Review: Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult & Samantha Van Leer - Juhina

Title: Between the Lines

Author: Jodi Picoult & Samantha Van Leer

Publication Date: June 26, 2012

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Genre(s): Young Adult (Contemporary, Fairytale)

Challenges: Contemporary, SARC

Source: Publisher
Format: ARC

Pages: 358
Add to Goodreads

What happens when happily ever after…isn’t?

Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book—one book in particular. Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah.

And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He’s a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He’s sure there’s more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom.

Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.

Between the Lines is a book about the lives of the characters in a book that the protagonist of OUR book (Delilah) is reading. However the main protagonist (Oliver) in the book she is reading is tired of always acting out the fairytale over and over again and just wants out. One day he succeeds in communicating with our main protagonist, Delilah, who was shocked and thought she was hallucinating in the beginning. Delilah is a loner, she only has one friend and spends most of her time reading a fairytale (THAT one). She dreams of finding a prince just like the one in the fairytale (Oliver), however all Oliver wants is to NOT be a prince and just live a normal life. They try to figure out a way to somehow transport Oliver from the fairytale to the real world so that both get their happy ending. 

I know I might have lost many people but to summarize it, there are three POVs: Delilah, Oliver, and the "Fairytale". I honestly did not enjoy reading the actual fairytale since I didn't get how that relates to the actual story and I skimmed through that POV. As for the other two POVs, they were interesting but I must say I did not enjoy the insta-love feel of this book. Also this book's target audience is more MG than YA which might explain why I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would. I personally liked Oliver more than Delilah. Oliver's POV was funny, had me cracking up at times and his determination and him just knowing exactly what he wants was a contrast to Delilah. She was lost, didn't know where she belongs, and when she somehow got what she wished for, she threw a tantrum when she realized that wasn't what she really wanted. 

The plot of Between the Lines was cute, I think many 10-13 year olds would enjoy it! It is like a border between fairytales and the MG/YA novels. I would definitely recommend it to young readers, but not older ones. There are mermaids, talking dogs and horses, pirates, and villains that all become friends when their fairytale book closes and they say CUT. It was really fun thinking of how the characters in the books we read don't really stop living when we close the novels or books. What if they are just actors that act out their part and when the book is closed go on living their lives? However the ending of the book was a bit sloppy in my opinion. I felt that they took the easy way out in terms of how to resolve the problem and it was a bit anti-climatic. Again, this may be because the target audience are much younger than me so go ahead and read it! younger readers will especially love the colorful illustrations this book!

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