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:

“We’re five miles behind the front. Reinforcements arrived yesterday. Now that we’ve eaten our fill of beef and beans, hunger is the last thing on our minds. We even loaded up our mess tins with extra helpings for later tonight. There are twice the usual amounts of sausage and bread to go with everything else. That really does it for us. We haven’t had this kind of luck in a while.”

This is clearly about war, and these few lines pulled me right into the story.

Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

This is a historical fiction novel.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint:

It is written by Erich Maria Remarque.

The First Lines Friday book is:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

About the Book:

• Title: All Quiet on the Western Front
• Author: Erich Maria Remarque
• Page Length: 256 pages
• Publication Date: March 3, 2026
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Synopsis:

One by one the boys begin to fall…

In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

Links: Goodreads     

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