Book Hook Plea for Help

A mere year after I submitted it to my editor, The Tithe is coming out on August 20! I only have two more steps before this baby is out of my hands and into the public’s.

The first is proofreading. I got this. The second involves choosing a book hook. This is where you all come in.

In short, HELP! Below are my back cover blurb (the description of The Tithe) and my potential hooks. I’ve written about a thousand, narrowed it down to ten, and just can’t decide on one. In case you’re not sure, a hook is a very brief, pithy, attention-catching summary of the story. Think about movie posters that say stuff like: “Even the end of the world can’t deter him from his quest for the perfect burger” or “They took everything she has. Now she’s taking it back” or “Never before has a bicolor Persian cat saved so many.” Quick, dirty, and intriguing.

Now that you know what it is, would you review all of my hook finalists below and let me know in the comments section which one you think is best? Thank you, thank you!

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Back blurb:

“Every seven years, seven persons from each of the ten towns must go into the desert,

where they will enter into the realm of Elovah, their God.”

No one knows exactly what happens to these seventy Tithes, but everyone knows who:  the “unworkables,” those with different physical and mental capacities. Joshua Barstow, raised for twenty years among her town’s holy women, is one of these seventy Tithes. She is joined by the effervescent Lynna, the scholarly Avery, and the amoral Blue, a man who has spent most of his life in total solitude.

Each night, an angel swoops down to take one of their numbers. Each night, that is, except the first, when the angel touches Josh… and leaves her. What is so special about Josh? She doesn’t feel special; she feels like a woman trying to survive while learning what it means to know friendship, community, and love.

How funny that she had to sacrificed to find reasons to live.

Possible hooks:

1. Leadership, friendship, good food, and love: Ironic that after living a holy life, Josh had to be sacrificed to her town’s god to find reasons to live.

2. Ironic that after living a holy life, Josh had to be sacrificed to her town’s god to find reasons to live.

3. An angel takes a sacrifice once every night… except when it’s Josh’s turn. What’s so special about this Tithe?

4. Every seven years, the towns sacrifice their sick and disabled. No one has ever survived the angels’ harvest. Until now.

5. A holy orphan with a disability, along with sixty-nine others, is sent into the desert to die. It is here, surviving murderous angels and humans, that Josh learns to live.

6. Only after being sacrificed to her town’s god and surviving a harvesting from an angel does Josh discover the meaning of friendship, community, and love.

7. In this utopian world, the heroes have disabilities and the angels sport sinister agendas.

8. Every seven years, seventy sick and disabled townspeople are sent into the desert to die. But one of these Tithes might save more than the towns that sacrificed her.

9. In this utopian world, the angels are the villains and heroes come in all sizes and abilities.

10. God destroyed most of humanity in 2012. Many generations later, the remaining humans perform a ritual to appease Her wrath: sacrificing their sick and disabled townspeople.