Review: Between The Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer (Between the Lines #1)

Title: Between the Lines

Author: Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer

Page Count: 368 (paperback)

Publishing: Simon Pulse

Synopsis: "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." -Goodreads

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How do I accurately describe my thoughts on this book without coming off bitter? Going into this book I thought that I would really enjoy it. The plot of the book was new and unique, and I was excited to see what the author decided to do with it. To my misfortune, the book made a turn that was not for the best.

To make the rest of this review easier on myself, I'm going to list the characters here for a reference point.

Delilah is the main character who is reading the fairy tale. She speaks to and falls in love with Oliver.
Oliver is the hero in the fairy tale who wants to escape his world and enter Delilah's.
Jules is Delilah's best friend.
Allie (I honestly do not remember her last name because I could have cared less about her character) is a bully who makes Delilah's life miserable.

The uniqueness of this story is very intriguing and will turn a few heads. The book has beautiful artwork and a lot of effort was put into the novel's physical form, but I cannot help but feel this is just to distract the reader from the actual story. In the beginning, the story was very interesting and held my expectations, but as I pushed through the story I felt it became more than repetitive. The story had excerpts from the fairy tale throughout the novel, and even though this could help the reader understand the story Oliver is from, it did nothing but add length to the actual book. The entire time while reading I would mindlessly skim the pages until I could no longer follow along with it. I thought that the story inside the story was very boring, to the point that I had to fight to make sense of why the author decided to place the fairy tale into the parts that I actually found interesting. I will not even lie, I stopped reading the fairy tale early on in the book because it was making the story less feel childish and like it was not for my age group.

The characters are the major problem in the story. The characters are petty, selfish, and self-absorbed. They never fail from being flat, lifeless characters that have made no impact on me other than how much I dislike their actions and attitudes. The main character in particular was whiny and pitted herself. She would go on about wanting a boyfriend or wanting to be loved, and it made her a weak character that got under my skin. To make matters worse, when she discovers that she can speak to Oliver, it seems like she becomes obsessed. She spends all her time focused on talking to him or being able to talk to him again and ignores all her responsibilities and friends. She becomes far too focused on what she wants and does not care who she hurts along the way. Oliver does the same thing because he goes to any length to try to change the story and thus hurts the people he uses along the way.

Even though Delilah is only fifteen, she should not act the way she does in the story. At her age it is time to stop pitying yourself for petty things such as not having a serious relationship. It is high unlikely to find love at that young of an age, and if it does happen it will not become a very serious until more than a few months together. The time that Oliver and Delilah spend together is not enough time for her to change her entire life or for him to make decisions for her that also change her life. It does not give Delilah the excuse from disobeying her mother that a simple apology can fix. Books like this cause readers that are within the target ages to have unrealistic view on what is reality. I do not recommend this book.