
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!
Number 14 Darlington Road in Bloomsbury, London, looks like a perfectly ordinary townhouse – at first glance anyway.
Any ideas?




I have absolutely adored all of Abi Elphinstone’s books, so was very excited to have been approved to read Saving Neverland on NetGalley.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Number 14 Darlington Road, looks like a perfectly ordinary townhouse – at first glance, anyway, but magic is good at hiding . . . when it’s waiting for the right person to discover it . . . Martha Pennydrop is ten, and desperate to grow up. But growing up is a tricky business. It means turning your back on imagination, fun and magic, because those were the things that led to the Terrible Day when something awful nearly happened to Martha’s younger brother, Scruff, which would have been All Her Fault. But when Martha and Scruff discover a drawer full of mysterious gold dust in the bedroom of their new house – along with a window that’s seemingly impossible to close – it’s the start of an incredible adventure to a magical world: Neverland! The Pennydrop’s new house used to belong to another family – the Darlings – who once visited this world themselves. Now Peter Pan is back, and in need of their help. Neverland is in the icy grip of a terrible curse – cast long ago by Captain Hook. And only Martha and Scruff can save it . . . A reluctant Martha and excited Scruff are swept off to Neverland and into the company of the Lost Kids. But when Scruff is kidnapped, Martha must rediscover all the imagination, magic and belief she has buried deep inside herself for so long, to save him – and Neverland itself.