Hello happy people! How was your week? Don’t forget to relax after all your hard work. You’ve earned it! Not that you need me to tell you that. But it’s important to take time to take care of yourself. So pull up a cozy mystery, a comfy blanket, and a cup of cocoa and de-stress.

And now I want a cup of tea. Oh well.

But it’s Friday! Huzzah! That means it’s time for First Lines Friday!

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!

The Lines:

“Charlie Goodwin drew a shaky breath and tapped furiously on her phone, the screen illuminating her face in the dark storeroom. She opened an app and searched for the emergency two-minute stress-release meditation. Once the soothing voice began, she closed her eyes and took another deep breath, trying to slow her frantic heartbeat. But all it did was bring the sharp scent of peppermint further up her nose and into her throat.”

Intrigued?

The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox

When chef Charlie Goodwin gets hit on the head on the L.A. set of her reality baking show, she loses a lot more than consciousness; she also loses her ability to taste and smell—both critical to her success as show judge. Meanwhile, Charlie’s identical twin, Cass, is frantically trying to hold her own life together back in their quaint mountain hometown while running the family’s bustling bakery and dealing with her ex, who won’t get the memo that they’re over.

With only days until Christmas, a desperate Charlie asks Cass to do something they haven’t done since they were kids: switch places. Looking for her own escape from reality, Cass agrees. But temporarily trading lives proves more complicated than they imagined, especially when rugged firefighter Jake Greenman and gorgeous physician assistant Miguel Rodriguez are thrown into the mix. Will the twins’ identity swap be a recipe for disaster, or does it have all the right ingredients for getting their lives back on track?

This book just so happens to be on my TBR for this month. I couldn’t help myself. Baking is one of my favorite holiday activities. I also found the premise of this story to be so cute! It’s not available until after the holidays on Amazon but is available at Barnes & Noble.

What do you think of this book? Would you give it a read?