First Lines Friday – #Orentober edition #1

Hi and welcome to First Lines Friday – #Orentober edition!

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

I love this feature, and I thought it would be a fun way to shine the spotlights on some fab Orenda books. So here goes:

It was when they snatched the baby from her that she realised how serious the situation had become.

All my senses went on high alert immediately! Have you read this, or can you guess the book???

.

.

.

It…. has my favourite colour on the cover, purple that is, a bit of a bold move but it absolutely works.

.

.

.

It is…. by a male author and this is his first book with Orenda Books.

.

.

.

It is… set in a part of the world I have never been, namely Pakistan.

.

.

.

And it highlights some of the issues still ongoing in Pakistan.

.

.

.

But above all, it is a fantastic story that draws you in and doesn’t let you go until long after you’ve turned that final page.

.

.

.

.

.

.

It is:

This is the blurb and you can find my review here, if you’d like to know more:

A young woman defies convention in a small Pakistani village, with devastating results for her and her family. A stunning, immense beautiful novel about courage, family and the meaning of love, when everything seems lost…
In sixteen-year-old Abida’s small Pakistani village, there are age-old rules to live by, and her family’s honour to protect. And, yet, her spirit is defiant and she yearns to make a home with the man she loves.
When the unthinkable happens, Abida faces the same fate as other young girls who have chosen unacceptable alliances – certain, public death. Fired by a fierce determination to resist everything she knows to be wrong about the society into which she was born, and aided by her devoted father, Jamil, who puts his own life on the line to help her, she escapes to Lahore and then disappears.
Jamal goes to Lahore in search of Abida – a city where the prejudices that dominate their village take on a new and horrifying form – and father and daughter are caught in a world from which they may never escape.
Moving from the depths of rural Pakistan, riddled with poverty and religious fervour, to the dangerous streets of over-populated Lahore, No Honour is a story of family, of the indomitable spirit of love in its many forms … a story of courage and resilience, when all seems lost, and the inextinguishable fire that lights one young woman’s battle for change.

Thanks for stopping by! What do you make of this first line, yay or nay? Let me know below!