“Everything is real on Coney Island – and nothing is real.”

Peggy Battenberg is requested to stay with her family on Coney Island. She reluctantly accepts. Peggy feels trapped within her family, their name, their riches, and she wants to shape her own identity. Shortly after arriving to the Oriental Hotel on Coney Island, prejudices are unearthed and a prevalent divide of social classes greet her while making her way to Dreamland. But, women begin to show up dead. Who can she trust and why is she being followed?

“On Coney Island, you can always find someone to do anything.”

Restrictions on women and the treatment of foreigners are spotlighted throughout the story. It focuses on the social structure and the formation of society on Coney Island during 1911 more so than the police procedural. The lush atmosphere was a character in itself and played a dominant role in the movement of the story.

Technical Stuff:
It starts with a woman being murdered in the Epilogue, but the murder is not revisited until the main character, Peggy, begins her extended stay at Coney Island which is sometime during chapter 5. (There are a total of 37 chapters.) However, the story deviates from the murder mystery for quite sometime after this chapter and instead focuses on the main character’s struggle for independence within her rich family, and her new found romantic interest. Because of this, the murder mystery fell to a quiet whisper until chapter 28 (or 78% into the story on a Kindle) when Peggy decides to look for the killer who has been murdering women on the island. That only leaves an eventful 22% left for the reader. I was wanting more suspense throughout the entirety.

The novel was very well researched. Click around below to learn more about Dreamland.

Visit Nancy Bilyeau’s website to get more information about her books.

Thank you to Hannah Groves from Endeavor Media for providing me with an advance copy. Opinions are my own.