Geez, a father in ICU, a husband with a debilitating mystery illness, profound depression, existential crises all the way down, and writer's block -- could we pile more on this unfortunate narrator/heroine? Well, here's the good part - with her dark humor, perceptiveness, acerbic observations, and willingness to verbalize the thoughts we normally keep to ourselves, our heroine somehow comes across as a sympathetic, engaging, and amiably distraught hero for our times. We start with crystal sharp realism and then pass through a cactus portal into magical realism; she doesn't bat an eye and we are with her every step of the way. The novel is absurd, but so is life, so it's all good.

I love Melissa Broder's humor and Milk Fed was one of my favorite books in the past five years. In Death Valley, she turns this humor onto existential dread and uses the desert setting to explore anticipatory grief. It was an easy, funny, wacky, and relatable read.
Thank you to NetGalley for the review copy!

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved the whole concept behind this book! The way the author describes the desert with all the metaphors related to family relationships really struck a chord with me. It was oddly relatable in probably the worst way, but I couldn’t help mirroring some of the main characters feelings revolving around her ailing family. If you’re looking for a well written fiction book with a touch of dark humor, try this out!

The Pisces and Milk Fed have been on my list to read for years, due to the hype. After reading this book I understand why. Melissa Broder has such a unique voice. Her ability to portray a variety of characters that are all individual yet feel very real is astounding. Especially considering one of them was talking to inanimate objects, abnormally large cacti and animals the entire story. Even so it doesn’t feel forced.

We follow the lead as she runs away to the desert to “write her novel” aka not deal with the fact that her husband is chronically ill and her father is actively dying. She’s only a little bit obsessed with Best Western and a lot obsessed with talking to rocks. But at least she has Frosted Flakes, a giant cactus and some lizards to keep her company.

This really lacked for me. I love weird and messy shit, but this really didn’t connect at all. It had no substance, and the quality was poor. I wish character relationships and the journey with grief was much stronger than it ended up being, and mainly because the characters themselves also lacked substance. Unfortunately, this is a boot.

Sign me up for any book Melissa Broder writes from now on. Wonderfully gross prose.

There's so much to process: the grief, the depression, the uncertainty of life. This is all wrapped up in a fever dream of a story about a cactus in Death Valley.

Honestly I’m not sure what to say about this book. The protagonist is a woman who is married to a man with a chronic illness that significantly impacts his everyday life. She also has a father who is in the hospital, possibly on his deathbed. She is a writer, and goes to the desert to get away from her life, finish her novel and clear her head. While she is there, she takes a hike and ends up getting lost, becoming disoriented and experiencing hallucinations and/or visions related to her dehydration/heatstroke. The story is interesting enough at the start, but devolves quickly into random observations/fever dreams during her time on the desert trail and is almost nonsensical at times. There is an undercurrent of humor which keeps the book light although it focuses on heavy topics, mainly grief/coming to terms with mortality. In the end, it kind of seems like the protagonist IS the main character in her own novel and has experienced the transformation that she hoped to write about, although this is not one hundred percent clear. I think there’s a lot to unpack and discuss with this book, but unfortunately it was a little too strange for me.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this one. It's poignant and emotional and sometimes funny, but verged on a level of surreal that I found hard to follow at times. Broder seems like the kind of author though where her style can be divisive, so I wasn't totally shocked, but I'm just not sure this one was for me. That said, I found the story compelling enough to keep reading, interested in tracing the deeply internal storyline that this follows. In it is an immensely thought-provoking and emotional character arc, tinged with grief and humor all at once. It's the kind of novel I think I have to sit with a little longer to know exactly how I feel about it, which I almost prefer to leaving a novel knowing my thoughts. With that, I recommend to those who are looking for a character-driven story that touches upon themes of loss and internal reckonings that tugs at the strange and funny in the process.

The main character is grieving her father who is in the hospital, dying. She decides to drive to Death Valley to write her next book. There, she finds it: a giant, green cactus just right off the hiking path, and interest with the cactus grows, and she must look inside herself to find what she truly needs. I think the ending could have been stronger, but it was psychologically very interesting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this ARC.

This is definitely her best. If you enjoyed The Pisces, here is a more mature, fully developed novel with flavors of magical realism that feel fleshed out, important, and memorable.

"I reach the bottom of the slope path and arrive at a weedy valley, full of globe-shaped puffballs and purple blossoms. I look up, wiping the sweat from my eyes: magnificent, primeval, overpowering rock. Wild West Shit."

Death Valley by Melissa Broder introduces us to an apathetic female novelist determined to get lost in the desert while grieving her ailing father in the hospital, navigating a listless relationship with her invalid husband, and trying to compose her new book. She becomes obsessed with the employees of a Best Western and finds herself wandering through the adjacent desert with the memories of her father.

Profoundly relatable thoughts from the protagonist persist like this one: "Sometimes I wonder if I'm genuinely the introvert I think I am, or if it's just that my Internet addition has become a substitute for meeting people. Without the Internet, I might be a very social person."

