REVIEW BOOK 2 OF 2024:BETWEEN THE LINES

Genre: YA Fiction/ Fantasy Adventure

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Delilah is your relatable girl next door who finds a world of her own in magical tales which end in happily ever after. Going through a difficult childhood with an absentee father, Delilah watches her mother eke out a living, making ends meet to survive.

She is popular in school. The popular outcast. Shunned and scorned by all for accidentally busting a knee cap of Allie the cheerleader of the school and breaking her nose in a freak swimming accident when she blunders into Allie’s lane during a backstroke lap, Delilah has only Jules, a jazzy girl with a punk look to call her friend…

Until Delilah chances upon a book Between The Lines in the school library when things take a fantastical turn, almost unbelievable even for a die-hard fantasy fan like her.

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This book is like no other where the characters have a life of their own once a reader shuts the book and take their places for the part once it's reopened!

Prince Oliver, our hero who saves Seraphima, fights Captain Crabbe the pirate, outwits the trolls who live under the bridge, negotiates with the cheeky fairies, confronts Pyro the dragon and avenges his fathers death when the villain Rapscullio falls out of the tower is tired of his playing his role over and over. He wishes to get out of the book.

And that's when he realizes that Delilah can hear his internal thoughts!

And the adventure begins to get him out. But all the best laid plans fail as the book resets itself to the original story and they are back to square one always!

There is an entire parallel world in the book where the mythical creatures have a personality quite different from the ones they are portrayed in.

Pyro is actually a harmless creature, Captain Crabbe and Prince Oliver are buddies, Rapscullio in fact is a cool dude, the mermaids are feminists and the fairies are quite a friendly bunch. Except for Seraphima…who doesn't know it's a role she's playing and is madly in love with Oliver. But Oliver? His heart belongs to Delilah, the reader and the feeling is quite mutual.

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A freak accident in our world but not quite in the fantasy world where Oliver enlists the help of Orville, the castle wizard to bring Delilah ‘into their world’ results in her tumbling inside the book and living a day with all the mythical creatures and as a guest in Prince Oliver's castle 🏰

Delilah is back into our world, back to her school life, lab, her best buddy Jules and of course her mother for whom she returned because she has no one except her. Orville does the needful.

As the story proceeds alternating between parallel worlds, Delilah deduces that the only person who can change the story and give it a happy ending for Oliver is the author herself and goes in search of her, Jessamyn Jacobs.

What she didn't expect was to find herself face to face with Edgar, her son who is a spitting image of Oliver !

What happens next is for the readers to find out. The story Between The Lines also has a sequel Off The Page, again written as a collaboration with Jodi Picoult and her daughter Samantha Van Leer.

For me, as a reader who leans towards this genre, this story was a real page turner with atmospheric descriptions and a fast paced narration.

A fairytale of a different kind 💖

©️ Sangeetha Kamath

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