Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by from I’d Rather Be At The Beach who posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.
One of the sad things about being a book lover is the inability to read every single book you want to – the more you read, the more authors you find to love which simply multiplies all the books you want to read. So although 2019 is the year I embrace the TBR, I do so with the knowledge that it is all to easy for books to slip between the cracks.
I ‘discovered’ Peter Swanson in 2015 following the publication of his superb novel The Kind Worth Killing. This was followed by The Girl with a Clock for a Heart and Her Every Fear but I still have last year’s book All the Beautiful Lies on the TBR so I am determined not to lag any further behind and read Before She Knew Him which will be published on 7 March 2019.
Blurb
‘They had a secret, the two of them, and there was no better way to start a friendship than with a secret.’
When Hen and Lloyd move into their new house in West Dartford, Mass., they’re relieved to meet, at their first block party, the only other seemingly-childless couple in their neighbourhood, Matthew and Mira Dolamore. Turns out they live in the Dutch Colonial immediately next door.
When they’re invited over for dinner, however, things take a sinister turn when Hen thinks she sees something suspicious in Matthew’s study. Could this charming, mild-mannered College Professor really be hiding a dark secret, one that only Hen, whose been battling her own problems with depression and medication, could know about? Lloyd certainly doesn’t seem to believe her, and so, forced together, Hen and Matthew start to form an unlikely bond. But who, if anyone, is really in danger?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro
WITNESS
CHAPTER 1
The two couples met at a neighbourhood block party, the third Saturday in September.
Hen hadn’t wanted to go, but Lloyd convinced her. “It’s just down the street. If you hate it, you can turn around and come straight back.”
“That’s exactly what I can’t do,” Hen said. “I need to stay at least an hour or else people will notice.”
“They really won’t.”
“They really will. I can’t just look around at my new neighbours , then turn and leave.”
‘I’m not going if you don’t go.”
“Fine,” Hen said, calling his bluff knowing that he’d go alone if pressed. Lloyd was silent for a moment. He was in front of the living room bookshelf, rearranging.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Now granted this isn’t an action packed opening but I do think it is one that sets the scene, and more pertinently, the characters really well in just a few lines. That combined with the synopsis which promises intrigue by the bucket load has me convinced this is a book I will enjoy.
What do you think? Would you keep reading?