She becomes deeply enthralled with a particular cactus which she physically enters (erotically and literally) and lets her mind manifest and interact with versions of her father and husband.
There's some excellent comedic elements here as she personifies everything that crosses her path in her desert quest, whether it's talking about pee or penetrating her beloved cactus. "There is never enough pee in novels" and The stones speak and have personalities. One says "Take me, I may not be the shiniest or prettiest, but I'm sturdy and stable. Loyal."

As she struggles with guilt over the situation her father is in, she is stuck between letting him go, and keeping hope that he will survive. Jethra, the "best" Best Western employee gives perhaps the greatest soliloquy in the book "That's the problem with this country she says motioning in the air "All this space! No room for feeling. Have you ever been to Bulgarian funeral? Oh! Well! Very different from American funeral. People are screaming, throwing dirt. People are trying to climb into the coffin!" as our protagonist muses "This is definitely better than having sex with her."

Loved this book-definitely vibes of Ottessa Moshfegh, if you like her books and sort of vile, unlikeable characters.

Thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for the ARC!

A writer trying to escape the stressors of a chronically ill husband and a father in the ICU travels to the California desert finds herself in a fever dream of a journey involving giant cactuses that you can live inside, rabbits writing hate mail, and rocks that give life advice.

Based on the description I was a little off-put by this one. Am I really going to enjoy and understand a novel this metaphorical and quirky? The short answer is yes. And I’m not a very literary reader in the sense of being able to interpret and evaluate every hidden meaning. The writing is graceful in the sense that it’s told and then we move on, each scene really only gets a few moments to shine. This book is a great look into grief, trying to outrun our feelings, and even some what-not-to-dos when exploring the desert on your own 🤣. It leaves for a very exceptional and bizarre experience that will definitely sit in my brain for a while to come.

Tldr; if you like weird pick this one up. Ignore the GR rating because this book is gold.

I think Broder is just not for me. DNF. I'm down with the grief and the weird, but this was just not my style of surreal. I don't think it deserves a bad rating for anything specific!

Death Valley was a mind-bending but wonderful exploration of grief. Even though the premise is odd, the themes were relatable. I love Broder's writing!

Broder weaved such a bizarre, beautiful tapestry with that one. I was utterly captivated by the desert's surreal embrace, the prickly humor, and the raw vulnerability of her characters. Every sentence shimmered with her signature wit, keeping me glued to the page, even as I stumbled through the more surreal moments. It's a love story, a grief odyssey, a cactus-fueled fever dream – and somehow, it all works. If you're looking for something utterly unique and deeply affecting, check this one out! You won't regret the sunstroke.

I love Broder's writing. So immersive and relatable. The whole lost in the desert gave me major anxiety which is the only reason it gets knocked down a point lol.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this one. I like Melissa Broder’s writing a lot, but this book fell flat for me. It felt a little too claustrophobic, and while there was definitely a lot going on, the hyper-fixation on the grief theme made it feel a little monotonous. I’m still excited to read whatever she publishes next.

What to do when the world bunches up on you? When your favorite people are failing in all the ways you can't help them? When you are filled with doubt that you did enough? Well, Death Valley's narrator jumped in her car and found comfort at a Best Western Hotel in the heart of California's most deserty desert to sort out her feelings.

Told in a tumbling free-association of every thought as she goes through this grand sorting, our narrator gets herself into a predicament. Readers are taken along the ride witnessing feelings and emotions from every part of the human spectrum, often served with a big dose of humor and smirk. Not my usual read. This won't appeal to some, but I enjoyed it to the very end (as I later discussed with the bird in the feeder outside my window).

*A sincere thank you to Melissa Broder, Scribner, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and independently review.* #DeathValley #NetGalley

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Author Kit Carson—I believe this is her name, but it was only mentioned once in the entire book—is grieving her not-dead father who is in the hospital, dying. She decides to get away from the hospital room in Los Angeles and drive to Death Valley to write her next book. There, she finds it: a giant, green cactus just right off the hiking path. Her interest with the cactus grows, and she must look inside herself to find what she truly needs.

I enjoyed this book from start to finish. It was very psychological/philosophical in the way she thought so much about stuff, and near the end was coming to conclusions about life, death, and love. The big, green cactus gave me Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes. Imagine if Miranda and co. were after a big, green cactus the entire time (priceless).

Here’s some things I had slight problems with: I absolutely did not believe this narrator was in her 40s, I also didn’t need her name as sometimes an unnamed narrator strengthens a book like this, and I wanted more scenes with the cactus. Also, I wanted a sad ending, like not traumatizing, but sort of like Ira Levin’s books; almost every book I’ve read of his has an unhappy ending, and it actually makes the books better.

It was a cute book. I give it 3.5 stars.

A very weird ride into grief and the path that it takes you. I really felt for the protagonist and how heavy her life was becoming with a sick husband and a dying father