The Between is an exciting horror/comedy/sci-fi book with creative world-building and fast-paced action.
Paul finds a trap door to an impossible world in his backyard, leading to a dungeon crawl-type adventure.

It's not a deep book, but it doesn't have to be. It's an enjoyable escapade in a wild setting. It has a mix of elements like Ready Player One and House of Leaves, with some video games thrown in. I don't know that many people saw it, but parts of this really reminded me of the 2016 movie Beyond the Gates. There are some loose plot threads and unanswered questions but those will probably be addressed in planned sequels, so I don’t see that as a detraction from the book. The Between is an entertaining read!

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2022 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at https://rusaupdate.org/2022/01/readers-advisory-announce-2022-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2022 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2022/01/readers-advisory-announce-2022-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

I was drawn in by the cover of this novel and then I saw that it was horror, so I was sold. It starts off great with the discovery of an iron door in the backyard and what happens when two friends venture inside and try to figure out where they are and how to get out.
There are elements of fantasy mixed with horror in this brutal real life video game type world they’ve found themselves in. There were times that scenes reminded me of movies like Cube, that give the sense of loneliness and isolation in unfamiliar territory and the need to either trust or question anyone you encounter. I thought the premise of the book was great but I didn’t care for the characters at all. The dialogue was often unnatural and sometimes even cringy, especially for people that were supposed to be friends. The characters were never really developed and personalities were very superficial. Also, their motivation for actions never seemed to make sense to me.
I’ve seen that this is the first book in a series so maybe some of the items that seemed off or not wrapped up well are going to be addressed in future novels but unfortunately I wasn’t invested enough in this one to want to read future novels. I hope that in any future works that characters get a bit more attention to make them more relatable and fleshed out.
I have seen a lot of five star reviews on this so I will say that maybe you should read for yourself and decide if you like it, it just wasn’t exactly for me.

I enjoyed going through this horror novel, the characters were great and I thought the story was so well done. The author writes really well and am looking forward to more from the author.

DNF -did not finish. I decided not to keep reading this novel because I did not connect with the writing and plot. Thank you, netgalley and publisher for the early copy.

ARC provided by NetGalley for an Honest Un-Biased Review

Some doors should never be opened...
A wild ride from the jump. A complex work that blends horror, sci-fi and a bit of cyperpunk together.
Paul Prentice is landscaping his yard when he finds a mysterious iron door in the dirt. His best friend Jay convinces Paul to explore what's behind the door...and they fall headlong into another reality. This one a maze of challenges, magic, and monsters, one they'll have to continue to venture through to find the way out.

Very interesting concept with strong characters. Pacing could drag a little but still an enjoyable read.

Wow, this was such a FUN read!! I enjoyed being lost in this story. It was a mix of several different genres and once you start reading there is no putting it down. You're in-between these wild dimensions, I literally felt like I was stuck in an 80's video game with hella unique characters.

I already purchased myself a hard copy. I'd love to revisit during spooky szn! If you're part intrigued/part nostalgic then this is the book for you!

In The Between follows an anxious boring rule follower named Paul. Who finds a door to an alternate reality buried in his backyard. His childhood best friend Jay convinces Paul to explore the room the door leads to and crazy shit happens from there. This is a book that is great for people who like House of Leaves and old videogames - like texted based rpg old.

For the most part I thought this book was okay but not really what I'm looking for in horror. Paul and Jay are both awful characters, which is fine. I just didn't want to read from their prospective. Supriya is the character I liked the most, her rep (a disabled woman of color) felt genuine and I was happy to read about her and from her prospective. Min-woo a gay Asian man, on the other hand, felt super tokenized.

I like a lot of death in my horror stories and this one just doesn't pay off the way I'd want it to. I need an extremely depressing ending, some final girl survivor type of thing. I think this book is good, and a lot of people will enjoy it. Its just not for me.

I dnfed this book. I thought it was a really cool concept but I just couldn’t hold an interest with how unnatural the dialogue felt and the very bland but rapidly changing characters. The plot felt super rushed and random, it was whiplash-inducing. This could have been really good, however it just wasn’t for me.

I was so looking forward to this book. I was in the mood for a good horror book. I was getting the eighties vibe from it. When it came to the monsters and horrors, I was expecting things that would only come from nightmares. I barely blinked at the things that Jay and Paul encountered. I kept reading hoping that the further I got into the story, the better it would get with the horror vibes. However, it did not and in fact, I became bored and after a while I lost all interest in continuing this book any further.

