Melissa Broder has always been vulnerable in the writing that she has shared with the world, and because of this, she is one of my favorite authors. This was one of my most highly anticipated reads this year, and it delivered. For readers like myself who are partial to Melissa Broder's nearly unhinged brand of humorous writing, you'll find that element preserved in this novel. With a magic cactus Narnia and anthropomorphic rocks, there is no shortage of introspection covered in this book as well. This is a story of resilience, grief, fear, and most of all, love.

Broder's narrative resonated with me on a deeply personal level, making it a journey that mirrored my own experience of anticipatory grief. Despite the darkness that surrounds the characters, the story served as a beacon of hope and resilience in my own life, and I found comfort while reading (twice!). Death Valley is an exploration of survival that speaks to the human spirit, offering a reminder that, even in the face of impending loss, there's a strength within us to navigate the most challenging of journeys.

Broder at her most absurd. And... I kinda loved that. I think the conversations with the inanimate world (stones with personalities, dialogue with a rose from a hospital bed, something new every chapter essentially) was one of the most interesting things I've seen her do with her writing style, and I think I would like it in another Broder.

But, similarly to my feelings about Pure Colour by Sheila Heti, the exploration of grief here left me feeling unsettled and frustrated. So, this just wasn't for me. I can see many people loving this one though.

I also should note that I am still a little uncomfortable with Melissa Broder's self-autobiographical *but not* fiction, I think she works better with creative non-fiction. But who am I to say what one of the zaniest authors of our time should be writing!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the eARC.

This was my first experience with Broder's work and I do not think I have ever come across anything like it. It is wild and funny and chaotic. I am so excited to go back and read more of Broder's work.

Thank netgalley and scribner for letting me review this book!

An unnamed narrator rolls into a best wedstern in the deserts of california running from the fragilities of the men in her life- her father, struggling in the icu, and her husband who has been suffering from an unidentified chronic illlness for nearly a decade. Ostensibly, she came to the desrrt to finish her novel, but escapes into the desert and into a literal mystical cactus, which sends her on a life threatening journey of self discovery.

This summary sounds really dark, and honestly the content of this book is pretty dark, but somehow- the narrator is so funny!? Life is kind of a joke!? This all read like a fever dream, and in the same way there were some startling moments of epiphany? I just got pulled along on this ride and enjoyed it.

I was a huge fan of Broder previous, preposterously insane (non-derogatory) novels THE PISCES and MILK FED. DEATH VALLEY is similarly preposterously insane, but felt too predictable and hallucinatory to reach the success of her other works.

Oh my. Broder's "Death Valley" was an insane fever dream of a book that was bonkers, full of heart, hysterical, and very clearly "Broder." This is honestly one of the most unique books I've ever come across that I need to read her entire back catalog.

Absolute bonus points for the tear drop cactus art cover. FANTASTIC. Very smart. Appreciated it so much more when the story was over.

I would not hesitate recommending this to ANYONE and will be buying a hard copy version of this book ASAP.

5/5 stars.

Death Valley is an unusual and powerful look at grief and the various ways it can hit us before and after a death. The plot has aspects of magical realism and absurdism that work well for the character and what she's going through. I read this because of my reaction to Broder's first book Milkfed - it was a book I thoroughly appreciated for it's originality and the writing skill, but had trouble connecting with in other ways. Death Valley worked better for me, in general. The main character processed things in a way I really appreciated.

This book makes me want to do shrooms with Melissa Broder. I fell in love with Broder when I read her book So Sad Today and Death Valley only confirmed that she is probably my soulmate. Broder's writing makes you feel like you’re listening to a long-time friend tell you a story. Broder’s writing style is chaotic and raw, making reading her books a unique experience.

If you want to laugh while reading about grief and the unusual way it affects people, Death Valley is one you won't want to miss out on.

Death Valley is an introspective novel centered on death and grief. We follow the unnamed narrator on an emotional and hallucinatory journey through the desert as she grapples with her father’s imminent passing and her husband’s progressive chronic illness. Broder perfectly captures the haziness of grief, anxiety, and depression while using her signature dark humor to take the sting out of these painful subjects. I loved this one and can’t wait to see what Broder does next.

Thank you to netgalley for the arc. I love the cover.

