Hello!
Would a Friday ever be complete without trying (and in my case, failing!) to guess a mystery book by its first lines? I think not!
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!
First Lines . . .
“LONDON, TWO YEARS BEFORE
The man in the dark grey trench coat walked briskly along the Embankment, cursing the cold and his lack of gloves. It had been years since he’d been called out to a secret rendezvous – he was past this kind of thing. But the name rang a bell. Made him curious. Astonished, in fact.”
Today’s First Lines Friday book is . . .

1956
Freddy and Polly are used to helping their father with experiments. So they don’t mind being put into cryonic suspension – having their hearts frozen until their father wakes them up again. They know it will only be for an hour or two, so there’s nothing to worry about . . .
Present Day
Ben and Rachel have resigned themselves to a long, boring Summer. Then they find a hidden underground vault in the garden containing two frozen figures, a boy and a girl. And when Rachel accidentally presses a button, something unbelievable happens . . .
Can Polly and Freddy adapt to the twenty-first century? Will their bodies survive having been in suspension for so long? And most important of all, what happened to their father – and why did he leave them frozen in time?
Did you guess this book by its first lines? Let me know in the comments!
Thank you for reading this post.
Hannah