First off...DISCLAIMER: I received this book from Parliament House in exchange for an honest review. To be more precise, I specifically requested a review copy. That didn't affect my opinion and rating in any way.

YOU SHOULD BE A-MAZED

What can I say - I'm a sucker for wild, trippy stories where I can't find my footing 😅. And in that respect, I can happily report that The Between delivered what its blurb promised, and even more. Starting with a mysterious underground library and proceeding through a maze of identical sitting rooms, only to plunge its characters (and readers) into a world full of riddles, layers and horrors, this book kept me entertained and wanting more all the way through. Mind you, there are a lot of questions and only a few answers, which can be disorienting at times, and a few flashback/vision scenes that keep hinting at a larger picture but make little sense at this stage - though I trust them to find their proper place once the sequel (sequels?) comes (come?) along. I can't be more specific because spoilers are just around the corner, but I can tell you two things:
This isn't a Jumanji/Ready Player One scenario. The Between is BOTH a videogame AND a real (if twisted, and more like surreal) place. At this stage, I only have a theory about the way those are related, but they're NOT the same thing.
If you're a horror aficionado, you'll probably have read darker (or at least gorier) books - except for a certain scene. Nonetheless, when it comes to the creepy factor, the story doesn't disappoint.

ROLE PLAYING

I have to admit that, if I had clicked with its characters as much as I did with the actual story, The Between would have been a 5-star book for me. The best way I can describe my problem with them (or some of them) is by using a computer-borrowed term - glitch - and yeah, I guess the videogame scenario influenced my train of thought 😉. So, basically, I felt like some of them glitched. While I understood that their whole experience in the Between - mainly, their taking over roles in that game-like world - warped their original personality, I found it to be an insufficient and not always fitting explanation for their changes or behaviours. For instance, a certain character I warmed up to, and whom I expected to see trying to resist their role, not only fell prey to it (which, OK, is understandable), but suddenly did something inconsistent with both such role and their pre-Between identity. I understand that TB isn't a coming-of-age novel, but it seemed to me that the characters either didn't acquire new skills/insights except the ones that went with their role (as one does in a real game - so that could be intentional, but I didn't love it), or got twisted in a way that their role alone couldn't account for. Honestly though, those "glitches" can very well be me nitpicking, and I have to admit that Paul grew on me over the course of the story, while on the other hand my expectations for Supriya, the badass amputee Indian athlete, were warped somehow - even if she went on being, well, badass. I liked Paul's wife Julie a lot (despite her being scarcely on page), and I can only wonder where she's going from here...Also, there's a valid reason why some of these characters would be drawn to the Between (while other are just along for the ride, but get sucked into it nevertheless), and that's a clever little touch.

JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH

If The Between were a standalone, we would not only have a cliffhanger on our hands, but tons of unanswered questions - not to mention, we would never get to visit more levels of the game with such thrilling names as The Garden of Before and The World in Pieces 🤩. I couldn't believe there wasn't going to be more, so I asked the author on Twitter if he had a sequel planned. He confirmed there's one in the making, plus he'll publish a novel set in the same world next year. Now I can barely contain my excitement. In the meantime, I encourage everyone who likes peculiar and twisty stories, creative world-building/imagery, funny/horrific worlds, and unlikely heroes with unfulfilling lives and/or lingering traumas, to give this first installment a try. As for me, I'm going to reread it soon, both to bask in its delightful weirdness and to look for all the clues I may have missed the first time around.

This book was a journey from beginning to end. Showing the ever changing human condition in a horrifying and non stop way. I scratched my head a few times confused but understood by the end. Would read more!

A SciFi - Horror story that is hands down original, exquisite and creepy. The premise and the cover caught my eye, but this story is equally promising and kept me interested and intrigued throughout. I wasn’t quite expecting the world building of The Between, but it was very exciting. I didn’t expect to love this book so much!! The characters were so good and complimented the story very well. Ryan Leslie is a unique and brilliant storyteller.

Thank you Independent publishers and Netgalley for the arc. [4.5/5]

When Paul finds a door in the ground in his backyard, he has no intention of going through it until his best friend, Jay, shows up and convinces him otherwise. Soon, the men are lost in a maze of identical rooms and impossible monsters in a world called The Between, where different artifacts force players into gamelike roles that play out over and over. The Between is eerily similar to a command-line computer game from the 80s with the same name, and at its heart is a horrifying being called the Koŝmaro, which hunts the dead and traps them in The Between for eternity. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at The Parliament House. Trigger warnings: death (on-page), body horror, some graphic violence, some sexist/homophobic asides.

