Love, relationships, and taking charge of one’s future are all themes in the novel Between the Lines by Tammara Webber. Set against the backdrop of filming for an Americanized version of Pride and Prejudice, the novel tells the story of a love triangle between self-centered, rich actor Reid Alexander, down-to-earth Graham Douglas, and a young starlet Emma Pierce. The novel also deals with the challenges of acting as well as the inevitable breakdown of a story when it is translated into a movie.

Even though she’s not really sure she wants to, Emma Pierce tries out for the part of Lizbeth in the movie School Pride. She does so because her father wants her to, and also because she wants to get the chance to meet Reid Alexander, the good looking teen actor who has been chosen to play the lead role. Emma balks at the part because the movie is based on Pride and Prejudice, a novel that was her mother’s favorite. Not only is the book fraught with memories of the mother that Emma misses desperately even though she never really knew her, Emma is also afraid what the movie scriptwriters will do to the story.

Once she is chosen as the lead actress for the movie and is on the set, Emma finds herself torn between the attractive Reid and Graham Douglas, who has become her friend and running partner. Reid pressures Emma for sex while Graham listens to Emma’s dreams and supports her desires to go to college and do work that matters. Emma feels her world has been destroyed when she and her best friend have a fight because of Emma’s new found popularity. Things go from bad to worse when Emma learns that several years prior, Reid got Brooke, another School Pride actress pregnant, then abandoned her. Meanwhile, Emma is struggling to find a way to reconnect with her father whom she feels she has lost since her mother’s death and his marriage to Chloe who is young and sexy.

Emma follows Graham back to New York where she decides to go to school. Here, she learns that he has a daughter. Despite Graham’s fear, the two reconnect. Emma finally learns there has been no relationship between Graham and Brooke, the two were just friends because they were both young, unwed parents. Emma also opens up about her breakup with her best friend that upset her so badly during their last weeks of filming. The novel ends with the two finally confessing their true feelings about one another.