Sliding Doors has become the go-to comparison for any story in which there are two possible timelines that can happen depending on what the main charaSliding Doors has become the go-to comparison for any story in which there are two possible timelines that can happen depending on what the main character decides to do at a critical turning point. Going Bicoastal is a YA spin on this, in which Natalya Fox has to decide whether to stay in NYC with her father for the summer or go to LA with her mother, with whom she has a strained relationship. In each version of the story, Natalya has a love interest � in NYC, it’s redheaded girl she’s crushed on from afar while in LA, it’s the boy who’s hired to be Natalya’s co-intern at her mom’s marketing firm.
Dahlia Adler has nailed something about the Sliding Doors style story that can be hard to do well � to tell two stories where it’s not obvious that one is preferable to the other. The entire time I was reading, I couldn’t decide which outcome I wanted for Natalya! When she stays in NYC, it’s sweet to see her loving relationship with her father and close friends, as well as the development of her relationship with Elly. In LA, Natalya is able to work on the strained relationship with her mother and reassess her own priorities through her relationship with Jake. Both stories are wholly satisfying in and of themselves and it’s never hard to keep track of what is going on, even though the book alternates between the two possible timelines. This was a lot of fun to read! ...more
I've never read anything by Jodi Picoult before. Partly because I was a bit too snobby when she first started publishing, but then I also noticed thatI've never read anything by Jodi Picoult before. Partly because I was a bit too snobby when she first started publishing, but then I also noticed that any time she wrote a blurb for a book I inevitably haaaated it. Didn't give me a lot of confidence in her as a writer, y'know?
I bought Off the Page, the sequel to this book, years ago, thinking that I should get past my snobbery and that it sounded like kind of a cute premise, but it sat on my shelf for forever. I've decided that 2023 is going to be the year that I read more of the "books I bought years ago and let sit on my shelf for forever" and finally picked it up. I was six pages in before I realized that it was actually a sequel, so I grabbed Between the Lines from Libby instead.
Unfortunately, Off the Page is now going into my to-be-donated pile without being read. Because this was...fine? I guess?
If you're twelve.
Couple more things I didn't know about this book: Samantha Van Leer is actually Jodi Picoult's daughter; the story is one she suggested to her mother, and Jodi basically said, "okay but you have to write it." I don't know how this compares to her other books, but I suspect they put the Picoult name on the cover just to drive sales. According to her author bio, Samantha was a sophomore in college at the time and it shows. This book is tagged as YA but it reads much more like it was written for pre-teens. It's a clever enough story about a lonely teen who discovers that the heroic prince in the fairy tale that she's grown obsessed with can actually hear her from inside the pages of the book. They decide they like each other and devise a plan to get him out of the book so that they can be together.
The problem here is that there's just no character development. Not once do Delilah, Oliver, or any of the supporting characters display any personality traits. There's nothing to inform their decisions, nothing that gives me any reason to root for them as a romantic couple other than the two of them just saying that they like each other.
The fantasy elements had their charms - the idea that book characters continue to live their lives when the covers are shut definitely holds a lot of appeal to someone who firmly believed that her stuffed animals lived their own lives while she was at school. If you think about them too hard, they don't really make a lot of sense (doesn't this presume that there is only one copy of the book to have ever been in existence?), but I was fine with it. I can imagine that I would have adored this book when I was in middle school. As an adult, it just did nothing for me and I have no desire at all to continue following the story.
I also did not know that this was apparently turned into a musical? And that was released just a week or so before I picked up the book?...more
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