This was a sweet book and I think lovers of books looking for a comfort read would find success with Escaping Dreamland.

I’m living for this trend of time-hop historical fiction. Robert seems to be a bit of a self-absorbed writer struggling to repair his personal relationship by delving into a hunt for the origins and inspiration behind his favorite childhood series. I found myself more enthralled in the development of the Gilded Age trio and Magda’s use of a pseudonym to preserve her writing dream in a time dominated by male writers. Seeing historical events played throughout the “eyes of the past” is definitely intriguing. Albeit I wish the plot moved a little quicker, this was an enjoyable read.

Intertwined tales a century apart, a series of children's fiction, and a mysterious event. What do they all have in common and how do they all connect? Fascinating look into the world of children's literature in the early 20th Century.

In an homage to readers of all ages, Charlie Lovett introduces a trio of early 20th century authors, Magda, Tom and Gene. Despite coming from diverse backgrounds, harboring personal secrets, they form a warm and successful union that is destroyed by misplaced affections. Robert Parrish, published 21st century author, is losing Rebecca, the love of his life. As his star has risen, he has become withdrawn and secretive. Through self-analysis he recalls the joy of reading the treasured books of his childhood and the secret grief he carries. With a promise made to his father, he pursues the authors of these books in a quest for answers to help him work through his problems and perhaps complete the last volume of the Magnificent Trio. Through dual timelines we follow his quest and the lives of Magda, Tom and Gene. This is my third Lovett novel and my favorite. It is a delight from start to finish.

“Nothing left to do but cash the checks and start planning the next books in the series,” said Magda. “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” said Gene. “I think we should celebrate.” “How?” said Magda. “It’s the last weekend of the season at Coney Island,” said Tom. “Let’s go to Dreamland.”

Charlie Lovett certainly tackles interesting topics in his books and once again he shines a light into an array of fascinating topics with his latest offering. Everything from the New York of bygone days, to significant historical events, to the publishing of children’s literature - all interwoven and told through some interesting character stories.

Told in two timelines, Charlie investigates who were the Tremendous Trio and why they stopped writing children’s literature at the turn of the 20th century. The modern day tale is harder to get into, the main character being rather depressed but determined in his search to discover answers. However, the stories of Magda, Tom and Gene prove far more interesting from the early 1900s. While the characters are fictitious, the settings and events were factual and definitely provide the lure for reading this book. Their lives and relationships form the backdrop to very real settings that were remarkably portrayed.

“It’s so lovely to have a day that is just about today. No worries from the past, no thoughts of the future. Just today.”

Herein is what I found to be the highlight of this book. The General Slocum disaster of 1904 that forever changed Magda’s life; the San Francisco earthquake that haunted Tom and the ever alluring and magical Coney Island’s Dreamland (pre and post fire) to name but a few. If you are at all interested in some of these key historical events (the first one I had never heard of and it was horrific upon Googling!) then you will appreciate Charlie immersing you in some rich New York city history.

‘If the summer of 1911 had proved anything it was that, no matter how much everyone had forgiven everyone else, they could never really escape Dreamland.’

At times the book does go slow and although modern day Robert’s anxiety is draining, the cause and in fact, all the revelations for the leads in the concluding pages make complete and satisfying sense. The revelations of much loved children’s series such as Hardy Boys etc will have lovers of these antiquated books in reading heaven. The publishing history is very enlightening.

Overall, the relationships of the three historical leads as they begin writing series books and their shared adventures is most entertaining. Combine that with Charlie narrating so many key historic events and it makes for some very interesting reading.

‘... the circus felt like a fantastical version of New York itself - everything happening at once, with never a moment to catch one’s breath.’




This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.

I loved loved loved this book. Dual time lines a bookish mystery. There is a little bit of everything and I loved it all.

Charlie Lovett writes about books. The Bookman's Tale and The Lost Book of the Grail are two of my favorites. The plots were focused and characters well-developed.
Escaping Dreamland left me wondering what the author had in mind.
The protagonist whose story launches the other story is a writer with a successful novel. He's in a fragile relationship and is dealing with a mysterious guilty secret from his childhood. Another plot line involves children's book series published at the turn of the century and yet another relates the history of New York City in the 1900s.
While all the stories eventually mesh together the book seemed lifeless despite all that happens.
Robert, the protagonist never elicited any interest from this reader and his guilty secret is anti-climatic.
Still, those of us who love to read about books can appreciate the detailed history of children's series publishing but on the whole, I was disappointed.

