Dreamland

Set against Los Angeles during a summer marked by brutal murders of women, the novel follows Anya Morris, a twenty-two-year-old biracial aspiring actress of Filipino and white descent. The narrative employs a recurring theatrical format, including a Greek-style chorus, stage directions, and embedded script pages, and alternates between Anya's first-person retrospective narration and fragmented sections from a young man named Jude, rendered as surreal dream sequences and disoriented waking moments in which he addresses an internal voice he identifies as a demon.

Anya lives with her mother, Della, in a courtyard apartment building called The Riviera, purchased by Anya's late grandmother Carmelita. Della has converted the building's ground-floor shop into an occult-themed boutique, while Anya scrapes by on bartending, yoga instruction, and content creation after losing a streamer pilot role. Her family includes her cousin Roro, a visual artist and hairstylist; Roro's twin brother JR, who has acquired a pygmy pouter pigeon named Alistair for a breeding sport called doo-flying; and Tita Linda, Carmelita's oldest friend, who relays messages she claims come from the dead grandmother.

One night at a Hollywood club, Anya watches a distressed, bleeding man step in front of a city bus. Impossibly, he drags himself from beneath the vehicle and walks away. Days later, Anya runs into Teddy Finch, a former classmate whose mother is an Oscar-winning director. Teddy works for Ara, William de Witt's production company, and invites Anya to its annual gala. There, Emmanuelle de Witt, a glamorous woman, takes an immediate liking to Anya and offers ten thousand dollars a month to watch over someone named Julian. Anya shares a charged moment of eye contact with William de Witt across the ballroom. Her agent tells her Emmanuelle is William's sister, framing the connection as a career opportunity. That night, Tita Linda warns Anya that a devil is following her, that she should never take a direct route home, and that Alistair the pigeon will one day save her life.

Anya arrives at the de Witt villa, a sprawling limestone estate built into the Hollywood hills, part renovated luxury and part crumbling ruin, smelling of fresh paint and something faintly sulfuric. Emmanuelle confiscates Anya's phone and hands her a baby monitor. Atticus Chandler, one of William's producers, explains that Julian is not a child but a young man with severe epilepsy, and that William is deeply protective of him. When Julian vanishes from the monitor, Anya spots him at the courtyard's edge and recognizes him as the man from the bus. She chases him to an underground fighting ring, where she watches his eyes go cold and inhuman as he demolishes his opponent with superhuman violence. When Anya screams, he stops and collapses. She drives him to Dr. Hodel, a private physician on call for the family.

Despite warnings, Anya returns to the villa, drawn by the promise of a film role and William's personal charm. William asks her to stay, explaining that Jude, his nickname for Julian, simply needs a friend. Over subsequent visits, Anya discovers Jude's room contains drawings of women from surveillance-like angles and pharmaceutical bottles prescribed not to Julian but to Killian de Witt, the family patriarch. At Emmanuelle's courtyard parties, Anya learns of a planned biopic about Killian's life with a leading role for her. She and William share charged moments, though she notices troubling signs: his teeth are stained gray at the gumline and his breath is coppery and rancid. A young woman named Valerie Nguyen, an immigration lawyer who did volunteer work for Ara, is found brutally murdered after Anya saw her talking to William at a party.

After overhearing William, his tech-mogul business partner Fred Dennings, and the housekeeper Genesis dismiss her as emotionally hollow and irrelevant, Anya's illusions crumble. She kisses Jude in the greenhouse during a rainstorm; the monster briefly emerges, placing a hand on her throat, before she pulls away. Trapped overnight by mudslides, she overhears the conspirators discussing the ritual's failures. Jude warns her about cameras throughout the property and tells her to see nothing and ask nothing.

In Jude's chapters, his internal world takes shape. He has lived in the villa his entire life, raised in near-isolation by the woman he calls Ova, whom Anya knows as Emmanuelle. During rituals, William and Hodel argue: The "blood" from sacrificed women is never "right." Hodel warns that increasing Jude's medication could kill him, but William insists Jude cannot die. A confessional chapter reveals the full history. Killian de Witt was an oil and energy mogul who developed a delusional belief that killing young women and consuming their blood granted him immortality. He fell in love with Emmanuelle Santos, who bore his child, Jude, and Killian believed his spirit would transfer into Jude upon death. William, Killian's grandson, returned to claim the villa, struck Killian with a fireplace poker, and caused a fire that damaged the house. Killian died; William inherited everything and took over the ritual. Emmanuelle is Jude's biological mother, not William's sister, and has survived by manipulating both men. Fred funded the villa's restoration and joined the ritual. The ritual's repeated failure has caused toxic mold to spread through the house and through William's and Emmanuelle's bodies.

Events accelerate. Teddy grows possessive; Jude beats him savagely. Hodel warns Anya never to return to the villa (273). After a desperate encounter with Jude on the Malibu coast, another woman is found dead. After Anya and Jude have sex at the villa, she slips out, forgetting to take an indirect route home. Emmanuelle's body appears in the courtyard fountain of Anya's apartment building, her throat slashed, her chest filled with black mold. JR discovers surveillance cameras around the building, their placement revealed by his habit of scanning the sky for Alistair, connecting the pigeon prophecy to a concrete discovery. Della performs a tarot reading with Carmelita's cards; Anya draws the devil card, and Della tells her that "even devils were once angels," implying the possibility of redemption (303). Anya receives a text summoning her to the villa for "filming."

At the villa, Anya finds Hodel, Atticus, and Fred dead. William sits in a director's chair, armed, with Genesis standing guard. He forces Anya and Jude to perform a scripted love scene as "Killian" and "Emmanuelle," pressing the gun to her head. He forces them to open the broken fountain, revealing a hidden crypt containing Killian's remains and other bodies, and orders Anya to kiss the corpse and recite vows of eternal devotion. The script instructs "Emmanuelle" to climb into the crypt and offer her heart. Anya laughs, calling the writing "appalling" (322). She taunts William, headbutts him, and fights back. Jude attacks William; Anya battles Genesis, retrieves the dropped pistol, and shoots her. Jude beats William to death, then fires into the production lights, igniting the dead foliage. The villa begins to burn. Jude tells Anya to run. She tells him she loves him, or could have loved him. She escapes, watching the villa burn from above.

In an epilogue, Anya reveals she wrote a screenplay based on these events. Teddy's mother agreed to direct. The epilogue confirms that Killian had severe early onset dementia, and that William's nonprofit was never humanitarian. The fictionalized Anya dies in the film, per studio demands. The real Anya achieved the fame she always wanted. No body matching Jude's description was found in the wreckage. Anya implies, without confirming, that Jude survived and is her co-writer. They live together in Malibu, watching old movies, though on certain hot, windy nights, they venture out into the dark.