It is a truth universally acknowledged that a good story starts with a good first line. In TODAY’s “Cold Open,” authors tease their buzzy upcoming release by revealing and explaining its first line, paragraph or page.
Writing about 20-something female friendships and platonic “breakups” for her 2025 essay collection “Does Anyone Else Feel This Way?” influencer and podcaster Eli Rallo knew she had more to say on the topic.
“I didn’t want to do it in a nonfiction vertical. I feel like I’ve said all I needed to say about my own personal experience or my own advice,” Rallo, who rose to online fame for doling out lifestyle “rules” for women navigating quarter-life, tells TODAY.com. “I don’t think I really necessarily have a ton of advice about how to navigate this.”
“I more so wanted to put words to it to make people feel less alone about it,” Rallo, 28, adds.
The result is her first novel, an exploration of the specific heartbreak that comes with dissolution of a decadeslong friendship, titled “I Hope Eden Reads This” — and TODAY.com has an exclusive first look.
After announcing her fiction debut to her cumulative one-and-a-half million social media followers in September 2025, Rallo officially unveiled its cover on Aug. 20.
The cover is an artistic portrait of two young girls, one with her eyes closed, another staring down the viewer. Rallo says she wants it to feel “so sad and tender” but also “emotional and intimate.” (While this cover was always her favorite, an alternative option was shaping up to be the winner from her publisher — until she got a “lovely, serendipitous” email on her birthday confirming the final.)
From the jump, Rallo says she knew the book needed to be blue.
“I felt like it had a Taylor Swift, ‘1989’ thing going on, like beachy blue vibes, New York City, all of that,” Rallo says.
“I Hope Eden Reads This” follows two childhood best friends, Penelope and Eden. Its premise establishes that the two, for whom “the term ‘best friend’ has never been enough,” are no longer speaking, and Penelope is falling apart. The book is told in dual timelines — one chronicling their friendship history, the other showing the aftermath of the breakup. The story is purposefully only told from Penelope’s perspective.
“I felt like the story had to be told from one side. It really is Penelope’s story, and Eden has a perspective in my mind and in my heart,” she says. “I’ve already received so much feedback from beta readers that people want to know more about what Eden was thinking, and I would rather leave them with that desire and maybe revisit it.”
So it’s fitting that the book’s first line of the first chapter starts with “I,” as Penelope reflects on the preteen years of her friendship with Eden:
I taught Eden how to kiss. I taught Eden how to do most things, if the definition of ‘taught’ is being brave enough to try things first and then report back my often-measly findings.
The book officially begins with a prologue, which Rallo says she wants keep a surprise for readers. So for TODAY.com’s “Cold Open” she shares the first few paragraphs of Chapter 1 (read the excerpt in full below).
She says this section was the very first thing she wrote about Eden and Penelope. Rallo wanted to channel “preteen awkwardness” and foreshadow an undercurrent of “toxicity” in intense female friendships that can go unnoticed — that is, until the relationship’s gone.
