Book review: Between The Lines

A TWISTED fairy tale. A teen who hates school and loves books. A loner who has a thing for her. All sound a bit too predictable?

A TWISTED fairy tale. A teen who hates school and loves books. A loner who has a thing for her. All sound a bit too predictable, a bit too twee? It sure is.

Throw in that the co-authors are a bestselling writer and her teenage daughter and it all seems like a stereotypical serving of pap for early teen girls.

Between the Lines is all these things - but happily it has splashes of something more substantial. A girl on the margins named Delilah is obsessed with a children's fairytale. But every second chapter reveals the back story of the fairytale characters and what they do and think when a reader is not looking.

That dimension just saves this novel.

Between The Lines
Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer
Allen&Unwin, $24.99