Historically I’ve been on a hit and miss basis with Olivie Blake, but Dreamland leaves me stuck in the middle this time. I appreciate elements and wanted it to go further in some. Keep reading this book review for my full thoughts on Dreamland.
Summary
The headlines are calling it the “summer of exsanguination” in LA—girls are being murdered, the Santa Ana winds are blowing a strange energy into the city, and all signs point to fire season.
More pressing for Anya Morris, though, is the drudgery of living at home, working part time at the family store, and contending with her mother’s disdain for the acting career Anya knows she’s destined for but that feels more impossible by the day.
It’s in this suffocating late summer heat that Anya receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, an invitation to work for the de Witt family, one of LA’s most influential film dynasties. Soon, she’s spending her days and nights at their strange villa high in the Hollywood hills, where she meets Jude, a recluse who is both the family’s heir apparent and its most closely guarded secret.
There’s a magnetism to Jude that Anya cannot resist, despite warning signs that scream like sirens in the night. Because the villa holds generations of bloodstained history, and an occult family curse may even live within its walls—or within Jude himself.
In this city, everyone cuts a deal with the devil. When Anya comes face to face with a devil of her own, she’ll learn just how far she’s willing to go to get everything she’s ever wanted.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
Dreamland never had me put it down. It’s a book that feels very much like a fever dream. It has passages which feel like there’s this reflective tone to it, that someone is speaking directly to us. And there are changes in POVs and transcripts. And the actual premise is a tale as old as time – an ambitious actress who wants to make it in Hollywood who gets involved in a family with major bad energy. Predictably, it’s a story about ambition and sacrifice. What, and who we, would sacrifice for our ambition, our future. For Anya, she’s deeply craving escape and is thrown into the deep end of something she doesn’t truly understand. Dreamland was like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.
In some ways, I empathized with Anya’s motives, her fierce desire not to let an opportunity go, to grasp everything and see it for what it could do for us. Anya feels chosen, even though we realize nothing is as simple as being chosen, it’s about manipulation and calculated moves. Not only on the end of this secretive family, but also on Anya and the situations she tries to get ahead in throughout the book. There’s a very slow build up to the atmosphere, the creeping sense of dread, and the things we can’t explain. But my main problem was the resolution. There are so many gorgeous threads introduced like her grandmother, her entire family, or even her friends, which are lost to the churning climax.
Throughout Dreamland it’s a story about ambition, but also a story about the treatment we think we deserve, when we think of ourselves as an insatiable hungry monster, but these themes don’t resolve. There are all these almost red herrings around of endings and characters which I wish had more resolution considering the lead up. As a whole, I think Dreamland is trying to exist within this grey space between agony and ecstasy, but the wrap up feels rushed and unfinished in some spaces. I wanted a bit more and it feels like my thoughts with Girl Dinner. I don’t need everything resolved with a nice bow for me, but I do like the feeling at the end of a book with the “aha” moment about where it rings true. And I think this just feels like it’s a bit short.
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Find Dreamland on Goodreads, Storygraph, Bookshop, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.