First Chapter, First Paragraph; Teaser Tuesday: Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

First chapter, first paragraph, is a meme hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea.

This is the first book I’ve read by Jodi Picoult and it grabbed me right from the start.  Here’s the beginning of the Prologue to Vanishing Acts:

I was six years old the first time I disappeared.

My father was working on a magic act for the annual Christmas show at the senior center, and his assistant, the receptionist who had a real gold tooth and false eyelashes as thick as spiders, got the flu. I was fully prepared to beg my father to be part of the act, but he asked, as if I were the one who would be doing him a favor.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books and a Beat. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s a teaser from Picoult’s Vanishing Acts:

Let me tell you what happens when you cook down the syrup of loss over the open fire of sorrow:  It solidifies into something else. Not grief, like you’d expect, or even regret. No, it gets thick as paste, black as ash; yet it isn’t until you dip a finger in and feel that sharp taste dissolving on your tongue that you realize this is anger in its purest form, unrefined; a substance to be weighed and measured and spread. p.88

What are you reading?  Have you read this book or another by Jodi Picoult?  What did you think?