I was lucky enough to have two friends offer to read my first draft and give me some notes.
Neither of them have finished it, which is a note in itself. I read a great book about making the best beginning you can for your book to help get it noticed by agents and publishers as they fly through the first page of every book on their ever growing pile of submissions. It is called Hooked by Les Edgerton, overall it had some great advice on how to make the greatest beginning you can. I already failed with the opening of my book, but I fully understand why now and am looking forward to polishing up my beginning. My goal is to make it so fantastic it makes my friends dive back into finishing the version they currently have.
If you are someone who has had many rejections, first off that is normal from what I hear, but also I cannot recommend this book enough. It will explain how to tweak your beginning to get the gate keeps to actually want to keep turning those pages you spent a great deal of time and love into creating, but also why you would want to change your ‘perfect’ beginning.