Happy Friday! Today I am participating in First Line Friday, hosted by Reading is My Superpower, AND First Lines Friday, created by Wandering Words!
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!
“I’m ahead of schedule and this is a problem.”
Anyone have any guesses on what book this is? I’ll give you a few clues…
any guesses yet? no? okay, one more gif…
Last chance to guess!
Today’s book is…
Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass Published on March 22, 2022 by Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Genres: Contemporary, Middle Grade, Neurodivergent, Queer
Pages: 336
Format: ARC
Source: TBR and Beyond Tours
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Author Links: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, TikTok
Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz feels most comfortable when her life is well planned out and people fit neatly into her predefined categories. She attends temple with Abba and Mom every Friday and Saturday. Ellen only gets crushes on girls, never boys, and she knows she can always rely on her best-and-only friend, Laurel, to help navigate social situations at their private Georgia middle school. Laurel has always made Ellen feel like being autistic is no big deal. But lately, Laurel has started making more friends, and cancelling more weekend plans with Ellen than she keeps. A school trip to Barcelona seems like the perfect place for Ellen to get their friendship back on track. Except it doesn't. Toss in a new nonbinary classmate whose identity has Ellen questioning her very binary way of seeing the world, homesickness, a scavenger hunt-style team project that takes the students through Barcelona to learn about Spanish culture and this trip is anything but what Ellen planned.
Making new friends and letting go of old ones is never easy, but Ellen might just find a comfortable new place for herself if she can learn to embrace the fact that life doesn't always stick to a planned itinerary.
About A.J. Sass
A. J. Sass (he/they) is an author, editor, and competitive figure skater who is interested in how intersections of identity, neurodiversity, and allyship can impact story narratives. He is the author of Ana on the Edge, a Booklist Editors’ Choice 2020 and ALA 2021 Rainbow Book List Top 10 for Young Readers selection, and Ellen Outside the Lines (Little, Brown, 2022), the co-author of Camp QUILTBAG* with Nicole Melleby (Algonquin, 2023), as well as a contributor to the This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us (Knopf) and Allies: Real Talk about Showing Up, Screwing Up, and Trying Again (DK US & UK) anthologies. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his boyfriend and two cats who act like dogs.
“I’m ahead of schedule and this is a problem.”
I’m reading Ellen Outside the Lines by AJ Sass right now for an upcoming tour, and IT IS SO GOOD YOU GUYS!!! I don’t actually have that much else to say today, but I did start posting on tiktok yesterday! Check it out here if you want. 🙂
What have you been reading lately? Let me know in the comments and have a splendiferous day!
Do you participate in either of these memes? Let me know if you do and link your posts in the comments so I can visit! And don’t forget to have a splendiferous week!
I’m currently halfway through To Disguise the Truth by Jen Turano. It’s great!
“Not that you’re going to want to hear this, but after listening to your diatribe against Arthur for the past hour, complete with complaints about his character, his handsome face, and the way he makes you long to punch him, I’m left wondering if the contentious relationship both of you share is something entirely different than a clash of two strong personalities.”
Have a wonderful weekend! 😀❤📚
My first line is from Until the Leaves Fall in Paris by Sarah Sundin. https://daniellegrandinetti.com/2022/03/04/until-leaves-fall-in-paris