First Lines Friday is a weekly feature for book lovers created 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? Here’s how to join in:
- 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!
This week’s lines are from an upcoming July release that sounds eerie and atmospheric:
Clay Lockhart’s cries echoed for half a mile up the rain-drowned coastline, carried on the late January storm that tore across the Outer Hebrides — an isolated windswept stretch of archipelagos in western Scotland. The rain had come quick, driven by a snell of cold wind that cut through old, rattling windowpanes and down to bone. In Saltwell — a small shoreline community along St. Magnus Bay — the residents shuttered windows, called in their children, and herded livestock indoors as they had always done when a western gale lashed against their sturdy homes.
But Clay Lockhart flung open his oak front door and strode out into the storm, a body slumped and weighted in his arms: golden hair spilling from a pallid skull, arms swaying like wet dishrags.
I got so caught up in this opening that I just had to share the first two paragraphs!
Vocab time: Snell
Scottish / Northern English Dialect (Adjective)
Meaning: Quick, active, sharp, or bitterly severe.
Context: It is most commonly used to describe piercingly cold or biting weather (e.g., “a snell wind smote us”) or a witty, sharp remark.
So what’s the book?
Habits of the Sea by Shea Ernshaw
Release date: July 7, 2026
304 pages
Synopsis:
A new adult novel from New York Times bestselling author Shea Ernshaw, in which a woman rediscovers the mythical island she stumbled upon as a child—and the man she once met who apparently hasn’t aged.
The night Clay Lockhart’s wife dies, a violent storm tears their home—and the eight hectares of land beneath it—away from the Scottish coast, sending it adrift into the Atlantic. Thirty years later, twelve-year-old Ellie Mills discovers the fabled floating island off the coast of Nova Scotia and finds Clay still living in the weatherworn farmhouse perched on its highest hill.
When the island vanishes overnight, Ellie is left questioning whether it ever existed at all. But decades later, the island resurfaces—and Ellie, now in her thirties, returns, determined to uncover the truth. What she finds is even stranger: Clay hasn’t aged a single day.
Faced with the impossible, Ellie learns that some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved—and that a life shaped by wonder may hold more promise than one bound by certainty.
With her signature atmospheric, lyrical prose, Shea Ernshaw offers us an original work of folklore with a masterful modern touch. A haunting tale, Habits of the Sea spans centuries and coastlines, journeys through time and memory, and redefines the very meaning of love itself.
I’ve read two previous novels by Shea Earnshaw, including the excellent A History of Wild Places — so I was delighted to win a copy of Habits of the Sea in a Goodreads giveaway, and can’t wait to get started.
Does this sound like something you’d enjoy?
Happy Friday! Wishing everyone a great weekend!
Bookshelf Fantasies 