Rating: Clear Eyed - 3/5
Release Date: June 26th, 2012
Publishers: Simon Pulse
Pages: 358
Source: Bought
Series: Another Stand-Alone!
First, a quick summary from Goodreads:
"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 about a girl named Delilah who is absolutely obsessed with a middle-grade fairy tail called
Between the Lines. Within this book is the main character Oliver, who Delilah just can't get enough of. He is her one and only fictional crush.
Except.
Delilah finds out one day that maybe Oliver isn't as fictional as she thought he was.
And from there, the story takes off. Delilah and Oliver work vigorously on the quest of getting Oliver out of the book and into the real world. While reading this book, I found myself kind of watching the characters get through their problems rather than being right there with them and rooting for them. I think this was mainly because of the way the chapters of the book were put together. First you would get a snip of the story within the story,
Between the Lines, and then a view point from Oliver followed by a view point from Delilah before it started all over again. With two different stories going on at once, it was very hard for me to stay on track with them. That is to say, I would just be getting into Delilah and Oliver's story only to be taken from it and thrown into the story within the story, shaking me of my anticipation from their story. This was because by the time I had come back to their story, I would be want to continue reading
Between the Lines instead. It derailed me a lot in this way.
Although, I have to say that I really enjoyed the little silhouette images that popped up along the margarine of the book. As well as the full-paged art. Truthfully, this is what sold me on the book. Yes, even though I am practically an adult, pictures in a book will make me want to read it more!
While reading
Between the Lines, I felt as if Delilah liked Oliver for the way the book made him out to be, not the way that he actually is himself. I believe at one point he even says that all he's doing is acting, that he's not very similar to his character at all. But I guess this isn't really something that can be explored unless Picoult and her daughter decide to write an epilogue type of thing about Delilah and Oliver.
The ending, while confusing in reasoning (hopefully you understand what I mean if you've read that book), was very cute and definitely a fairy tale type of book. The ending made me want to coo at it as if it were a little kitten.
All in all, Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer's
Between the Lines was a read that I definitely liked, but probably won't end up picking it up again to read or be at the top of my recommendations list.
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