Between the Lines

Having read a number of paranormal and dystopian novels recently, "Between the Lines" is a breath of fresh air. It's cute, romantic and very entertaining. I love the different perspectives and how the actual fairytale is woven between Prince Oliver and Delilah's alternating viewpoints. The premise is extremely clever, and the beautiful illustrations and black and white silhouettes throughout add to the book's overall charm. Having always been a fan of fairy-tales, I found this a magical read with a delightful happily-ever-after ending. While this won't appeal to everyone, I loved it.

I thought this book was highly enjoyable, I think I read it in one sitting. However, it obviously wasn't memorable, because I read it, and within a couple days, I'd forgotten it existed in the first place.

SETTING

Okay, so I absolutely LOVED the setting of this. Delilah lives in the real world, but Oliver lives in a book.
He's a fictional character, and the basic premise is that all of the characters from the book are alive, and whenever no one is reading the book, they're just going along living their lives, and then someone opens the book, and it's like their acting in a play. Only... they HAVE to do it.

I thought this was SUCH a unique premise, and I completely adored it!

PLOT

The plot of this was basically that Oliver was tired of being show more stuck in a book. He wanted out. And then he realizes he's able to talk with Delilah, and it was just super interesting.

The plot was well done, and it left me wanting to know what happens in the next book.
I don't really have much more to say.

CHARACTERS

I quite liked the characters in this... they weren't anything special, but they were well developed, and likeable.

-Oliver was okay. He wasn't by any means my favourite character, but he was very well developed, and felt very human.

-Delilah was sort of great. She was a bookworm, and it always makes me so happy to see a character in a book who loves to read. She was a tiny bit more obsessed with a children's book than was reasonable perhaps, but... once the character in it started talking to her, I understand completely.

-Jules was Delilah's best friend, and she was wonderful. She was probably my favourite character. Delilah was a terrible friend to her, but Jules was seriously amazing. She got pretty mad at Delilah, because Delilah was completely ignoring her, and just over all being an awful friend, but she was still there for her. She was an amazing friend, and I love her.

There was also a bunch of side characters that were awesome, but whose names I no longer remember, because I read this almost a month ago. Whatever their names were though, the supporting cast of characters was amazing.

OVER ALL

Aside from being completely unmemorable, this book was very good. I highly enjoyed it, and I'd really like to read the sequel now.
There was also a lot of cool pictures, and stuff inside, which was fun. This wasn't my favourite book ever, but I would still highly recommend it. show less

I've never read any of Jodi Picoult's work before, though a quick look at a Books-A-Million the other day showed me that I'd be willing to at least give them a shot. So when Between the Lines and its sequel Off the Page started showing up in my BookTube world, I didn't quite know what to expect. But since it's about falling in love with characters in a book, and it's a mother/daughter co-written story, I was excited to pick it up.

It did not disappoint.

Is this book great literary fiction? No, it's really not. The plot is predictable, the characters are expected, and nothing really surprises necessarily. But to be honest, I wouldn't have wanted this book any other way.

Delilah is a high school girl who is absolutely obsessed with one show more particular fairy tale she found at the library. Reading wouldn't make her an outcast, per se, but reading something this far out of her grade level certainly will. Her mother thinks it's strange, her best friend Jules thinks it's strange...but there's a very good reason why Delilah is so entranced by this book.

See, not only is the hero of the story--Prince Oliver--handsome and wonderful and true, but...he can talk to her. And when she opens that book, Oliver comes alive. And much like her, he doesn't feel like he fits in with his story, and longs to make his way through the world of the Reader--Delilah's world. As Delilah longs to be in the world of the story, they try to understand each other and over time, begin to fall in love. Now Delilah needs to find a way to get the boy of her dreams out of the pages of his fairy tale and into her arms...before someone takes the book away for good.

I feel for Delilah and Oliver. I was an outcast in high school, with my very small group of friends, and I always dreamed for bigger shores. I still do, to some extent. I've never quite found where I properly fit in, and Lord knows I've fallen in love with my fair share of book characters. And I know what it's like to feel like you're doing something strange by reading out of your age range. Some of my favorite books are YA novels. I'm 27. Do I care? Not in the least. The characters are no less "real" to me because they're younger, or written for a younger audience. And if I found out that the illustrations of one of my beloved protagonists could talk to me? Yes, you'd probably want to send me to the funny farm. There would be no taking me away from that book--ESPECIALLY when I was Delilah's age. I wanted nothing more than to be far away from where I was, in the arms of a valiant savior.

The story swaps perspective from Delilah, to Oliver, to Oliver's original story (also aptly titled Between the Lines), and to good effect. Especially as they have to live their separate lives in their different worlds, it's good to see both sides of the coin. I love the concept of Oliver's original tale and who the prince was meant to be as well. The belief that characters can be something other than what the story tells them once the pages are closed...well, let's just say I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's ever thought about that. Being able to see who these characters become is a lot of fun, and very well put together.

The book is charming and fun, with all the right dashes of young love, adventure, and heartbreak. The ending is beautiful, and makes me excited to read what happens next in Off the Page...because I know something is going to go down. It has to. And I like that set up.

