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:

“It took longer than it should have for Olivia Clark to recognize that the world as she knew it was going to end, which seemed foolish, since all the signs were there.”

I love a good apocalypse story, and this single line has already caught my attention

Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

This is a horror novel.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint:

It’s written by Hollie Overton.

The First Lines Friday book is:

A Mother’s Guide to the Apocalypse.

About the Book:

• Title: A Mother’s Guide to the Apocalypse
• Author: Hollie Overton
• Page Length: 496 pages
• Publication Date: August 19, 2025
• Publisher: Redhook

Synopsis:

If you knew the world was ending, what would you want your children to know about survival? What would you sacrifice to protect them? What secrets would you want to stay buried?

For Olivia Sullivan, the summer of 2024, was the beginning of the end. The news is constantly reporting on political upheavals and natural disasters, food and gas shortages are becoming more frequent, and southern California is unbearably hot. Soon Olivia becomes obsessed with doomsday prepping, spending hours on forums determined to protect her children from the coming apocalypse. Her husband and friends insist she’s being irrational, but then Olivia is swept away in a flash flood that wiped out half of LA.

Or that’s the story Rosie, Bettie, and Cassie were told.

Twenty years later, the sisters discover a box of their mother’s belongings that calls into question everything they’re father has told them about their mother, including if she really died. Reeling from their father’s betrayal the family returns to California determined to uncover Olivia’s true fate. Confronted by a world unlike anything they’ve ever known, where no one quite seems to be telling the truth and danger hangs heavy in the air, the Sullivan triplets find themselves struggling with questions about the father who raised them and the mother who may have abandoned them, all while trying to hold onto the only constant in their lives—each other. 

Links: Goodreads     

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