Happy Friday! Leading up to the 2026 Christy Awards next month, I am featuring first lines from some of the nominees. Today I am featuring Girl Lost by Kate Angelo. This romantic suspense is book 1 in The King Legacy. Set in south Florida, it is a chilling novel — real enough to make you believe the unthinkable is possible. Nominated for the mystery/supense/thriller category, this book is perfect for fans of the genre.
Here’s the first line:
Luna Rosati could disappear into any crowd, any city, any life.
A LOST BABY
Luna Rosati found acceptance and comfort with her childhood foster family, but when she became pregnant at sixteen, she gave the baby up for adoption and left without a word. Now a CIA counterintelligence officer, Luna wants to reconcile her fractured sense of self by finding the only blood family she has–the teenage daughter she’s never met. As Luna closes in on learning the girl’s identity with the help of her mentor, Stryker, she prepares to meet him in her old neighborhood–the last place she wants to be. Then Stryker is captured.
AN INESCAPABLE PAST
Special Agent Corbin King changed his last name to escape the shadow of his convicted father serving a life sentence. When he runs into Luna, the object of his failed teenage romance, the two must put their pasts aside and work together to expose a secret that someone’s willing to kill for.
A DEADLY THREAT
But when they encounter a kidnapping, missing bodies, and murder, the secrets Corbin and Luna are keeping from one another are only the beginning of the threat they face with more than their own lives at stake.
Kate Angelo is a Publishers Weekly bestselling author, Selah Award winner, and Amazon Top 100 bestseller from Southwest Missouri. She writes fast-paced romantic suspense novels where her characters confront trauma and find faith and healing.
When she’s not putting fictional people through the wringer, Kate works alongside her husband, Jerry Angelo, as the co-founder of their nonprofit ministry dedicated to strengthening marriages and families. Whether she’s helping people survive in fiction or thrive in real life, Kate is passionate about helping others discover their happily ever after.
Ooo, Girl Lost was a great book. I didn’t realize it was one of the nominees for the Christy Awards