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!

If it had not been such a rain-lashed, windy evening, the people who jostled the pavements of Camden Town might have noticed something a little odd about a white-haired elderly gentleman who made his way against the steady flow of the crowd.

Any ideas?

I spotted this in Waterstones just before Christmas and the opening totally intrigued me so I had to pick it up.

Goodreads Synopsis:

‘When you come to the house, you will hear strange tales. They will tell you in the village that it is haunted, but you must not be afraid. When the time comes … you will know what to do.’

Mr Blunden’s words echoed through Lucy’s ears as she explored the house. It was such an old house that it seemed to Lucy as if all the past was gathered up inside it as if in a great box; as though it had a life of its own that continued to exist just beyond the reach of her eyes and ears. Did Mr Blunden, who went out of his way to offer their mother the job as caretaker, mean to help or hurt them? Could she and her brother Jamie really help those troubled ghosts from another age?