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?

The Rules:

• 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 Lines:

“Avital Cohen wasn’t wearing underwear.

Standing behind the front counter of Best Babka in Brooklyn, holding their signature pink box in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other, she tried to ignore the pain radiating through her lower abdomen. Despite the fact there was a line spreading around the block, and Shabbat was less than four hours away, the middle-aged woman with streaks of purple in her hair was taking her sweet time.”

This sounds like a really interesting start to a book, and it makes me wonder if she’s going to get the home in time to prepare for Shabbat, and more importantly, if that pain is going to improve. But a book starting with a woman not wearing underwear makes me think that she’s likely to going have an embarrassing fall in front of either her crush or life-long nemesis.

Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

This is a rom-com.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint:

It’s written by Jean Meltzer.

The First Lines Friday book is:

Kissing Kosher.

About the Book:

• Title: Kissing Kosher
• Author: Jean Meltzer
• Page Length: 432 pages
• Publication Date: August 29, 2023
• Publisher: MIRA

Synopsis:

Step 1: Get the secret recipe. Step 2: Don’t Fall in Love…

Avital Cohen isn’t wearing underpants – woefully, for unsexy reasons. Chronic pelvic pain has forced her to sideline her photography dreams and her love life. It’s all she can do to manage her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, without collapsing. She needs hired help. And distractingly handsome Ethan Lippman seems the perfect fit.

Except Ethan isn’t there to work – he’s undercover at the behest of his ironfisted grandfather. Though Lippman’s is a household name when it comes to mass-produced kosher baked goods, they don’t have the charm of Avital’s bakery. Or her grandfather’s world-famous pumpkin-spiced babka recipe.

As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets, especially as he helps her find the chronic pain relief – and pleasure – she’s been missing. But perfecting the recipe for romance calls for leaving out the lies … even if coming clean means risking everything.

Links: Goodreads     

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