I collect first sentences. There are few things better than the feeling you get from browsing the first page of a book and knowing you're about to be hooked. The perfect introduction to a novel looks many different ways: It invites you to ask more questions. It makes you stop, think, and then reread. It provokes a response — laughter, tears, snorts, terror. And hopefully, the urge to keep reading. Here are some spectacular lines from 2020 books.
2. “The harvest begins, and all that exists is fear.”
—The Loop by Ben Oliver
3. “In the deep wilds of the north, there is a Shrine cut into the mountainside.”
—The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood
4. “I didn’t mean to kill Josh Harper.”
—When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey
5. “The first thing Silverfish had learned on board the Brackish was how to hold a knife.”
—Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim
6. “People were too scared for music tonight.”
—The Beginning at the End by Mike Chen
7. "One day after the emperor had died and been eaten, the call went out to select his successor.”
—House of Dragons by Jessica Cluess
8. “They’ve never found the body of the first and only boy who broke my heart.”
—The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller
9. “They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.”
—The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso
11. “'Something wants to eat you,' called Almost Brilliant from her perch in a nearby tree, 'and I shall not be sorry if it does.'”
—The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
12. “My mother told me once that being an Oliva meant measuring our lives in lengths of red thread. And probably, that was true.”
—Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore
13. “Silence on a tropical island is the relentless sound of water.”
—Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup
14. “I am a girl surrounded by monsters and ghosts from an ancient world.”
—Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda and Valynne E. Maetani
15. “Hal was not yet a prince when she fell in love with Lady Hotspur, but she would be within the hour.”
—Lady Hotspur by Tessa Gratton
16. “I was eighteen years old, give or take a fairy-tale century, when I had my first kiss.”
—The Night Country by Melissa Albert
17. “I wake up the same way I fell asleep: knife in hand, boots for a pillow, and Nameless.”
—Nameless Queen by Rebecca McLaughlin
18. “As pale as a grave grub she’s an eyeful.”
—Things in Jars by Jess Kidd
19. “Begin at the end: plummeting down the side of the ship in the storm’s wild darkness, breath gone with the shock of falling, my camera flying away through the rain—”
—The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
21. “Let’s say that you are a sixty-nine-year old Jamaican man called Stanford, or Stan for short, who once faked your own death.”
—These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card
22. “Sweet sixteen is when the claws come out.”
—Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin
23. “When a star reaches the end of its lifetime, it explodes in this violent supernova.”
—And the Stars Were Burning Brightly by Danielle Jawando
24. “My grandmother used to tell me that when our ancestors die, they don’t just disappear, they continue to watch over us.”
—The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
25. “There were warning signs in the Ward that day that anyone could have seen.”
—The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkowski
26. “When a body goes down in Lake Tahoe, they say, it does not rise again.”
—Pretty Things by Janelle Brown
27. “The light, sweet honey scent of burning candles did not quite masked the odor of blood and sweat in the makeshift ballroom.”
—The Engineer’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood
28. “My mother is a wizard.”
—Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown
29. “Salt for pride. Mustard seed for lies. Barley for curses.”
—Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
31. “The last two were a girl and her father who lived along the old eastern range on the side of a mountain they called the mountain that stands alone.”
—The Bear by Andrew Krivak
32. “California revealed itself to Kate as a series of spots, like a scratch-off lottery ticket, the forested hills emerging in patches as the plane lowered through the clouds.”
—Take me Apart by Sara Siglar
33. “Around me was an ant colony of black motorcars. In my jacket pocket, hidden inside a mint candy box, were the ashes of my father — Sadegh Mozaffarian — dead for two weeks and estranged from me for thirty-eight years.”
—Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer
34. “It was after midnight when the boatman and his daughter brought the witch out of Sabbath House and back onto the river.”
—The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson
35. “Oona stopped trusting the mirror years ago. After all, it told only a sliver of the story.”
—Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
36. “Pastor Newsome’s rules for First Missionary House of the Lord were simple.”
—Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles
37. "'Oranges don’t have nipples,' says Sophie.”
—Yes No Maybe So by Aisha Saeed and Becky Albertalli
38. “The little girl’s memories began in a dark cellar.”
—The Empire of Dreams by Rae Carson
39. “From above, the heart of the city is easy to see. Beijing is a bull’s-eye.”
—Little Gods by Meng Jin
41. “Stories always begin the same way: There was and there was not.”
—Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
42. “When you live in a place like this, you’re always planning your escape.”
—We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez
43. “The beach smelled of death. Half a dozen sharks lay under the sun, waiting to be salted.”
—Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
44. “Eleanor West was fond of saying — inasmuch as she was fond of saying anything predictable, sensible, or more than once — that her school had no graduates, only students who found somewhere else to do their learning for a time.”
—Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
45. “Katrina King loved love. Even when it didn’t love her.”
—Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai
46. “Death,
As blackness eats my last sliver of consciousness, I realize I regret.”
—A Breath Too Late by Rocky Callen
47. “He was seventeen the first time he saw her. A February dusk in 1943 on the cold plains of Manzanar.”
—The Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II by Andrew Fukuda
48. “A white castle once stood in the forest, with spires that soared to the lower floors of heaven and dungeons that stretched ever downward, or so the legend went, to brush the very chimney stacks of hell.”
—Don’t Call the Wolf by Aleksandra Ross
49. “I know too much of mud.”
—Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
