SERENDIPITOUS FRIDAY: BOOK BEGINNINGS & THE FRIDAY 56 — MAY 11

Welcome to some serendipitous fun today as we share Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and as we showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

Today I’ve grabbed a book from next week’s stack:  an ARC of the Lisa Unger novel, Heartbroken.

About the Book: 

A shattering new novel about three women on a heart-wrenching collision course.Long after anyone expected Kate to do anything with her life, she did. Using the journals left behind by her aunt and grandmother, she wrote a novel based on a very real generation-old love story that ended in tragedy. On the other side of town, Emily is about to set fire to her life. She’s in a dead-end job and is involved with the wrong man; she can feel herself being drawn into darkness, with horrific consequences. With nowhere to go, she finds herself on the run.  Without knowing each other, and with lives that couldn’t be more different, Kate and Emily head to the same point on the map: Heart Island, an idyllic place in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks, owned for generations by Birdie Burke’s family. The harsh and unyielding Birdie is at one with this island, which has a terrifying history all its own. She, too, has consequences to face.

Heartbroken is a tense, mesmerizing novel about the limits of dysfunctional families, of an island haunted by dark memories and restless ghosts, and of the all-too-real demons we must battle.  Wonderfully suspenseful, exquisitely crafted, and written with raw, emotional power, this is Lisa Unger at her very best.

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Beginning (Prologue):  Birdie Burke stood on the edge of the rock and watched the first light of morning color the sky a dusty rose.  As she perched on the cold, slippery stone shore, the lake water lapped at her toes.

Beginning (Chapter One):  The Blue Hen was bustling, and Emily had screwed up in at least three different ways since her shift began.  She’d given one customer the wrong change.  She’d given another the wrong order.  And now, as some little kid ran out of the bathroom without looking, cutting her off as she moved down the narrow hallway from the kitchen to the dining area, she felt the tray of ice waters slipping from her hands.

Wow!  Her day is just not getting any better!  This opener grabbed my interest; so did the prologue, but in a different way.  It hints of peace and endings, perhaps.

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p. 56:  “I have a right to buy my daughter gifts,” he’d said to Kate during this afternoon’s heated conversation.  She was inadequate to the task of explaining why it was not okay to give Chelsea things that Kate would have made her wait for or earn.

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While none of these snippets really hint at the suspense that is certainly part of this book, I can’t wait to read it.  What are the rest of you sharing today?  Come on by…..