I am a lover of children's series books, so I was intrigued by the basic premise of this book. Positives: Once I get into the stories of Magda, Gene, and Thomas, I was enthralled with their friendship and the story of how they came to write their books. I loved the NYC setting and the early 20th century time period. Negatives: I was less enthralled with the modern-day story. I wasn't fully invested in Robert and Rebecca and not sure why his obsession with his childhood books necessitated them almost breaking up. Obviously, there was the reveal at the end that made it more clear but somehow that part of the book didn't hold together for me. Overall it was a book that got better and better as it went on, and it was enjoyable, but in a 3-star sort of way.

America at the turn of the 20th century was a time of dramatic change, a treasure trove of triumphs and tragedies for any historical novelist. In this dual-timeline novel, Lovett mines that rich history beautifully.

The early 20th-century timeline is focused on three protagonists: Magda Herzenberger, a survivor of the Slocum ferry disaster; Thomas de Peyster, a journalist from a wealthy family; and Eugene Pinkney, a scientist who happens to be gay. The story of how they meet and become the “Tremendous Trio” unfolds against the backdrop of New York, especially Coney Island, in its heyday. Lovett includes not only famous real-life events but also famous real-life people such as Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, the Vanderbilts, and Edward Stratemeyer, publisher of popular children’s series the Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins. Readers already familiar with the period may be forgiven for thinking that Lovett was trying to include every celebrity of the era, but those less familiar will likely be fascinated by the famous people the protagonists encounter. Escaping Dreamland is very much a love song to New York, not just to its famous inhabitants, and both timelines express the magical sense of possibilities in the city: “He loved this about New York—that you could walk into any one of thousands of unassuming buildings and find something within to strike awe.”

The modern timeline follows Robert Parrish, a bestselling author who is struggling to write his second novel. He is also struggling to hold onto a difficult relationship with his longtime girlfriend. He knows that his failure to open up about a tragic secret from his past is what holds him back in both his work and his love life, but he can’t face that secret until he goes on a mission to find out about the real lives of the children’s-book authors who called themselves the “Tremendous Trio.” Even though Robert has fond memories of reading the Trio’s books as a child, his memories are also bound up with his secret: he “had loved the Tremendous Trio, and loved sharing the stories with his father, until [the stories] had ruined everything.” How exactly Magda, Eugene, and Thomas and their alter-ego protagonists “ruined everything” for Robert Parrish keeps the reader guessing until the end of the novel, and the unfolding of this final mystery weaves perfectly into the “love and loss” stories of both timelines.

The metafictional layers of Escaping Dreamland are comforting (as opposed to experimental), with the main protagonists in both timelines struggling with their role as writers who are deeply invested in children’s stories. As a professor of children’s literature, I was delighted by the many ways in which children’s stories inspire and mold the protagonists. I also loved the subtle message that popular fiction for children is something to be celebrated just as much as the more privileged literary classics.

A recurring theme is the tension between the desire to be known and the fear of vulnerability in relationships. As Robert ponders telling his girlfriend the secret from his past that changed his life, “he tried rehearsing the story he would tell [her], but he quickly realized that the truth didn’t require rehearsal, only courage.”

This novel is about the ways in which the stories we read and are told in childhood become legacies that weave themselves into our adult identities. It is also about legacies in a larger sense, shown through Robert’s musings about having inherited his grandfather’s ability to suppress the tragedies of the past: “he realized that inheritance was no gift. His failed relationships, his estrangement from his mother, and his occasional periods of depression and isolation must all be linked to the guilt he refused to talk about.”

The crisp clarity of Lovett’s prose, as well as the way Escaping Dreamland immerses the reader in its historical time and place, reminded me of the novels of Ian McEwan and A.S. Byatt. Lovett’s language is never obtrusive, often giving this reader the impression of looking through a spotlessly-clean pane of glass at story in its purest form. Like the best children’s literature, this novel will inform and delight adult readers who are nostalgic for the books of their youth.

Gripping Dual-Timeline Story

I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into with this book, but I am always drawn to novels about books and writing. What a fascinating listen and read. The author pulled me right into the story, and I found myself captivated by the dual timeline story. As an avid reader myself whose love of reading started when I was a child (including Nancy Drews!), I loved the literary aspects of this book, both in the past timeline with three young people who wrote adventurous children's novels that were so popular back in the day (like Nancy, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, et al.) and in the present with the hero being a celebrated literary fiction writer whose love of those children's books—shared across the generations with his grandfather and father—inspired his own love of words and writing. Mysteries are a part of the book on several fronts. While we, the readers, watch the world of those early 20th Century writers unfold, the present-day main character doesn’t have such knowledge. He has to delve into the mystery about them for reasons we don't fully understand until much later in the book. Somehow, his present difficulties hinge on this mystery.

