Another unique, compelling read by Melissa Broder. Her individualistic voice and writing style wrings true in this novel about grief, depression, illness, adult/child relationships, told in a one-of-its-kind journey as she stumbles across a cactus on a desert trail that turns into a 'portal' for exploration. Highly recommended!

So I am less of a sci-fi reader and am trying to expand my reading. I read Pisces by Broder and thought she was a good writer but the story wasn't ideally my thing. This book is more my thing and Broder is an even better writer. A tale involving a writer trying to finish writing where she goes to stay at a Best Western in the desert. Her father is in the hospital and her husband is chronically ill. This plays into the visions she has while hiking. Her take on the god of her understanding and love as a verb drew me in. I was still a little lost mid through but it all seemed to make some sense in the end.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

I was blown away by this book. Something about Broder’s voice made me feel like she was talking directly to me. I felt like I was her protagonist, despite having little to nothing in common with the character. This story got more and more trippy, and I was happy to go along for the ride. I was left wanting a little bit at the end with some of the reunions between characters. But I am so happy I requested this book and need to read more of Broder’s work!

An excellent study in grief and longing. I love Melissa Broder's writing and I highly recommend this.

(2.75 rounded up) Overall, I feel like this book wasn't really for me. The first half was probably more of a 3.5, but the second half dragged for me, and I was just over it by the end. I think if this book was condensed into a short story, I would have liked it all the way through, but I didn't connect with the character, the atmosphere, or I guess the plot? There were some interesting survival themes (both physically and emotionally/mentally) which I would say was my favorite part.

I really loved this short little book. The writing was quirky in the best way. The character was off the wall and yet totally relatable. Her inner dialogue propelled the narrative in a pleasing fashion. The story was sad and hopeful and funny all at the same time. The cover art is stunning. Read it.

I was new to this author and I tried to keep an open mind while reading this but it's truly not for me. I felt like for moved slow at certain points and I don't know, it's just not for me

Thank you to Net Galley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I made it to about 50% on this one before deciding "life's too short to read books you don't like." Unfortunately, I really, really didn't like this one.

It's a little too "out there" for my taste. Just as unfortunate? This was my first Broder. I've heard Milk Fed's basically gospel, so I hope my issue is with this book specifically and not her style, in general.

While I appreciated the commentary here about grief, it was layered beneath a lot of nonsense that I just couldn't buy into. Everything felt very stream-of-consciousness and scattered. Not sure what would have made it more appealing, but I'm sad that I was unable to keep trudging through it.

It’s not the worst but it wasn't for me. All the characters were flat and the writing felt monotone throughout. Even though I know it’s purposely weird and the potential is there but it struggled to hold my attention.


Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for providing a copy for an honest review.

A great novel and very well-written, surrealist like her other books. I would say I enjoyed it a little bit less than her previous books--I loved Milk-Fed!--but that's probably because I relate to the narrator and what she's going through less.

Wow! This novel was like a literary fever dream (or acid trip)! And I mean that in a good way! I loved this strange book, but I struggle to explain why or even categorize it. Magical realism in spades. I loved Broder's novel, The Pisces, and Death Valley did not disappoint at all. I'm a Melissa Broder fan!

