First Lines Friday

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!

When Herc woke up in the middle of the night, his first thought was of the cake, which had already been stolen twice. His second thought – that he had most definitely heard a noise downstairs – should probably have come first, but his brain had firm ideas about what sorts of things were important and there was no point in fighting it.

Any ideas?

This looks like such a fun read which is just what I’m looking for! The illustrations by David Tazzyman are wonderful.

Goodreads Synopsis:

There’s something fishy going on at St Halibut’s Home for Waifs and Strays . . .
Life at St Halibut’s Home has been idyllic for two months, ever since the children buried their matron (don’t look like that – it was an accident!) Helpfully, the not-so-dear departed matron left behind a surprisingly large stash of money, which will keep them in black-market lemon sherbets for the rest of their lives. Tig, Stich and Herc just have to make sure nobody finds out they’re on their own. But when they find out that St Halibut’s is to be inspected by DEATH (the Department for Education, Assimilation, Training and Health), they start to panic. They’ll need to convince the inspector that everything is peachy or they’ll be sent to the Mending House – where badly-behaved orphans go, never to return. As the big day approaches, the children start to think they might just pull it off. But when the inspector arrives, things don’t just go wrong, they get spectacularly out of hand . . . Join Tig, Stef and Herc in this hilarious and quirky adventure about friendship and the power of the underdog from debut author Sophie Wills, illustrated throughout by the million-copy bestselling David Tazzyman.