I loved the complicated but believable and relatable characters in this book, particularly the ones in the past timeline. They all had rich backstories that the author reveals gradually. When they all finally meet and start their children's book writing careers, the group dynamic between them becomes gripping and tenuous at times. Tom comes from a wealthy family, and he defied them by going into journalism instead of banking, the family business. Magda/Mary is a German immigrant who lost all her family in tragic ways, including one horrifying scene the author shares. Gene is a cross-dressing homosexual at a time when gender fluidity wasn’t a concept, and heterosexuality was the only acceptable romantic preference.

The author did a good job describing New York and San Francisco around the turn of the previous century, during the last gasp of the Gilded Age. I felt like I was walking the streets with them and could visualize it all, especially Dreamland. As a former San Francisco Bay Area resident, I particularly liked his description of the journalist-author’s experience of the 1906 earthquake. Two of the past characters had to deal with some pretty horrific historical events. The author must have done a lot of research, first to create such a believable past and then to show the horror of historical events through the characters’ eyes. A well-written tell that kept my interest long into the night.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for my copy of Escaping Dreamland by Charlie Lovett in exchange for an honest review. It published September 22, 2020.
I found the premise of this book to be really interesting, and the writing to be well-done. However, I found the sexual content to be more "open-door" than I am comfortable with, however, I understand why it was important to the story.
If you are a book lover who loves books about stories/books, looking for a sweeping story, following lots of main characters, over different time periods, set in NYC, look no further!

I found this book to be utterly charming. I loved how the story interconnected and how well written each one of the characters was. I already have plans to give this as a gift to some of my friends for their birthdays

‘Escaping Dreamland’ by Charlie Lovett (Blackstone Publishing)

Speaking about anticipating a novel experience: Readers have devoured everything of Winston-Salem author Charlie Lovett’s since the 2013 major publication debut of “The Bookman’s Tale” (https://tinyurl.com/y9vczq53), and we've comfortably come to know what to expect from this writer. Lovett is famously a former antiquarian bookseller (to the point that he was consulted by John Grisham as the legal-thriller writer was researching a novel), a Lewis Carroll scholar and a lover of the British landscape. Many, if not all, of these things populate his novels in some fashion or another.

Until this one. Oh, not the parts about the new
novel being influenced by old books or even a Carroll reference — those are in there — but the part about knowing what to come to expect from this exceptional storyteller.

“Escaping Dreamland” is a departure from the Lovett canon in that it offers not one coming-of-age tale, but three; not one mystery, but two; not one love story, but four.

Typically with a Lovett novel, the story is built on the enigma of old books and is divided into historical time periods. So it is here. In “Escaping Dreamland,” the year 1906 is largely centered on the Manhattan of that era — although the San Francisco earthquake figures prominently — and that period intersects with the life of a contemporary author, Robert Parrish, whose connection to three young writers of the early-20th century epoch propels much of the narrative.

Through alternate tellings, the story of Magda, Gene and Tom gradually evolves to reveal the answers to both their own mysteries, and the mysteries that are driving Robert’s lifelong insecurities and fears. With graceful insight and prose injected into those stories, Lovett explores and exposes themes he has only hinted at in previous works — sexuality, women’s rights and bigotry among them.

Few are the authors who have so beautifully captured the Gilded Age of New York as has Lovett here, and fewer still are those who could couple that period with the inner struggles of a modern-day Manhattan novelist — while simultaneously teasing out the puzzles behind a set of century-old children’s books and the secret that has defined Parrish’s life.

“Escaping Dreamland” is a bold and brave novel from Lovett. Even the title is like nothing he has produced before, and although its raw stories and controversial subjects may lose the author a few current fans, he will gain many more for what he offers us here.

Offering another dimension is the nearly 13-hour audio version of the novel, also from Blackstone. Ably and well-read by veteran voice artist Mike Lenz, the narrator does a fine job traveling not only between time periods, but between the most diverse group of characters Lovett has produced to date. Capturing the friendship, love and angst between Magda, Gene and Tom, and bringing that forward to Robert’s and his wife’s marital struggles would be a challenge for any audiobook narrator. Lenz is up to the task.

I think the best word to describe my feelings on this book is disappointed. There was so much potential here for an incredible novel: a literary mystery, NYC in the early 1900s, actual historical events tied in. The research was incredible and weaved into the tale really well. But the writing unfortunately was abysmal. There was no magic to the story, and the dialogue felt so fake and stilted. I am really bummed because this could have been something amazing at the hands of another.

Escaping Dreamland is a fictional novel about one man’s quest to discover more about his three favorite authors from his childhood while simultaneously saving his relationship. Robert Parrish grew up reading different children’s series with his father, and one in particular about the “Tremendous Trio” ended on a cliffhanger, and Robert wants to find out the truth. Told from both Robert’s point of view and the point of view of the authors of the Tremendous Trio a century prior, Escaping Dreamland is essentially a love story to New York City and to books themselves.
Charlie Lovett is becoming one of my favorite authors. This story is enthralling after about 25%. At first, the numerous characters are confusing, but once the stories intertwine the book is not only more manageable but more enjoyable. I was laughing at some points, and was nearly brought to tears at others.
Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

What are the stories that make you who you are? What are the stories you keep hidden from everyone, even the people who love you the most? Escaping Dreamland explores these questions while taking you along on an adventure.

