First Lines Fridays: August 4, 2023

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 are as follows:

  • 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!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

First Lines

In my life I have experienced regret, embarrassment, maybe even a touch of agony. But nothing, absolutely nothing prepared me for the ignominy of finding myself in a bathroom stall, pressed against the arrogant older brother of the guy I’ve been pretending to date for the past six months.

Do you know what book this is?

Still guessing?

Well, the book reveal is…








Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

From Bookshop.org:

Rival physicists collide in a vortex of academic feuds and fake dating shenanigans in this delightfully STEMinist romcom from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain.

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.

Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig–until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

8 thoughts on “First Lines Fridays: August 4, 2023

    1. Haha…did you have any guesses? I finished it yesterday and enjoyed it a lot…it’s my favorite of the 3 of hers I’ve read.

      1. I do, but very, very rarely.
        I don’t even watch movies of this genre. This genre often, unfortunately still connotes false expectations, especially to young females, of relationships. I cannot support that with my money, time or words.

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