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:

Every time Mary tried to relax in a bath, a paedophile ruined it.

I remember gaping like a codfish reading that first line 😂 And the next ones:

Tonight it was McKinley, who she’s visited on the way home, and who had sat on the sofa for ten minutes with one or more balls hanging out of his shorts. She still wasn’t sure if it was deliberate. Probably not, as Mary was fifty-two, not five. ‘I’m not allowed to think about that,’ Mary said out loud, and McKinley’s ball/s disappeared into the bubbles.

I’m sure that if you’ve read this book, that first line stuck with you, but if you haven’t, can you guess the book???

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Which Orenda powerhouse wrote the opening line of opening lines?

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It is…. a she, and she’s originally from Australia, where, incidentally, her second book for Orenda Books was set…

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But this is a line from her first book published by Orenda Books…

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Last year…

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Featuring parole office Mary Shields…

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It is:

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

Mary Shields is a moody, acerbic probation offer, dealing with some of Glasgow’s worst cases, and her job is on the line.
Liam Macdowall was imprisoned for murdering his wife, and he’s published a series of letters to the dead woman, in a book that makes him an unlikely hero – and a poster boy for Men’s Rights activists.
Liam is released on licence into Mary’s care, but things are far from simple. Mary develops a poisonous obsession with Liam and his world, and when her son and Liam’s daughter form a relationship, Mary will stop at nothing to impose her own brand of justice … with devastating consequences.
A heart-pounding, relentless and chilling psychological thriller, rich with deliciously dark and unapologetic humour, Worst Case Scenario is also a perceptive, tragic and hugely relevant book by one of the most exciting names in crime fiction.

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