Lisa Parkin

Best Opening Lines in Young Adult Books
Compiled by Lisa Parkin

source

You stop fearing the devil when you’re holding his hand.
– Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
– The Fault in Our Stars

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
– Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone

Here’s everything I know about France: Madeline and Amelie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, although I have no idea what the function of either is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and a lot of kings named Louis.
– Anna and the French Kiss

I’ve been shot. And, as it turns out, a bullet wound is even more uncomfortable than I had imagined.
– Destroy Me

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
– The Hobbit

There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.
– Divergent

The basement hallways in King’s College of Medical Research were dark, even in the daytime. At night they were like a grave.
– The Madman’s Daughter

Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love.
– The Raven Boys

I wake up. Immediately I have to figure out who I am.
– Every Day

The hours were bad. The tips were worse, and the majority of my co-workers definitely left something to be desired, but c’est la vie, que sera sera, insert foreign language cliche of your choice here.
– The Naturals

The early morning sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.
– Uglies

I remember being born. In fact, I remember a time before that. There was no light, but there was music: joints creaking, blood rushing, the heart’s staccato lullaby, a rich symphony of indigestion.
– Seraphina

It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since scientists perfected a cure.
– Delirium