First Lines Fridays – 24th October 2025

Welcome to entry #10 for First Lines Fridays! Every week (or whenever the mood strikes), I’ll be sharing the opening line of a book—no title, no author—just the first sentence that sets the whole story in motion.

First Lines Fridays is a weekly post hosted by Wandering Words. In this post instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines.

To do this simply:

• 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 line:

Kiela never thought the flames would reach the library.

Do you recognise what line this book is from?

Okay, here’s a hint for you… it’s a popular cosy fantasy book.

Still unsure? Here’s your last hint… it’s written by Sarah Beth Durst.

Keep scrolling down for the BIG REVEAL!

Goodreads

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.

When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.

In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.

But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.

[Did you guess right?]