Broder’s newest novel, Death Valley, broaches topics like grief, depression, chronic illness, life after death, familial sickness, leveling of conflicting and contrasting emotions, and feelings of existentialism in the face of larger powers and our inevitable looming death, and it does so in an incredibly clever, realistically magical, and often relatable way. beginning with a woman’s escape from the heavy atmosphere of grief created by the wavering condition of her dying father, who is confined to the hospital, as well as the guilt she feels at her incapability to fix the chronic illnesses present in her husband as well as those in her father, she takes temporary residence at a Best Western in southern California, near the Death Valley, aiming to finish the current book she is writing, to fully encapsulate its purpose, and is hoping to uncover some focus in solitude, a room of her own. Recommended a hiking path by one of two very idiosyncratic Best Western workers she meets, she ventures into the desert wilderness, trying to escape her own mind, and spurred by a cactus bigger than she could have ever imagined, and soon internally changed by it’s very large sinister yet beckoning hole into which she takes vulnerable solace, she slowly slides deeper into her own grief, guilt, and delusion, confronted starkly with herself, in her attempted escapist isolation, as a result of the unceasing sunshine that enlightens and bares her deepest worries and fears. She attempts to desert her identity as wife and daughter in this never ending desert, ending up lost in terms of her location as much as she is in terms of her certainty in her own conscience, she stumbles through this uncertainty with the company of inanimate characterized objects created by her own imagination, visions of the men in her life in times of their lives before they became unwell, and comes face to face with existentialism and death in more than one way; our main character, in the most genuine sense of the cliche, has to get lost in order to find herself, physically and emotionally. We live briefly, in this short but encompassing book, in the sarcastic but sorrowful mind of this woman using physical escapism to come to terms with her anticipatory grief, we experience her flashes of loved ones, and watch as she forms hilarious desperate relationships with various rocks and cacti due to her desert heat delusion, and in turn follow this woman’s journey towards a newfound desperation to live while those she loves are slowly dying, and entrenched in this overheated, lonely, directionless stupor, she comes to terms with the things she cannot control, no matter how hard she tries and tries to control them. She truly characterizes the endless love she holds deeply for these people she adores whose circumstances she cannot change, and realizes they do not expect her to change them. We cannot outrun ourselves, no matter how lost we become we are still chained to ourselves, to our deep caves of despair, our endless skies of uncertainty, the prickly cactus-like corners of our mind that become increasingly unavoidable. Our souls are heavy and we are forced to drag them through our lives, and when those we love lose the ability to keep going, we attempt to carry them too. But at what point do we get to set it all down? How do we know what to set down? it reminded me of the Anne Carson quote, “You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? And I said, Where can I put it down?” where can we lay down our grief and guilt, and how can we come to terms with the fact that we are allowed to try to abandon misery and emotional projection and accept love, compassion, acceptance? Despite our mortality, our fallibility, our corruptible brains, don’t we still deserve to have family and love? we pray to Gods we do or don’t believe in to let that be enough, that whether we live or we die, we are loved, and that that’s enough.

In Death Valley, Broder combines a desert survival story with a deep dive into anticipatory grief and loss using her own brand of fever dream writing. The unnamed narrator, dealing with her father's imminent passing and her husband's worsening chronic illness, ventures out to the desert and enters a giant cactus that may or may not be there. The combination of weird desert occurrences and a deep dive into the narrator's psyche full of grief and existential dread definitely made for an interesting and profound read. I found this to be thought provoking and there were definitely parts I connected more with. I found the survival part a bit meandering but thought it was still fast read.

As I was reading Death Valley I was reminded of THE HIKE by Drew Magary. They are both similar in weirdness and overall survival themes with a dose of emotional deep dives. I think had I not read The Hike (and felt more connected to the experiences of the protagonist there), Death Valley would have been a very unique experience, but it's still a new twist on a rare type of story and definitely worth a read.

Thank you so much to Scribner for the ARC.

My favorite Broder yet. Filled with her signature wit and humor, a sprinkle of magical realism, a dose of depression, and a woman dealing with grief, and Death Valley was a winner for me. There were moments throughout where I felt as if the book was written FOR me, because I connected with it so closely, there were other moments that had me laughing aloud, and by the end I was sobbing. A brilliant novel.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year. I have read Melissa Broder’s other novels and they both hit that 5 star mark for me. Unfortunately this one fell flat.

In this novel we follow a woman who is going to the California Desert to escape the never ending pressure of both her father and husband being ill. A majority of the novel takes place at the local Best Western and a trial nearby where she comes across a huge cactus and her fascination goes from there.I enjoyed the surrealism factor but I was left wondering why any of it was happening. Even though it was a shorter novel it felt long. Since we didn’t interact with the father or husband character much I found it hard to empathize with the main character since we didn’t get to know them.