When Robert was a kid he struggled to find ways to connect with his dad - they had very different interests. Until one day while visiting his grandfather Robert comes across a box of old books. These were adventure stories from the early 1900s - the Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift - and as Robbie read them and rushed to discuss each with his dad, they found the connection that had been missing.

Robbie’s very favorite though were 4 connected series - each a trilogy. “Daring Dan Dawson, a series about a young circus daredevil who was always in the right place to perform spectacular rescues after dramatic disasters; Alice Gold, Girl Inventor, about a brilliant girl whose inventions are largely confined to the domestic sphere; Frank Fairfax, Cub Reporter, about a boy who goes to work for a newspaper and is assigned to various expeditions in search of lost civilizations; and, finally, a series involving all three of these youngsters and their adventures together - the Tremendous Trio.”

When our story really starts, it’s 2010 and Robert starts doing research to learn more about these books and their authors. The story alternates between his quest to learn more and the early 1900s when these books were being written. I really enjoyed the dual timelines and how the story came together.

This book also felt really personal to me. Growing up, I was really close to my dad. Right from the start, I felt like these are stories he might have enjoyed as a kid if they had been real. And the whole time I read, I wished I could share this story with him. He passed away almost 20 years ago so that isn’t possible but I loved thinking about him the whole time I read it.

This book also felt like a love letter to New York City - both current day and historical. I love the city - seeing places I know well and even my workplace mentioned added another layer to the story. Especially right now as I read this mid-pandemic and haven’t been to any of those places in 6 months.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

What a fantastic read!

Escaping Dreamland is a beautiful novel set in two different time periods. Way to bring back all of the feelings about the books that made me love reading so long ago. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and all of the other fantastic children's fiction.

The novel seamlessly weaves the two periods together. I loved the feelings it stirred up. Such a great read. I can't wait to explore more by this author.

I enjoyed this book, and learned a lot from it too. It is about an author named Robert in New York City in 2010 who finds himself in a bit of a rut after his first book is published. He finds that reporters and interviewers always want to know where you get your ideas, what inspires. Robert finds that he can't answer that question, and he can't move on in life until he gives an honest answer. He wants to mention all the literary greats he has read, when he really loved the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and the other books from the Stratemeyer Syndicate. He feels embarrassed and realizes that he needs to find himself and explain his own life to himself, so sets off to solve the greatest literary puzzle of all, by finding out the truth about his favorite children's series, The Tremendous Trio.

This book is brilliant, insightful, entertaining and informative. It shows the importance of books and fiction to shaping us all, and how the characters that we love in childhood shape the people that we become.

This book kept me reading and I cared deeply about all the threads of the story. I found that in the beginning I was more interested in Robert's story, and was confused about the other time line story that intersected. I didn't understand who they were and how it was all going to connect. That part of the story was a bit slow to start, but I persevered and came to be equally interested in all of it.

Thanks for this ARC. I enjoy Charlie Lovett's work and his interests very much. His settings are also a character in the books he writes. In this book, it was New York City in 2010 and in the early 1900's.

I also requested and received a copy of the Audio Book and I enjoyed reading and listening at the same time.

It’s a little hard to talk about this book without giving too much away. Dual timelines in NYC, one present day and one in 1906 with 4 people. Robbie is investigating children’s books that he grew up with, as did his father and his grandfather. This is what takes him back to the past and the 3 people who are trying to make their way in the world. He is looking for lost books and researching the authors because he thinks it will help him be a better author himself. Interesting premise.

I have adored every book that I have read by Charlie Lovett and this title is no exception. It is so clear that this author loves all things book related. Each novel has a connection to something literary: in First Impressions, for example, it is Jane Austen and there is generally a dual time line.

Escaping Dreamland is another winner! This novel is a love letter to series books and New York. Any one who ever read Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys and loved going from one title to the next will relate to the protagonist and the power of reading as expressed in this novel. I liked that there was credit given to those books that are not “great,” but are greatly loved.

In the dual timeline, much of the book takes place in the early 1900s and just before. Readers get to marvel at the Statue of Liberty when it was new and visit an artists studio that is frequented by the famous bankers and writers of the day, including Henry James.

The three protagonists in the past represent different cultures and childhood experiences. How they come together and what they do is one of the story lines. The modern parts of the novel are about a writer, his relationships, his struggles and his relationship to his beloved childhood series.

I absolutely loved this book. I am already longing for the next book by this author.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.