Dangerland
by Erin Singer
This book releases on July 7, 2026*
The marketing for this book says: “Nora Ephron meets The Hangover in this screwball romantic comedy and family drama with a big, beating heart, set in the sun-bleached neon of Las Vegas,” and “When Harry Met Sally meets The Hangover in this screwball romantic comedy and big-hearted family drama set in Las Vegas, about a will-they, won’t-they couple who have spent years trying (and failing) to figure out whether to roll the dice on love.”
I guess? But not entirely. There’s a reference to When Harry Met Sally that felt a little shoved into the story, but other than that I’m not sure how they get Hangover at all. So if you cringed a little (or a lot) when you saw “meets The Hangover,” know that I’m truly not sure what this book has to do with the Hangover movie other than Las Vegas. So maybe forget that you read that.
Dangerland has so many things that I love in a story:
- It isn’t set in New York City or some place where people who live in NYC vacation
- The main characters are not in their 20s (mostly)
- Couples that seem meant-to-be that take more than 3 dates to get there
- Time hopping across four decades
- Normal-ish people doing normal-ish things
I get it. People love New York. New York is where writers want to live. I wanted to live there when I was a teenager. But I personally find it kind of boring when a book’s background city (or main character) is New York. It’s the setting of too many movies and too many TV shows and WAY too many books. Give me literally anywhere else. Dangerland is set in suburban Las Vegas, so it delivers Not-NYC in a way that made me so happy. You do get a little bit of the strip if that’s what you think Las Vegas is, but what you’re really getting is southwest suburbia complete with a gated golf course community and homeowners suing developers. I was obsessed from the first chapter.
I’ve spent some time at conventions at casinos on the strip and family lived in the Vegas suburbs in the 90s and 2000s. Singer’s descriptions + my experiences in Vegas made it easy to visualize the Alluvian community that plays a huge role in the story. Alluvian is a typical southwestern gated community complete with neighbors you mostly ignore, planned events, and a neighborhood pool. Eugenie was absolutely believable as a real estate agent (of course she drove a Corvette) during the boom era of real estate in the southwest. Either the author knows a few real estate agents or she did her homework. She nailed it with Eugenie’s demeanor and how she approached all of the situations she found herself in.
The whole cast of characters was so fun to read about, from Eugenie & Kurt’s meet cute (I think it was cute? but also maybe not that cute) all the way through to the events at the end of the story. I never knew what was going to happen next and there were some points in the plot that I guess you’d call twists but to me they just really showed off the complexity of human relationships. The whole thing was just really interesting but also so very human.
There was always something happening in the story. Not huge somethings, but enough somethings to keep me reading and enjoying it over the 4 evenings it took me to finish it. It was kind of like binging a good streaming series – multiple characters, lots of situations, humor and seriousness, and a desire to find out what happens to everybody in the end. I thought it wrapped up a little short… you can read the spoiler section below to get my full thoughts on the ending.
One of my favorite parts of the book was the way all of the characters’ lives touched or even grazed each other throughout the chaotic story, coming together at the end in pairings I totally didn’t expect earlier in the story. The one that I’m still thinking hmm about though is Austin and Brianna. I think I need a good 2-3 chapters of explanation, or at least a chapter from one of their points of view that shows how it all went down. Chad and Janelle/Nellie I can visualize a little better. A road trip from Vegas to Saskatchewan where they ended up rekindling (I guess you could call it that) their connection from earlier in the story worked better, but I wouldn’t have been sad to read more.
I’m low-key hoping that there’s a second book coming that gets more into the Austin/Brianna story with a side of Nellie & Chad. Oh and of course, Kurt & Eugenie in the background as weirdo grandparents. I’d read it.
A final note: the descriptions of rain in the desert were perfect. All of them. It was like reading a little love letter to the desert tucked away in this novel about people. It would have been easy to leave out of the story – it never rains in the deserts, right? Nobody would say it’s not very realistic that it’s always sunny in this book set in Las Vegas. Having rain sneak in and be so well done was a real treat.
*I received a pre-release galley copy of this book from Simon & Schuster. I wrote this review because I think Dangerland is a good book, not because it was free.