Regardless of not actually enjoying the story Broder’s writing still stood out, and I am excited to see what comes next from her.

It's safe to say that if Melissa Broder writes it I will read it. Death Valley is a bit of a departure from her other novels (The Pisces and Milk Fed), but is still full of the dark humor and honesty that I love in her work.

Death Valley follows a narrator whose father has spent months in the hospital and is close to death. Seeking respite, she books a few nights at a Best Western and takes up hiking. On the trail she finds a large, abnormal cactus that seems to speak to her like a friend. A series of strange visions, including one of her dying father as a young boy, lures her back to the trail the next day. Our narrator is not the smartest hiker though and soon her walk on the simple trail turns into a situation that could end in death.

I love Melissa's writing style so much - its snappy, funny and often a little gross. In Death Valley, we see the narrator's struggle with her father's impending death, her relationship with her chronically ill husband, and her own struggles with her mental health. She pivots so well between moments that have me near laughing out loud to moments that would scare the crap out of me if I was in her situation. Death Valley is a real rollercoaster of emotions and a fever dream of a novel that had me questioning what was reality and what was in our narrator's head. This book is not a long one, but Melissa makes every single page count.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for a review copy.

I love Broders wit and humor in the face of a such a dismal and depressing topic: grief. I honestly was not that blown about by this story however. I love a book with very little plot but this just felt boring and forgettable to me.

Imagine you are faced with several crises. It is not too difficult of a reach, life is hard. Your father is in the I.C.U., near death for many months and your husband has been suffering from a "long flu" for nine years that leaves him in pain, unable to work, often even unable to walk, and frequently spending months in bed. What do you do? If you are the main character in the latest novel by Melissa Broder, "Death Valley", you flee Los Angeles and end up in a Best Western in the desert.

With lots of humor and introspection, our heroine then goes on ill advised, unprepared hikes in the desert, and encounters a giant cactus and her own mortality. In a low place mentally, and then in a lonely place physically, she tries to escape herself, but as conventional wisdom warns us-we bring ourselves wherever we run to. Will our protagonist survive? Will she find a way to thrive? Even her attempts to find connection with an automated customer service phone line are hilarious. You will laugh, you will wonder at that tear forming in the corner of your eye, and you will not be able to put this book down.

This story is for those who love family drama and searches for paths to fill our emptiness and finding the levity in the most unlikely of situations.. Melissa Broder knows her craft. She knows the difficulty of having to choose your hotel breakfast selections the night before, the inability to process our feelings in a way that is kind and beneficial to our psyche, and how impossible it is to successfully deal with all the people in our lives without getting paralyzed by fear and indecision. This narrative will resonate with the reader for quite some time. It is a welcome addition to your TBR list.

In Death Valley, the nameless author who narrates the book travels alone to a Best Western hotel in the desert to work on her book. Her father is hospitalized with a severe illness and her husband suffers from a debilitating chronic illness. While all of this could be unbelievably sad and depressing, Melissa Broder actually makes her main protagonist’s observations bitingly funny and sarcastic (“𝘔𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘴. 𝘚𝘩𝘦’𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴; 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘴. 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢: 𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵: 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘰𝘯.“)

Yes, there is a giant cactus here with a doorway in its side. And the narrator talks to some rocks while lost on a hike in the desert. I loved the narrator’s dark sense of humor and her dry wit. If you’re a fan of the author’s previous books The Pisces and Milk Fed, you will not be disappointed by this very keen observation on grief and survival.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy!

This is such a great novel it’s about a woman caring for her dying father after his accident and takes a brief holiday excursion to death Valley in on a hike find a cactus this is more like a letter to a friend because her writing is honest and I do mean totally honest and humble and I loved it so much! This is one of those books you don’t run into every day they’re not a dime a dozen it’s so original and so good and I just love it! If you love well-thought-out stories that are original with a day of sci-fi thrown in then you will definitely love Death Valley by Melissa Broder from her mixed up relationship with her dad to the book she is writing it is all awesome awesome awesome! I want to thank Scribner Annette galley for my free arc copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.