First Lines Fridays || 17/02/2023

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!

The first lines:

The ghosts are still here.

The words lingered in the air, each one a shimmering spirit, cold whispers of caution, but I wasn’t afraid.

I already knew.

Don’t you think these are such captivating first lines?!

Here’s a little hint to help you out:

Not to give much away, but this is a book where the MCs are a reformed thief and a young leader of an outlaw dynasty. Oh and the cover is truly a work of art!!

AND the book is:

Dance of Thieves (Dance of Thieves) by Mary E. Pearson

Genre: YA fantasy, romance

Blurb:

When the patriarch of the Ballenger empire dies, his son, Jase, becomes its new leader. Even nearby kingdoms bow to the strength of this outlaw family, who have always governed by their own rules. But a new era looms on the horizon, set in motion by a young queen, which makes her the target of the dynasty’s resentment and anger.

At the same time, Kazi, a legendary former street thief, is sent by the queen to investigate transgressions against the new settlements. When Kazi arrives in the forbidding land of the Ballengers, she learns that there is more to Jase than she thought. As unexpected events spiral out of their control, bringing them intimately together, they continue to play a cat and mouse game of false moves and motives in order to fulfill their own secret missions.

Mary E. Pearson’s Dance of Thieves is a new YA novel in the New York Times bestselling Remnant Chronicles universe, in which a reformed thief and the young leader of an outlaw dynasty lock wits in a battle that may cost them their lives—and their hearts.

Goodreads