You've Got Five Page, The Personal Assistant by Kimberly Belle, to Tell Me You're Good.

The first chapter can make or break a reader's engagement with a story. We as writers must craft brilliant opening pages in order to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it!  Ironically, the prologue is my favorite part of the opening pages in Kimberly Belle's The Personal Assistant. These first two pages are a well-paced scene with balanced external action and sensory detail from the perspective of an unnamed girl without a dime to her name. Her car's run off the road by a farmer in the middle of nowhere, her tire blows out, and she has no one she could turn to for money. The prologue ends with a mysterious man pulling up to her vehicle offering aid. Now I mention in my episode that prologues make me nervous because they seem to be the author's backup plan to hooking readers when they know the first chapter is a slog. Lo and behold... We meet protagonist Alex, a social media influence married to a financial talking head named Patrick who also does a lot on social media. The opening pages detail how happy she is with her rise to fame, his skepticism about why people care enough to follow her online, and how he never cared about her daughters. +++CORRECTION+++ It is not clear in these opening pages if Patrick is the father of those girls or not. In the episode, I interpreted that he is, which makes him sound like an even bigger jerk than he might be. Just wanted to clarify that. +++ Kimberly Belle clearly knows how to craft a scene. Belle knows how to balance detail and action, and she knows how to use dialogue to relay information. If I spot another book by Belle, I'll likely give it a try. I just struggle to read a story about this particular kind of character. For folks who enjoy the realm of social media drama, or thrillers with that social media flare, this fiction will fit right in with your tastes. As one who is not as keen on such drama, I struggle to relate to such personalities. So, I'm going to see what the next mystery from my library contains. And what will you learn from these opening pages? Let's find out! Cheers!