Favour! This is an absolutely wild book,
and you're right, the woman in this has such a big secret. And the first line is "My mother used to
say everyone has secrets." I so nearly chose this, that's so annoying. For "So how shall I begin?" I
chose The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes. This is a Greek myth retelling, so i thought fit
that historical element I was going for. And like Greek myths have this sort of grand tradition of
being told aloud, with the "So how shall I begin?" kind of fit that. So the first line of Children of
Jocasta is "The man looked across the room at his son who lay shivering on the hard couch."
That's hilarious. I got the right book but for the wrong line. So that means that this is going to
be wrong. This was my guess for "The man looked across the room at his son," because I remember
there is a man and his son in this book. But no, the first line of this is "If Erdman Frith had
chosen pizza instead of roast beef, his son might have been spared." Wow that's very sinister. OK
so that means I still don't have the answer for "So how shall I begin?" but I used up my guess
on the wrong book. OK the answer is . . . The book that begins "So how shall I begin?" is The Queen
of Bloody Everything! I would not have guessed that. This is Queen of Bloody Everything by
Joanna Nadin. This is a good book. It's sad. This is told from the point of view of a woman talking
to her mother in hospital, and so she begins "So where shall I begin?" and she retells their life
story together, of course she does! That was hard. So that was ten books, ten brilliant first lines,
even if I only guessed seven of them right. Do leave a comment letting us know how many did
you get right, did you beat me? I think I was pretty good, even if I didn't get them all. I
will also link a playlist here of all of the other videos where we played games here on Book Break,
and leave a comment if you have any games you'd like to see us play next. See you next time!