Roberta at Offbeat YA put this book on my radar with her awesome cover reveal, so when I snagged a copy from NG, we thought it was time for a buddy read. The Between is a cool, offbeat, and genre-bending adult fiction novel, and I’d recommend that anyone intrigued by its premise give it a try regardless of the rest of my review. It’s almost guaranteed you’ve never read anything else quite like it, and it’s sure to work for its audience (adult male gamers, I’m assuming) and anyone looking for something off the beaten path. I’ll also go ahead and add that fans of Ready Player One will probably like it for its gamelike aspects and nerd culture, although I wouldn’t say the reverse was true, since RPO is much heavier on the fandom trivia. Not liking RPO isn’t necessarily going to rule this one out for you.

I really enjoyed the world-building of this book, which is as good as its premise indicates. The Between is flat-out creepy, from its maze of mostly identical rooms to the unsettling character roles (10/10 would want to be the gardistaro, by the way). I was less fond of the steampunk masinisto and robot junklings, but I think one of the cool things about this video game-style world is that it will have something for everyone in it. I also wasn’t as crazy about the shift from horror to sci-fi/fantasy that happens when characters start exploring deeper levels of the worlds, but again I think it’s a credit to the novel that it blends genres like that. There’s so much of this world to explore.

Paul is an easy main character to get behind. He’s steadfast and careful, if a little too much in his head (which most readers can probably relate to). If it were down to him alone, there might not be a novel because he isn’t reckless enough to go through a mysterious doorway in the ground on his own. He needs Jay for that and, unfortunately, Jay feels like the driving force behind most of the stupid decisions made in the book. I disliked him from his introductory penis jokes, and my opinion didn’t improve from there. Even putting aside his sexist/homophobic comments, if you can, I’d always rather read about smart, interesting characters than unrelenting idiots. (That moment Jay tries to echolocate his way through a dark cave was when I was done with him. Your knife glows in the dark, moron.) He kind of killed half the novel for me.

In contrast, though, I really enjoyed Supriya’s character and Julie’s, although Julie gets much less page-time. (The first chapter establishes Julie as much smarter than Paul, and I kind of wished the novel had been told from her perspective.) Supriya is a disabled woman of color and a badass even before she takes up a role in the game, and Leslie makes the representation look casual and effortless. Though I got a little lost in all the running around of the end chapters, there’s a fun boss battle and enough closure on these characters’ stories to be satisfying, while still leaving plenty of room to expand on the world. I’m not sure I’m committed enough to continue with the series, but I’ll be avidly reading Roberta’s reviews to see how things turn out.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

"The Between" pulls you in with a gloriously glitchy album-art style cover and the promise of an action-packed ride in a world of video-game-inspired horror but delivers something amateurish at best. 

Reminiscent of "House of Leaves "mixed with the 1980’s movie "Labyrinth" but in a way that is shameful to both, "The Between" follows Paul Prentice after he discovers a trap door in his backyard leading to a series of impossible rooms that change and remake themselves and a host of dangerous roles waiting to be filled. With the help of his friends, Paul begins to understand that the place is a world between worlds, not knowing if it will be enough to truly escape. 

The exciting and fast-paced plot and setting are the highlights of this novel but are dragged down by cliches, cookie-cutter and unlikeable characters with flimsy backstories, and mediocre writing that inserts humor in all the wrong places, sapping the life out of an otherwise interesting world. 

Underdeveloped and disappointing, I rated "The Between" 2 out of 5. 

Thank you to Netgalley and the Parliament House for an early copy in exchange for an honest review!

This was an incredibly interesting concept and a very well-executed book. I just think unfortunately, I wasn't the target audience for this. I spent a majority of my time being very confused as to what was happening but I genuinely think that was a fault of me as a reader as opposed to the content. For me personally, I think this would make an incredible movie and I would love to see that executed.

The premise of this book was really intriguing to me, and the cover caught my attention as well. The story itself was just okay. I was really into it for about the first quarter of the book, at which point the story started to meander and morph into something a little bit different than I was expecting, which isn’t always a bad thing, but what it morphed into I just didn’t find quite as compelling. Definitely not a bad read and Leslie has talent as a writer and story teller, I would read more from him for sure.

The Between by Ryan Leslie sounded like it was going to be exactly up my alley. It started off well and really held my attention for probably the first 20%, but after that it started to lose me. It ended up not being what I expected it to be. Sometimes that's a good thing, but not in this case. I've seen a lot of great reviews of this one so far, so this could be more of a case of it's me, not it.