‘Between the Lines’ by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer – Audiobook Review

After seeing the off-Broadway musical Between the Lines, I knew I wanted to read the novel it’s based off of – sometimes you enjoy an adaptation but not the original source material as much, but I’m glad to say that’s not the case here! I loved the novel just as much as the musical, it’s incredibly wholesome and feel good.

Title: Between the Lines
Author: Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer
Series: Between the Lines #1
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Fantasy

Goodreads Summary

This is only going to be a review of the book, I’m going to save my comparison to the musical for another post – stay tuned!

This is told in 3 POVs – there is a narrator, telling us the fairytale story of Between The Lines, there is Prince Oliver, the hero of the story, and Delilah, the reader. I listened to the audiobook and there are actually 3 narrators, one for each POV, which I loved! I also picked up a physical copy and see that each POV has a different color text! The font for Delilah’s section is also different. In addition, there are illustrations through the book – just as you would find in a real children’s fairytale! 

15-year-old Delilah is a bit of an outcast at her school – she prefers books over people and her only friend, Jules, is also a bit of a weird outcast – but more outgoing. Delilah lives with her single mother in New Hampshire, as her father left them to go live with his new family in Hawaii instead.

She finds a children’s fairytale titled “Between the Lines” in the school library and checks it out – returning it when she’s forced to only to check it out again the very next day. Delilah has memorized the book – so one day when she notices something different on the last page, she begins to question what is going on and how is that possible.

Prince Oliver is the hero of the story, rescuing the beautiful Princess Seraphemia who falls in love with him at the end of the story – but he doesn’t want that to be his story. He wants a life outside of what the author wrote for him. I love the idea that a story lives on even when the reader isn’t reading it and the book is closed. The characters inside all have their own hopes and dreams and desires outside that which was written for them, and that’s what Between The Lines is all about.

I enjoyed that we had an outside narrator telling us the actual story of Between The Lines as it was written by the author, it’s almost Inception-esque with a story within a story but I found that to be incredibly fun!

There’s only one page in the story Prince Oliver is alone, and that’s the page he ends up talking to Delilah on. They have a lot of conversations, and at first Delilah thinks she’s going crazy but the more she learns about Oliver, the more she wants to help him get out of the book and into the real world.

I found this story to be incredible wholesome and heartwarming – as readers ourselves, don’t we sometimes wish the characters on the page could come to live or even live in our real world? This is a fairytale that is truly alive!

I will say the ending felt rushed and incomplete. There is an ending, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered – there is a sequel and I plan to read it, but I’ve heard it might not be as good. I prefer when stories wrap up more cleanly as this could be read as a standalone otherwise.

This book was originally published in 2012 and while parts of it do feel dated (iPods, anyone?), overall I think it still holds up 10 years later in 2022. It feels like your typical 2012 young adult storyline but sometimes we all need that familiar comforting feeling of a story and I enjoyed this one more than I expected to!

I really enjoyed listening to this as an audiobook as we have three narrators, one for each POV! A narrator, a Price Oliver, and a Delilah narrator. To me, that added another element of fun and entertainment to this story – it made it come to life!

My Rating:

If you’re looking for a story that you can lose yourself in for a few hours and that will make you feel really good – and believe in fairytales again – this is the story for you. I highly recommend this one, I think it’s going to become a comfort read for me, I enjoyed it so much!