Book reviews: Between the Lines and Off the Page

This is a “double-book” Review, as the two books go together, and you can’t get the complete story without reading both.

Between the Lines and Off the Page

Two books by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer

Reviewed for the Ash Flat Library by Patty Ann Peal 

Author Jodi Picoult, in collaboration with her daughter, Samantha Van Leer, have written a two-book fantasy combining the “real” world with the world between the pages of a fairy tale.  Have you ever wondered what it would be like to actually meet and interact with those characters you’ve come to know as you read their stories?  What would it be like to be physically transported into their world, or for them to step into yours?  

Prince Oliver lives within the pages of a fairy tale, “Between The Lines.”  Along with all the other characters in this fictional world, they replay the story as it is written each time a reader opens the book, as if they are actors on a stage. But when the reader closes the book, these characters live a completely different life within the context of their world.  Prince Oliver, however, desperately wants to be able to leave the confines of the story and explore the outside world. 

One day, Prince Oliver discovers that he is physically able to contact the current reader of his story, the young teen, Delilah, who has fallen in love with the character of the Prince while reading his tale, and would dearly love to be able to pluck Oliver out of the book so that he could actually become her real boyfriend.  Together they search for a way to make it happen.  But before Prince Oliver can come “Off The Page,” and begin to live in Delilah’s world, there are problems to overcome.  In order for Oliver to leave the pages of the book, someone must take his place in the story.

 “Between The Lines” tells the story of how Delilah manages to help Prince Oliver leave the confines of the book and live in the “real” world.  “Off The Page” tells of the problems they have integrating him into her world, and the problems that the characters in the book run into when the Prince is replaced in the story.  How can these problems be resolved so that Oliver can stay with Delilah in the real world?

The two books together weave an incredible love story with a surprise happy ending for all.  These books are written mostly from the vantage point of a younger person, and employ terminology and slang that today’s youth would be comfortable with and understand more than an older person would.  I highly recommend them for a younger reader.