Jodi Picoult, Samantha Van Leer, Off the Page, Allen & Unwin, June 2015, 372pp., $24.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781743439982
Oliver is a prince, a real one. Delilah is a 16 year old girl who has always dreamt of meeting her prince and now he is here, transported from the pages of a fairy-tale into the real world. To exist beyond the pages of the book however Oliver must take the place of a real boy, another teenager so Edgar, who has always wished for an adventure, agrees to go to fairy-land. As the story evolves, other characters also move between both real and fictitious worlds, although what is real has become a little less clear.
Characters on both sides soon realize that life in or out of the book is not necessarily as ‘rosy’ as they thought: How for example does a prince manage when he is flung into the hot bed of high school life, or how does a regular teenager go about saving a princess or riding a dragon? All of a sudden life is a lot more complex than anyone expected, especially when parents become involved.
Tandem writing team Jodi Picoult (author of many YA and Adult novels) and her daughter Samantha Van Leer have created a rollicking sequel to their first joint writing project, Between the Lines, in which anything becomes possible if you just wish for it enough. A clever plot driven narrative that explores, with a lightness of touch, the weighty notions of love, death and living happily ever after. And although the characters may appear to be as one dimensional by the end of the book as they were at the beginning, perhaps this is as the authors intended – so you can read between the lines and imagine beyond the page to give your own depth and meaning to the players in the story.
A romp of a read for early teens, Off the Page, can be read as a stand alone novel or as a sequel.
Reviewed by Mem Capp