First Lines Friday is a weekly feature 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?

Here’s how it works!

• 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!

Yes.

There is a witch in the woods. There has always been a witch.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

This is the next book on my TBR! I’m looking forward to diving into this middle-grade fantasy story. The blurb on the back promises a swamp monster and a tiny dragon, which I’m really interested in meeting and reading about. 

 Title: The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Author: Kelly Barnhill

Genre: Fantasy

Age Category: Middle-Grade

Publication Date:  August 9, 2016

Number of Pages: 400 Pages

Buy the Book: Amazon , Indigo, Book Depository

Add On Goodreads and TheStoryGraph

Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey. 

One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule–but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her–even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known.

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