The Top Ten is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.
All the books featured here are 4 or 5 Stars. Some I’ve re-read/listened to multiple times. I decided to share the opening paragraphs from the books that grabbed me. The pictures take you to my review or affiliate link.
May 26: Opening Lines (Best, favorite, funny, unique, shocking, gripping, lines that grabbed you immediately, etc.)
Sinister Magic (Death Before Dragons, #1) by Lindsay Buroker
As I scooted a few more inches down the cliff, I came to the end of my rope. And Swore. Vehemently and virulently, as appropriate for someone hanging from damp, gritty, vertical rock a hundred feet above crashing ocean waves.
Then I made the mistake of looking down and swore a little more. Heights don’t usually faze me. What gets me is the thought of fall-ing from them, landing on sharp pointy rocks, being pulverized like flank steak in a meat grinder, and then being sucked out to sea, never to be seen again.
Slouch Witch (The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Magic) by Helen Harper
The man didn’t look like much at first glance. Taller than me but weedy, with an oddly bul-bous head perched on top of a white, scrawny neck. He was smartly dressed, with a suit and tie, but I should have known better than to assume that clothes maketh the man. I’d had some ridiculously wealthy people in the back of my cab in the past and the most affluent of them looked as if he’d been sleeping rough for three months. maybe that was why he had such a healthy bank account – because he didn’t waste time on things like shaving or brushing his hair or, um, washing.
Elizabeth’s Wolf (Breeds) by Lara Leigh
Prologue
Cassie At Seven
Dash Sinclair. That’s the name you want, Cassie. Choose Dash.
Seven-year-old Cassie Colder stared at the name that the pale, translucent finger pointed to. Her heart raced, fear was an ugly taste in her mouth and desperation had the tears she couldn’t shed threading to well in her eyes. But when the fairy pointed to him, all she could do was hope.
Dash Sinclair sounded like such a nice daddy’s name. She bet Dash Sinclair didn’t hit his little girl or scream at her. She bet he loved her and he took care of her like a daddy was supposed to do.
Bear Meets Girl (Pride) by Shelly Laurenston
Brutal, undeniable pain. The kind of pain that could kill a man. Maybe it had. Maybe the pain throbbing in his head right at this moment had killed him and he’d have to spend eternity feeling like this. Like warmed-over shit melting in the hot desert sun.
The worst part about all this? It was his fault. He had no one to blame for this but him-self-and those dame Jell-O shots. He should have stayed away from them. He knew better. All that alcohol intros delectable little jiggly squares … what was he thinking? And now he could barely move without pain. Brutal, un-deniable pain.
Hot and Badgered (The Honey Badger) by Shelly Laurenston
Prologue
Charles Taylor didn’t realize until that moment how fast life could flip on a man.
One second he’d been listening to two crazy women he’d known for years try to talk him into taking over the Pack from the young, arrogant wolf they all hated. The next second the doorbell rang . . . and everything changed. Forever.
Spider’s Bite (Elemental Assassin) by Jennifer Estep
“My name is Gin, and I kill people.”
Normally, my confession would have elicited gasps of surprise. Pale faces. Nervous sweat. Stifled screams. An overturned chair or two as people scrambled to get away before I buried a knife in their heart–or back. A suck-ing would was a sucking wind. I wasn’t picky about where I caused it.
“Hi, Gin,” four people chorused back to me in perfect, dull, monotones unison.
But not in this place. Within the walled confines of Ashland Asylum, my confession, true though it might be, didn’t even merit a raised eyebrow, much less shock and frightened awe. I was relatively normal compared to the freaks of nature and magic who populated the grounds. Like Jackson, the seven-foot-tall albino giant seated to my left who drooled worse than a mastiff and gurgled like a three=month-old child.
Oracle’s Moon by Thea Harrison
Attracting a Djinn’s interest is generally not considered to be a good thing, Grace.
The babysitter Janice’s pointed words kept bouncing around in Grace’s head like a loose football on a field. That football was ten yards away from the end zone, and it had two teams of two-hundred-pound-plus NFL football players scrambling after it with all the intensity of their multimillion-dollar careers being on the line, and if that football could talk, you know it would be whining, “Oh geez this is gonna hurt.”
Which was pretty much how the whole day had felt to Grace, including the sense of impending doom.
So thanks for the snark fest, Janice. It wasn’t like Grace had any choice about the Djinn appearing in her life in the first place. He had been part of the group that had shown up on her doorstep at three thirty in the morning, because they couldn’t wait until a goddamn decent time to talk to her.
She should probably stop calling him “the Djinn.” He didn’t, after all, have a name. He was Khalil somebody. According to one of his companions, he was Khalil Somebody Important.
Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1) by Thea Harrison
After Another night filled with nightmares, Sophie overslept. When she finally woke and looked blearily around her bedroom, she could tell by the angle of the light along the edges of the blinds that the day was no longer new.
The day had, in fact, not been new for some time. Her stomach took a nosedive as she snatched up her alarm clock. Damn it. Her technology curse and struck again. Resorting to an old-fashioned windup clock hadn’t helped in the slightest, and the clock’s hands had stopped at 4:36.
Ignoring the flare of aches in her shoulder, abdomen, and right thigh, she shoved upright and limped into the living room to check her cell phone. The screen confirmed what she already knew. She was horribly late.
I was born and raised in Northern Indiana. I’m an outdoor sun loving reader living near San Fransisco. I’m a mother, wife, dog owner, animal, and book lover. I’m the owner, reviewer, and mind behind Angel’s Guilty Pleasures. My favorite animals are horses & dogs. As for reading I love all things paranormal & urban fantasy. My favorite shifters are dragons!
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