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.

This week I’m going with my next-up read, and it’s our current book club selection, so here we go!

“One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing. He doesn’t immediately understand that it’s a bullet at all, and it’s only luck that it doesn’t strike him between the eyes.”

This has been a pretty popular book but also a controversial one following its pick by Oprah for her book club. Any clues yet?

The book follows a mother and her 8-year old boy as they flee their home in Acapulco in search of a better life in the United States. Ringing any bells?

And the book is….

American Dirt by

Jeanine Cummins

Well done if you had this one! I should be starting this one either tonight or tomorrow if I can finish my Agatha Christie, and I’m looking forward to it! Until we meet again, happy reading!