Editorial Content for Dreamland

DREAMLAND is an atmospheric, cerebral tale of ambition, seduction and the occultish trappings of power from Olivie Blake, the bestselling author of THE ATLAS SIX and GIRL DINNER.

Los Angeles is known for its filler-plumped, veneer-housing, impossibly gorgeous faces, each of them hungry for something --- whether it’s embarking on a Hollywood career or locking down a clueless, wealthy partner willing to pay your bills in exchange for your beauty. But when we meet Anya Morris at the height of the “summer of exsanguination,” LA has begun making headlines for the bizarre storm that has taken over the glamorous city. The Santa Ana winds are blowing, whispers of fire season are on everyone’s lips, and girls are being murdered at alarming rates.

The daughter of resourceful Filipino immigrants, Anya gets through the drudgery of her day-to-day life by working part-time at her family’s store, a woo-woo mishmash of fortune telling, crystals and sage. By night, she roams the city’s clubs and afterparties, putting on a new persona each time as she practices for the lucrative, world-changing acting career she knows is just around the corner. And if she has feelings about being biracial and too Filipina to be cast as a star, but not Filipina enough to be cast as a token, well, she really doesn’t have time to think about that --- not when her suffocating mother is constantly decrying the city’s gentrification and accusing her of wasting her life on dead-end dreams.

"DREAMLAND reads like a fever dream of ambition, the occult, and a Greek chorus of social commentary on everything from racism and gentrification to the exploitation of women’s bodies.... [F]ans of Mona Awad and Tara Isabella Burton will delight in this heady, tantalizing novel..."

So when Anya is attending a party one night with a former classmate who clearly wants something more, she’s quick to clock William de Witt, the forty-something actor/producer she has idolized since her youth. In a world of “boy of the moment” celebrities and vapid influences, William is the real thing. He has that “it” quality that puts him firmly alongside the likes of the Henry Fondas and George Clooneys of Hollywood. He’s also the son of the late Killian de Witt, an oil and energy mogul who essentially was responsible for making LA what it is today. 

Anya knows she’ll have to play it cool to get near William, a man who no doubt can sniff out desperation like a shark can smell blood. But her prayers are answered when his sister, Emmanuelle, takes a swift liking to her. Emmanuelle says she has the perfect job for her and offers her a jaw-dropping $10,000-a-month salary.

After signing the requisite NDAs and agreeing to give up her phone while she’s at the family villa, Anya learns that she has been tasked with watching Julian, William’s secret son who suffers from epilepsy and is wildly unstable. He is either medicated to a zombie-like state and confined to his room, or he is creepily roaming the villa’s grounds, his face twisted into an expression of hate. And there’s one more major problem with Julian. Despite his status as the de Witt family’s biggest secret, Anya recognizes him. It was only a few nights ago that she watched as he locked eyes with her, stepped directly into traffic, and was immediately hit (more like run over and decimated) by a bus. Now, as he locks those very same eyes with her through the eerily childish baby monitor that Emmanuelle has given her to watch him with, Anya sees something else in them: a yellow-hued, all-too-knowing evil.

Though she makes several attempts to cut herself off from the de Witt family, Anya is faced with the hardest question of her life: Just how far is she willing to go to achieve her dreams? As it turns out, the answer is as far as babysitting a potential demon who may or may not be dismembering young women all over LA. Employing her skills as an actress, Anya attempts to act out the scenes in which she learns to care for Julian, who is obviously a victim of something. But the closer she gets to acing her role, the more she finds she cannot deny his magnetism. She also cannot deny that while “inside Julian de Witt was a monster capable of great harm, whose existence alone necessarily compromised mine,” he is also being held captive by the de Witts, whose whispers of a failing ritual form the chorus of the nights she spends watching (or is it guarding?) their son. 

All the while, Emmanuelle and William continue to dangle career-changing roles in front of Anya. They hint that success is just on the horizon if only she is willing to make a few bargains to achieve it. Cynical, naive and reckless, Anya isn’t too afraid of demons, but she has always placed Hollywood on an altar. “And even then I didn’t trust it,” she sagely notes. “I just routinely tithed.” What greater tithe can there be than caring for the heir apparent to a Hollywood dynasty? Now the question is just how good an actress she is and how much she can use her skills to survive.

DREAMLAND reads like a fever dream of ambition, the occult, and a Greek chorus of social commentary on everything from racism and gentrification to the exploitation of women’s bodies. Anya invites readers into this heady mix from a place of detachment. She is never quite living the actions on the page; rather, she is observing them, acting and reacting to the tune of whatever character she is wearing that scene. But in positioning the reader’s entry point into the demonic narrative this way, Blake does something brilliantly clever. She obscures the novel’s darkest plotline with the glamour of Hollywood, the allure of wealth and power, and her own flowery, lyrical writing. Like Anya, by the time you realize you’ve essentially made a deal with the devil, you’re too enmeshed in the gorgeous prose and the eerie mystery keeping the de Witts afloat. 

But this book is not all lush imagery and gothic chills. Blake also drenches her prose in satire, making numerous tongue-in-cheek and biting comments on the grotesqueries of Hollywood: fame, plastic surgery, NDAs, and unpalatable relatives hidden behind locked doors and agreements with the media. She deftly weaves these analyses and more into her narrative, even while Anya ignores them, creating a nice tension that will propel a savvy reader through the book’s more difficult-to-pin-down fever-dream moments. 

Those looking for easy answers may struggle with DREAMLAND, but fans of Mona Awad and Tara Isabella Burton will delight in this heady, tantalizing novel where success is only a deal with the devil away.