Rating: **** - Recommended show less

Have you ever wished your favourite book characters were real? Have you ever considered that they want to be part of the real world as much as you want them to?

Delilah is obsessed with a children’s fairy tale book — maybe an unhealthy amount. The true love, the happy ending, the hero who uses his wits to solve every problem that gets thrown at him, and that line at the beginning about how hard it is to grow up without a dad. But as much as she wishes Prince Oliver could be real, she never expected that one day he would start talking to her! It turns out the characters are not quite the same as the story portrays them, and Oliver wants more than the limited world he exists in. Together, he and Delilah try to find a way to bring show more Oliver out of the book … easier said than done.

This is a self-indulgent teen booklover’s dream, but it’s also a really interesting concept that touches on themes of destiny, free will, love and loss. The book switches between Delilah’s and Oliver’s perspectives interspersed with chapters of the actual fairy tale story that Oliver is a part of, including the illustrations. Like I said, booklover’s dream! show less

Before I picked this one up from my library, I'd read a lot of not very great reviews of it. However, I thought the story sounded cute and decided to give it a chance. Let me start off by saying that I've only read one other book by Picoult (and that was about 3 years ago) and so didn't have expectations based on her "style" of writing.

I really enjoyed the story! It labels itself as a fairy tale, and so the few things that didn't quite make sense didn't really bother me. It tells the story of a girl, Delilah Eve McPhee, who is a bit of a loner and recently obsessed with a children's book and especially with the main character, Prince Oliver. The idea of the story was very original, and I found myself really intrigued by the situation show more of the characters. It didn't play out quite the way I expected it too, but the journey was a lot of fun.

The book itself was quite beautiful. It was told alternating between Oliver and Delilah's point of views, and it also included the actual children's book that Delilah is reading. I thought it was very well done and I really enjoyed the illustrations and various silhouettes scattered throughout the book. show less

I hadn't heard of this book before I was considering going to see a small local production of the musical. At that point, I decided to read the book before seeing the show, just for comparison. And I couldn't help but feel many times as I was reading that it would make a much better visual production than written one.

Let me back up: this is a book told in three parts. One: Oliver's POV. Two: Delilah's POV. Three: the fairy tale itself. The text sections from the POVs of the two main characters seemed a VERY YOUNG YA, which fits the marketing placing the audience at age 12+. (Which is not really a YA book, even though it's not really a MG either. It very much straddles the line between YA and MG.) My favorite part of the book was the show more lovely color illustrations portraying the scenes being told in the fairy tale section. I also liked the silhouettes peppered throughout the rest of the text. The two different illustration types were very nice touches for the book.

Don't get me wrong: I love the concept of this book, and I never considered DNFing. But I feel that the execution of the book didn't live up to its potential, and that the concept could have been done better. For example, I think it would have been better if the whole thing was told in third person, instead of having two very similar-sounding first person POV sections. This book seems to have a very mixed set of reviews, with lots of people who loved it. So if it sounds interesting to you, it's worth trying it to see what you think of the writing style.

EDIT FOR SOME SPOILERS: I have to make one note about the end of the book: I don't like the decision that was made for Edgar and Oliver to switch places. However, Edgar is also supposed to be young (about the same age as Delilah and Oliver) and I can see where a 15-year-old would make that decision and be happy with it... at least at the time. Honestly, that decision was one of the more believable parts of character interactions to me. Edgar gets to live out his fantasy, and is not old enough yet to see what the consequences of his actions are. He's not thinking of his mother's feelings at that point. I dislike that decision because I'm an adult and looking at it from an adult perspective. 15-year-old me would at times have happily switched places with book characters, and as a result I can't complain about the ending. show less

What happens to the characters in a book when the reader closes the book? In this young adult novel co-written by Jodi Picoult and her teenage daughter, Samantha Van Leer, the characters come alive and have lives of their own, separate from the story which they enact over and over again whenever someone reads their book. One character, Prince Oliver, is not happy with this existence. He does not enjoy repeating the same story over and over forever and wishes there was some way to escape the book. Then one day, something different happens - one of the readers can hear him outside of the story. Delilah has read the fairy tale book so many times she has it memorized, but one day Prince Oliver talks just to her from in the book. Is she show more crazy or is she really able to talk to the handsome prince. Oliver and Delilah soon decide they can not live separate from each other and start trying to find a way for Oliver to escape the book.

This book was cute. I liked the fairy tale that Oliver was apart of. I really liked the book characters, they were interesting twists on the parts they play. The characters in Delilah's world were less interesting and less developed. I was disappointed in the ending of the book, it was rushed and not explained very well. I did not understand why it worked when so many of their other plans failed. I also am not sure I like the message that the final solution sent to readers. But maybe I am expecting too much from a novel for teenagers written by a teenager.

I read this book on my kindle and wish I had a paper copy. There are beautiful illustrations (which looked nice on my kindle) and I believe that the parts of the story told from Oliver's first person perspective must have been a different color in the original. On my kindle, the text for Oliver's parts was very light gray, I could barely read it. All of the other text (Delilah's part and the fairy tale excerpts) looked normal on the kindle. show less