TUESDAY INTROS/TEASERS: DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS — JUNE 19

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Just grab your book and share the opening lines; then find another excerpt that “teases” the reader.

Today I’m sharing from a book on Sparky, my Kindle:  Dirty Little Secrets, by C. J. Omololu, is about a long-held secret that is bigger and dirtier than most.

Blurb:  Everyone has a secret. But Lucy’s is bigger and dirtier than most. It’s one she’s been hiding for years-that her mom’s out-of-control hoarding has turned their lives into a world of garbage and shame. She’s managed to keep her home life hidden from her best friend and her crush, knowing they’d be disgusted by the truth. So, when her mom dies suddenly in their home, Lucy hesitates to call 911 because revealing their way of life would make her future unbearable-and she begins her two-day plan to set her life right.

With details that are as fascinating as they are disturbing, C. J. Omololu weaves an hour-by-hour account of Lucy’s desperate attempt at normalcy. Her fear and isolation are palpable as readers are pulled down a path from which there is no return, and the impact of hoarding on one teen’s life will have readers completely hooked.

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     Everyone has secrets.  some are just bigger and dirtier than others.

     At least that’s what I told myself whenever I stood in a crowd of normal-looking people and felt like I was the only one.  The only person on the planet who had to hide practically everything that was real.  It was soothing to look at all the unfamiliar faces and try to figure out the thing each person hid inside—true or not, it made me feel like less of a freak.

     I’ll bet that guy in the red hoodie picks his nose when he thinks nobody is looking.  And the kid with the baseball cap pulled too low over his eyes?  Totally stoned on the pain pills he steals from his mother.  See how that girl in the corner stands just a little apart from everyone else?  Her dad probably smacks her around when he’s had too much to drink.  Mom never laid a hand on me.  There was that, anyway.

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Teaser:    My pulse was pounding in my ears so loudly that at first I didn’t listen, but then I began to hear people giggling all around the room and I started to pay attention.  p. 8

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I’m liking this beginning…and I like how the teaser shows something about the character and what she is going through.

What are you all sharing?  Come on by with your comments and links.