Off the Page by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
it was a bit too YA for me and for awhile i dreaded reading through the lamentations of love and uncertainty that happened between delilah and oliver as teenage lovers.
From where we left off in Between The Lines, Oliver safe off the page and Delilah living her dream life of having a high school prince lover. all those teenage love rivalry and frustration is there although we have a happily ever after idea all along.
so things go well for a bit until Edgar, the human boy who is now living in the fairy tale have some leadership issues and his mother the author of the book apparently dying from cancer. some switches happen along the way including Delilah’s best friend Jules got into the book.
however, i felt there are some unfairness in the way that since Jules is quite a major character here, falling in love with Edgar, i thought she should be given the right to share her point of view, as a protagonist. and i did wonder how this whole switch-human-book character going to turn out, because i am no longer on Delilah’s side of hoping she can get her happy ending. i wonder what is going to happen to Jules? is it not unfair now to let Jules go through what Delilah went through? of course it also shows great friendship from Jules to ‘sacrifice’ leaving with Edgar inside the book now. i just felt we totally left Jules out just to give a happy ending for Delilah and Oliver, sounds a bit tad selfish.
also the two months after portion is really just to give people like me a ‘it’s ok everything is fine, don’t think too much’ haha.
i still feel Jules must have a say for herself.
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what i appreciate from this book are some quotes that quite touch the heart.
“What would you do if you only had one day left in this world? Spend it with the people you love? Travel to the far corners of the earth to see as many wonders as possible? eat nothing but chocolate?
Would you apologize for all your mistakes? Would you stand up to those you’d never had the courage to face? Would you tell your secret crush that you loved him or her?
Why is it that we wait till the last minute to do the things we should be doing all along?”
“Everyone has a story…What you do, what you say, how you carry the plot, just might leave a mark on someone. Because that’s what stories do. They help you escape and they give you the chance to do things you never imagined you would or could.”
“…she somehow is able to create a story that is exactly what the reader needs at the moment she is reading. what one person takes away from a book might be different from what the next person takes away – almost as if the story is altered depending on who’s reading, where and when…..the real question is who’s doing the changing: the story, or the reader”
point on.
living seri 