Author: Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 358
Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary (from Goodreads): New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult and her teenage daughter present their first-ever novel for teens, filled with romance, adventure, and humor.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.
Thoughts: A friend of mine recommended this book to me but in the beginning I wasn't too sure if I would like it. I read all the forward stuff, acknowledgments and such, and got the whole background of how this book came to be. I love the story behind the story, that's for sure. I agree with them, this was a great idea for novel! I enjoyed it.
The characters fit the story. They were both stereotypical and not at the same time. Of course the girl that reads wouldn't fit in at school and would dream of a much bigger world. I thought that same about the prince. Let's give a character everything but nothing all at the same time and show how hard he has to fight to get out of his world and into a bigger one. These are types that are used a lot but still work. I think this was one of the few places that this story was lacking. However, as I said, it does work for this book. I did think Oliver was pretty awesome though. He didn't want to fit into his story. Instead, Oliver fights for what he wants and he fights through the disappointment that he somethings has to face. He was a trooper.
The biggest problem that I had with this novel was the solution to the problem. All of these things they tried didn't work. I can't understand where the solution came from or how it could work when nothing else did. I just didn't believe the ending. I just didn't feel it. I think that a bit more thought could have gone into the solution or more time could have gone into explaining why it did work so well. Maybe with a bit more work on that, I could have believed and accepted the ending.
Another thing to notice is the change in perspective. The story is told from Oliver's and Delilah's points of view but it also has full pages from Oliver's storybook. I enjoyed the points of view but not the storybook pages. It was a great idea but the reader is already given quite a bit of information about what Oliver goes though in the story, I didn't think that we needed to read from the story on top of that. Plus, I had a very hard time connecting why we were being given certain parts of the fairy tale during the story. I didn't really see the connections there. Maybe I needed to look a little bit harder.
Conclusion: I enjoyed this novel and I think that its worth a read. It's fast and easy to read, it doesn't involve a lot of thought or attention. Definitely something to read on a rainy afternoon.
The characters fit the story. They were both stereotypical and not at the same time. Of course the girl that reads wouldn't fit in at school and would dream of a much bigger world. I thought that same about the prince. Let's give a character everything but nothing all at the same time and show how hard he has to fight to get out of his world and into a bigger one. These are types that are used a lot but still work. I think this was one of the few places that this story was lacking. However, as I said, it does work for this book. I did think Oliver was pretty awesome though. He didn't want to fit into his story. Instead, Oliver fights for what he wants and he fights through the disappointment that he somethings has to face. He was a trooper.
The biggest problem that I had with this novel was the solution to the problem. All of these things they tried didn't work. I can't understand where the solution came from or how it could work when nothing else did. I just didn't believe the ending. I just didn't feel it. I think that a bit more thought could have gone into the solution or more time could have gone into explaining why it did work so well. Maybe with a bit more work on that, I could have believed and accepted the ending.
Another thing to notice is the change in perspective. The story is told from Oliver's and Delilah's points of view but it also has full pages from Oliver's storybook. I enjoyed the points of view but not the storybook pages. It was a great idea but the reader is already given quite a bit of information about what Oliver goes though in the story, I didn't think that we needed to read from the story on top of that. Plus, I had a very hard time connecting why we were being given certain parts of the fairy tale during the story. I didn't really see the connections there. Maybe I needed to look a little bit harder.
Conclusion: I enjoyed this novel and I think that its worth a read. It's fast and easy to read, it doesn't involve a lot of thought or attention. Definitely something to read on a rainy afternoon.
Nice review! I've had this one on my TBR pile for almost a year now when the author and her daughter actually came to my lowly little city. It sounded freaking amazing to me since I love bookish worlds and this one seems to have our world and the bookish one colliding of sorts!
ReplyDeleteA shame that it wasn't 100% awesome for you. I thought I recall another review that had issues with the ending. Guess I need to up it in my TBR mountain to find out!