Reading Between the Lines

Reading Between the Lines

Have you ever read something or watched a movie and absolutely loved a character? and I mean, love a character so much that you’d want them to be real; living, breathing, and fully functional? If so, Between the Lines is the book for you.

 

Written by Jodi Picoult and her daughter, Samantha van Leer, this book takes the phrase “I wish that character was real” to a whole new level with a high school freshmen named Delilah, who hates school and everything about it, finding out that her favorite fairytale book has a Prince that can hear her.

Wait, what? Yes, a book Delilah found in her library is a one-of-a-kind copy for a special reason; after the millionth time of reading it, Delilah decides to start again, only this time, as she makes a comment on how she wished Prince Oliver were real, he responds to her. But not only does he respond to her, she finds out that life inside of a story while books are closed become a free-for-all time for the characters, and that Prince Oliver is tired of his role in it. As Delilah wants her freedom from school, Prince Oliver wants his freedom from the pages that bind him to his story.

With a unique plot that dances on the edges of the concept between real and fictional, Delilah and Prince Oliver find themselves battling their own obstacles on different plain levels – Delilah with her mom, her best friend Jules, and trying to find a way to bring Prince Oliver into her world whilst Prince Oliver deals with Seraphina, various characters from his story, and trying to find a way into Delilah’s world.

This book caught my attention because the plotline is something that almost every reader has felt at least once in their life – wanting your favorite character to pop off the pages of the book. The fact that this book has three different points of view – Delilah, Prince Oliver, and the original story itself – makes it superb and tiresome as we really get to know more about the characters in the fairytale but we also get a double-whammy of the original plot of the book Delilah is constantly reading.

Even with the “everyone deserves a happy ending” theme throughout, the ending to this particular story left me with feeling happy and questioning the ever-after. Some of the parts were hard to read as the mother-daughter duo decided to write it in different colors, but nonetheless, it was a good read that explains the true relationship between the author, the reader, and the characters we end up loving to death.