First Line Fridays: The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams, Karen White, and Lauren Willig #firstlinefridays #tarheelreader @wmmorrowbooks #theglassocean

First Line Fridays is a feature hosted by Hoarding Books.

TGIF, everyone!

Today my first line is from a book I am currently reading:

New York City May 2013

The evening had turned blue and soft, the way New York does in May, and I decided to walk to the book club and save the bus fare. According to Mimi’s Facebook message, the group was gathering at her apartment on Park Avenue, deep inside the plummy center of the Seventies—at least thirty minutes from my place on Riverside Drive—but I didn’t mind. I was a New Yorker, I could walk all day. Anyway, a brisk hike (so I told myself, scrolling through the Mimi message chain for the millionth time that afternoon) would settle my nerves.

I adored The Forgotten Room written by these three authors. I reviewed it on Goodreads and gave it five stars. I also happen to love each of these authors individually, and how they manage to write so seamlessly together, I will never know. I was super excited to see a new effort from these three, and so far, it is off to an  amazing start.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Forgotten Room comes a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century—two deep in the past, one in the present—to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.

May 2013
Her finances are in dire straits and bestselling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history. Sarah embarks on an ambitious journey to England to enlist the help of John Langford, a recently disgraced Member of Parliament whose family archives might contain the only key to the long-ago catastrophe. . . .

April 1915
Southern belle Caroline Telfair Hochstetter’s marriage is in crisis. Her formerly attentive industrialist husband, Gilbert, has become remote, pre-occupied with business . . . and something else that she can’t quite put a finger on. She’s hoping a trip to London in Lusitania’s lavish first-class accommodations will help them reconnect—but she can’t ignore the spark she feels for her old friend, Robert Langford, who turns out to be on the same voyage. Feeling restless and longing for a different existence, Caroline is determined to stop being a bystander, and take charge of her own life. . . .

Tessa Fairweather is traveling second-class on the Lusitania, returning home to Devon. Or at least, that’s her story. Tessa has never left the United States and her English accent is a hasty fake. She’s really Tennessee Schaff, the daughter of a roving con man, and she can steal and forge just about anything. But she’s had enough. Her partner has promised that if they can pull off this one last heist aboard the Lusitania, they’ll finally leave the game behind. Tess desperately wants to believe that, but Tess has the uneasy feeling there’s something about this job that isn’t as it seems. . . .

As the Lusitania steams toward its fate, three women work against time to unravel a plot that will change the course of their own lives . . . and history itself.

Please share with me the first line(s) of the book you are currently reading! I would love to read it! Have you read The Glass Ocean (or The Forgotten Room), or do you plan to? Happy Friday reading! ~ Jennifer THR