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Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee
Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: 15th April 2021
Blurb:
In the coastal resort of Margate, hotels lie empty and sun-faded ‘For Sale’ signs line the streets. The sea is higher – it’s higher everywhere – and those who can are moving inland. A young girl called Chance, however, is just arriving.
Chance’s family is one of many offered a cash grant to move out of London - and so she, her mother Jas and brother JD relocate to the seaside, just as the country edges towards vertiginous change.
In their new home, they find space and wide skies, a world away from the cramped bedsits they’ve lived in up until now. But challenges swiftly mount. JD’s business partner, Kole, has a violent, charismatic energy that whirlpools around him and threatens to draw in the whole family. And when Chance comes across Franky, a girl her age she has never seen before – well-spoken and wearing sunscreen – something catches in the air between them. Their fates are bound: a connection that is immediate, unshakeable, and, in a time when social divides have never cut sharper, dangerous. Set in a future unsettlingly close to home, against a backdrop of soaring inequality and creeping political extremism, Rankin-Gee demonstrates, with cinematic pace and deep humanity, the enduring power of love and hope in a world spinning out of control.
Review:
There is absolutely no doubt that this is a well written book that pushes climate change to the forefront of our minds. This could be a reality.
At the beginning of the book, six year old Chance is moving to Margate with mum and thirteen year old brother JD following a government grant to move out of London.
The seaside town of Margate where funfair Dreamland stands, is destitute. Sea levels are rising, buildings are derelict. There are no services. Most people are leaving but Chance's life there is just beginning.
Her family are doing anything to survive which ends in some heartbreaking consequences. Teenage Chance meets and seemingly falls in love with Franky, a girl who shows up from London working with LifeSave. But can Chance really trust her?
It is very heavily focused on social inequality and political extremism and forces us to both think and feel.
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