You've Got Five Pages, Wayward by Blake Crouch, 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! Honestly, this was a curious find. It's plain to see we're not starting with the regular protagonist, but that outsider perspective does provide a unique look at the setting for this trilogy. For all the quaint beauty of this small town, there is a very real, very lethal menace in all the razor wire and posted snipers. To begin the story with one of those snipers immediately establishes the high stakes involved with surviving this mystery. We may be entering this story arc in the middle (it is Book 2, after all), but the first chapter does its job in establishing some major ground rules for a reader uncertain of the road ahead. We have action, we have monsters, and we have an unsuspecting populace. Sounds like a recipe for mischievous disaster to me!