The world is going to hell in a handbasket, politicians are corrupt, the rich get richer at the expense of the poor, and global warming is going to kill us all. A single mum, Jas is offered a cash grant to relocate to Margate with her son JD and daughter Chance. Without questioning why they are being paid to move, the family are delighted to leave the grim bedsits they’ve endured in London. In Margate, they find a flat and Jas gets a job at a pub, where seven-year-old Chance befriends Davey. They attend the Tracey Emin Academy, until the schools start closing. People are moving out of Thanet and dangerous tides and rising temperatures keep the tourists away. Increasingly feral, Chance and Davey run amok and hang out in Dreamland, the town’s derelict amusement park.

Mirror Book Club: The Power Of Geography a fascinating look Mirror Book Club: The Power Of Geography a fascinating look

Duels to the death, weekly, in the garden. Adjudicated by my father, of course, who we both try to bribe. No – not competitive at all, just interested in similar things, though done differently I think. She’s definitely the OG speculative writer – her exceptional novel The Ice People, set in a close-future Britain where climate change has sparked a new ice age, came out in 1998 – and she moved to Thanet before I did. Come to think of it, I better get my defence lawyers ready.Mirror Book Club members have chosen a brand-new book of the month – Happy All The Time by Laurie Colwin. It’s a contemporary novel, about a gay man and gay woman who fall in love, but it’s also – in a prequel-esque way – within the Dreamland universe. I’m having a lot of fun with it. Dreamland is set in the near future, a dystopian novel that highlights some very real potential threats to the UK and its seaside towns. Chance is our main character, from a poor family suffering in London who are given the seemingly optimistic opportunity to move to Margate and start a new life. The realities of this move drag Chance’s family into a situation that is just as bad as before, but with some added drama too. A content warning for sustained drug use, domestic abuse, suicide and death is definitely needed! They are handled well, but run graphically through the book – so just be aware! 🙂

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee Book review: Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee

You said earlier that it’s quite similar to How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, which you considered including in your list of five. It’s set in Margate in the near future. 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. This march to an increasingly unjust society rife with social inequality and political extremism is documented through the eyes of Chance, a young girl-then-woman who has been brought to the fading coastal resort of Margate by her once middle class, now junkie mother who has a predilection for choosing the entirely wrong type of men.

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What kept me going was Chance, the main character of the book. The book is filled with complicated, difficult to like people but Chance loves all of them in her own way. She has this desperate desire to trust and to help, even when it's clear that she shouldn't. Nobody thanks for it and it ends up hurting her in many different ways, each more heartbreaking than the last. But her perseverance and loving heart is properly inspiring. The narration is extraordinarily well done. Many post-apocalyptic books have a spareness and sparseness that can sometimes feel affected. This feels incredibly naturalistic, and yet manages to be very lyrical. One review I read talked about it having a haiku-like quality. It has these clipped sentences, in a way that feels hyper-realistic to how minds think. It’s effortlessly beautiful while being violent and harrowing. A newly reissued romantic comedy first published in 1978, we follow two couples – Guido, “serious in matters of the heart”, and “precise” Holly, Guido’s cheerful cousin Vincent and his spiky colleague Misty – as they meet, fall in love, then endeavour to remain “happy all the time” amid the challenges of life. This should be on every 30 books to read before you turn 30 list. Are those a thing? They should be.