Friday 56 and Book Beginnings: Devil's Daughter (Lucinda's Pawnshop, #1) by Hope Schenk-de Michele

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

Please join us over at RoseCityReader every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Synopsis:

     Lucinda is as old as humanity itself, yet perpetually young, beautiful, and endowed with supernatural powers. She lives a double life human and immortal. 

     In her human guise, she manages Lucinda's Pawnshop & Antiquary, the doors of which can open to any street anywhere in the world at any time. Mortals who have arrived at a moral or spiritual crossroads are drawn into the mysterious shop. If they acquire one of its cursed artifacts, they may find themselves drafted into Lucifer s service. 

     Born out of a betrayal of trust between the first woman, Eve, and father Lucifer, Lucinda has worked covertly and subtly for millennia to be true to her mother's love by subverting her father's schemes. She wins freedom for some; Lucifer keeps those who fail for eternity. She has to be careful, for Lucifer has placed her under the watchful eye of the fallen angel Nathaniel, whose real intentions are a mystery. 

     Lucifer manipulates his army of corrupted souls to achieve his end game: to explode the tension between global powers, then create a charismatic anti-Christ to seemingly save the world with Lucinda as mother and a hand-picked human as father. 

     But Lucinda has her own plans. After centuries of seeming distance from humanity, she falls in love with a mortal man, which threatens to derail Lucifer's plans to trigger Armageddon. This book follows Lucinda s torturous relationship with her supernatural father, as she strives to secretly undermine his crusade to destroy mankind. 

     How deep does Lucinda's humanity go? Where do her true loyalties lie? Is she her father's ally, or her mother's child? And if the Devil's daughter will not love a man he can control, can Lucifer control the man she loves?" 

Book Beginning:

Brittany Anders had grown up watching old Hollywood musicals. She still watched them -- still loved them. She watched them in black and white when she could. They were made in black and white, after all, and ought to be watched that way. She often caught herself humming show tunes. Her coworkers at the law firm of Dunfy, Corrigan, and Price thought it was amusing, and occasionally annoying. She made a point of trying not to hum in front of the senior partners.

Thoughts:

Honestly, this opening isn't very interesting and doesn't really set any ideas of what kind of book this is going to be in any way. Maybe the point of this opening is to show the personality of the character rather than the kind of book it's going to be?

56% on  tablet:

"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. All these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these things are but the beginning of sorrows.

Thoughts:

I haven't made it this far yet, but the book sounds kind of strange, possibly horribly cliche. This is a NetGalley 'read now' find. The synopsis sounded really interesting but the content so far, for me, isn't that engaging.