Would You Turn the Page?

One of Rhamey’s posts at Writer Unboxed: Would You Turn the First Page of this Bestseller?

“You understand what that means, don’t you, Rob?” Ryder murmurs as he straightens his suit, not that it was even wrinkled in the first place. Fucker always dresses like he’s ready to walk a runway. Though the cold calculation in his gaze lets you know he’s not just a pretty face.

I told him once I could scar his face for him, it might make others take him more seriously. I don’t know why he said no.

I, on the other hand, am covered in Rob’s blood, so is Garrett for that matter. His scarred, tatted up knuckles bleed from the punches he delivered to our unhappy host. Munching on the guy’s crisps, I watch in glee as Garrett delivers another brutal blow before stepping back. There’s a reason they call him Mad Dog in the ring—you don’t even see the big bastard coming. I’d know, I’ve fought him a couple of times. They were good times, even if I did break some bones.

Blinking, I look back at the man in the chair opposite Ryder. Rob’s eye is ballooned shut, his lip split and cheek already bruising. And those are only the wounds you can see. I know there are a few blisters forming under his shirt from where Ryder let me have some fun.
Kenzo is leaning against the wall opposite me, his dice rolling between his fingers like always. His face, similar to Ryder’s, is locked in a death stare with the man, waiting for something interesting to happen. It was Kenzo who brought this man to our attention, after all. But Rob looks only to Ryder—good. Let him think Ryder is the only one in charge, we like to keep it that way. To have him as the face of our … company.

I did not stop in the middle of a sentence, as Rhamey did, because I think that’s unfair. The first page is however long it is depending on how you set the font size (if you’re reading an ebook), so it’s artificial to stop in the middle of a sentence, and worse when the last sentence is interesting.

Rhamey says he wouldn’t turn the page. Neither would I, but not for the same reason. Watching someone getting beaten to death on the first page is a big, big turnoff for me. Who is this author and why is this a bestseller?

This is Den of Vipers by KA Knight, whom I’ve never heard of. This person has written a huge number of books, though. Here’s the description from Den of Vipers:

Ryder, Garrett, Kenzo, and Diesel—The Vipers.

They run this town and everyone in it. Their deals are as sordid as their business, and their reputation is enough to bring a grown man to his knees, forcing him to beg for mercy. They are not people you mess with, yet my dad did. The old man ran up a debt with them and then sold me to cover his losses. Yes, sold me. They own me now.

I’m theirs in every sense of the word. But I’ve never been meek and compliant. These men, they look at me with longing. Their scarred, blood-stained hands holding me tight. They want everything I am, everything I have to give, and won’t stop until they get just that. They can own my body, but they will never have my heart. The Vipers? I’m going to make them regret the day they took me.

This girl? She bites too.

Which sounds extremely uninviting, especially since this is evidently a reverse harem violent kidnappers-to-lovers romance. It has, I will note, 70,000 ratings. I have no idea how Rhamey picks the bestsellers he features, but, well, not really my cup of tea.

***

Let’s try a different first page.

Three of the yard-long bean seedlings had their first true leaves. They’d unfurled like green hearts overnight, and Andrew Uchida — if that was really his name — was delghted.

The long bean seeds had arrived as a single dried reddish-orange pod the length of Andrew’s forearm. He’d cracked the papery husk to find eight pale kidney-shaped seeds. Mathematics, skill, a little wild invention, and the magic of geometric progression had finally put Andrew’s goal within reach.

He’d planted the seedlings in deep clay pots designed not to disturb the sensitive roots of the young plants. Andrew had spent the entire winter pouring over diagrams of magnets and wire coils, painstakingly constructing a water wheel turned by the irrigation canal that ran by his seed shed. In January, he’d turned on the first Edisonian incandescent light in Wedgeford. Those combined gave him a two-week start to the growing season.

He had kept his long beans a secret. Five of his eight seeds had germinated. He’d consulted calendars and done math: the fruit of these seedlings would go to seed themselves in 12 weeks, and he’d start the next wave of seedlings hopefully a hundred strong. By the time those went to seed in late August, he’d have enough for everyone in Wedgeford to sow a row of yard-long beans for a November harvest.

I just thought the extreme peacefulness of this opening made a delightful contrast with the brutal first page of the first example. Does anyone have a guess about who this is? This is Courtney Milan’s latest, The Earl Who Isn’t. Here’s the description:

Nobody knows that Andrew Uchida is the rightful heir of an earl. Not his friends, not his neighbors, not even the yard-long beans growing in his experimental garden. If the truth of his existence became public, the blue-blooded side of his family would stop at nothing to make him (and anyone connected with him) disappear. He shared one passionate night with the woman he loved…and allowed himself that only because she was leaving for Hong Kong the next morning.

Then Lily Bei returns, armed with a printing press, her irrepressible spirit, and a sheaf of inconvenient documents that prove the very thing Andrew wants concealed: that he is actually the legitimate, first born son of the Earl of Arsell.

What’s Andrew to do, when the woman he’s always desired promises him everything he’s never wanted? Andrew’s track record of saying no to Lily is nonexistent. The only way he can avert impending disaster is by stealing the evidence… while trying desperately not to fall in love (again) with the woman he shouldn’t let into his life.

Quite an illustration of the extremely broad spectrum of Romance novels!

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