
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?
- 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!
Today’s First Lines:
“The little purple Christmas tree had a lot to answer for. Con hadn’t celebrated Christmas in the three years she’d lived in Washington, DC. Hadn’t meant to this year either. But then on the way home from the corner store, she noticed the tree in a box of junk left on the sidewalk outside her building. She couldn’t say what made her rescue it, but it felt right playing Charlie Brown in her very own melancholy Christmas special.”
Do you know which book this is from? Scroll down to find out!

Title: Constance
Author: Matthew Fitzsimmons
Publication Date: September 1, 2021
Goodreads Synopsis
A breakthrough in human cloning becomes one woman’s waking nightmare in a mind-bending thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Gibson Vaughn series.
In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying.
After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness—stored for that inevitable transition—something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it’s eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she’s told, is dead. If that’s true, what does that make her?
The secrets of Con’s disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who’s just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder—all over again.
Thoughts & Comments
I don’t read a ton of thrillers anymore, but I’ve always enjoyed them. I got this ebook for free from Amazon, and it sounds really interesting. The first few lines quickly introduce the personality of the main character, which I loved. So, I’m excited to see how her story plays out.
Does this book sound like something you would like? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments!
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