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:

“Freida was underwater. Her muscles contracted, shocked from the cold, and she was reminded suddenly of giving birth to her children: the way her own body had been a stranger to her, knowing things she had never learned, moving without her command. She opened her lips and exhaled, forcing her muscles to relax. The pain turned to pleasure. Miriam’s warm hand pressed gently on the top of her head and she opened her eyes, seeing her own pale hands illuminated by thin veins of light in the dark water.”

These first lines made me even more intrigued by the story, and I couldn’t help but prioritize this to the top of my TBR.

Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

This is an historical fiction novel with elements of fantasy/magical realism.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint:

It is by Gabrielle Sher.

The First Lines Friday book is:

Odessa by Gabrielle Sher.

About the Book:

• Title: Odessa
• Author: Gabrielle Sher
• Page Length: 288 pages
• Publication Date: April 21, 2026
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Synopsis:

In a powerfully imagined Russia at the height of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turn to ancient magic to bring their daughter back from the grave.

Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother’s anxiety, her father’s rules, and the path that’s been laid out for her, she craves the kind of freedom she doesn’t know the edges of. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending Gentile attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed.

Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned—but although she looks the same, Yetta is not the girl she once was. She knows there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the monstruous being stalking the villagers and their enemies, lurking in the woods beyond the shtetl, something that may be of her father’s making, and a being which has plans of its own.

Links: Goodreads     

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