

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!

Ari was hiding out in the Middle Ages.
The rubber knight's costume she wore squeaked with
each movement and smelled like her brother -
before he'd embraced deodorant.









Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy!

I’ve been chased my whole life. As a fugitive refugee in the territory controlled by the tyrannical Mercer corporation, I’ve always had to hide who I am. Until I found Excalibur.
Now I’m done hiding.
My name is Ari Helix. I have a magic sword, a cranky wizard, and a revolution to start.
When Ari crash-lands on Old Earth and pulls a magic sword from its ancient resting place, she is revealed to be the newest reincarnation of King Arthur. Then she meets Merlin, who has aged backward over the centuries into a teenager, and together they must break the curse that keeps Arthur coming back. Their quest? Defeat the cruel, oppressive government and bring peace and equality to all humankind.
No pressure.

I know, I know. A lot of you guys will be like “noooo, why are you reading this?” Well, to clarify. I only read the first two lines so that doesn’t even count! Yes, I borrowed it, and I’ve been seeing so many reviews that are not a big consensus with those I follow and now I’m confused.
Should I or should I not read this? I don’t mind returning it if it’s a hard pass. Just let me know!


I haven’t heard about this one so I’m not sure what other readers/reviewers have been saying, but I do know that I LOVE a good gender bend on a classic tale. A woman with Excalibur??? I’m so here for it!
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I’ve heard a lot of problematic things from one side, and then other sides talked about how great it was! It’s such a huge divide that I don’t even know if I want to end up reading it lol. But yes, the premise sounds so great and part of why I was intrigued by it.
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I’m going to look into it and check out the debate on it because before your post I hadn’t heard of any of it but now I’m really intrigued!
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I haven’t seen too much about this one so I can’t help you, haha.
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Ahhh thank you! You aren’t the only one that hasn’t We’ll see if anyone who has read it comments on here 😉
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I was so upset I didnt get an ARC of this and now it is on my huge TBR. I did get the library to order it but haven’t gotten to read it. I have probably gotten the St. Louis Public Library to order about 50 or more books in the past 12 months!
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That is amazing! I’m really hoping that my library will order more of the stuff I’m looking for too. I don’t know if they will be able to, but maybe. I hope you end up getting to read it soonish, but I’m sorry you didn’t get the ARC 😦
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They don’t tell you? When I put an order in, they email me and let me know.
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They haven’t told me personally. it keeps saying that they don’t have any copies of certain books and I don’t know if they will ever order it. I’ll try to ask the next time I’m in there!
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Huh. Maybe it is just St louis
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