I've read other reviews of people who love this book and love this author and just assumed now that this author is not for me. I didn't like it. At all. It's all connecting death with god and someone thinking they're more profound than they are.

I think my mother would like it.

if you've read anything by Broder before you have a general idea of her writing, but Death Valley goes completely off the rails. if you don't like rambling protagonists and conversations with inanimate objects then this will not be your jam. if you like reading about grief and grappling with the mortality of your loved ones, you might enjoy it! this worked for me because of the latter.

I keep accidentally reading a lot about parents who are dead and/or dying, which is a cathartic experience for someone who lost a parent this year. so this brought me close to the protagonist as i clung to sentences that in previous years i would have just found nice. i highlighted so many bits of this and at points just stared at the ceiling, processing how hard they were hitting me.

this novel is completely out there! but if you can get past that, you might just love it.

Death Valley is a portrait of love while being in a unsettling state of grief, an existential crisis and dealing with a loved one that needs your full attention.
I found myself relating to this woman in so many moments, especially in her relationship with her father, and on how she's used to express her love and how she expected eveyone else to express their love.
It felt like a fever dream, like one of those movies where everything happens out of nowhere, and you have to pay attention to every single detail or you'll definetely get lost.
I enjoyed very much, and i think with that ending gives people more hope about any situation that they could be in, it's like saying: in reality it's not as bad as you think it is in your head.
Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for the advanced copy in exchanged of an honest review.

This book is the best blend of beautiful and complete kookiness. I loved it.

Our protagonist is taking a break from sitting in the hospital in the ICU helping with her ailing father to go to the desert to get inspiration for a new novel. While staying at the local Best Western (where else are you going to stay when heading west?) she decides to go on a hiking trail where she finds a mysterious cactus. Only when she goes back to find said cactus she gets a wee bit turned around. 😅

Okay. Seriously keep some beverages next to you while reading because you’re going to get THIRSTY.

I cannot get over this book. For folks that have gone through a major hospital stay with a parent, all the metaphors resonated with me soooo hard. Like, I did not expect to cry TWICE and feel such connection with a woman lost in a desert, trying to climb inside a trippy cactus but here we are.

Broder so perfectly captures the claustrophobic and intense feelings of pre-grief. It has her trademark ridiculousness but she digs deep into emotions in this book, which makes for the perfect combination.

And can we talk about the cover? It’s PERFECTION.

This is kind of a difficult book for me to review. It’s no plot just vibes, but I was happy just to go along the ride. I didn’t realize going in that it was magical realism, but I really enjoyed that aspect.

I think the humor was my favorite part of the book. The use of parentheses and clarification was simple but funny.

Melissa Broder is incredibly talented at prose and the book is enjoyable just for that. It took me a while to finally read one of her books but I’m glad I finally have and I look forward to reading Milk Fed!

I am absolutely feral for this book. I love the way Melissa Broder's mind works so fucking much. She just really gets me. Based on how much I've loved Milk Fed and now this book, I feel like I need to read the rest of her body of work immediately.

This is a book about the weirdness of grief—grieving death, grieving seeing your loved ones in pain—and the fear of death and the unknown, and it's appropriately bizarre. It feels like a fever dream or an acid trip in the desert. An unnamed writer narrator (whose life bears more than a few similarities to Melissa's) with a chronically ill husband takes a trip to the Mojave Desert while her dying father is in the hospital. There, she finds a magical cactus that propels her into a psychedelic odyssey.

I loved the poetic, absurd descriptions of the desert nature setting. I've also been a slut for women writing thinly veiled fictional versions of themselves ever since reading Carmen Maria Machado's short story that did the same. According to an interview, Melissa sees this as a satire of autofiction, and I love to see her playing with the genre.

I read this book mostly in the dark late at night before bed, and I think it really benefited from being read in the liminal half-awake dream state because of its trippiness. Also, parts of it captured this strange, anodyne feeling of coziness—the kind of feeling you get in a sterile hospital room or in a Best Western hotel room—that I've always been drawn to and have never quite heard anyone else describe in art (I've even tried to capture it in my own writing).

This is one of my favorite books I've read all year, up there with Our Wives Under the Sea, another beautiful weird book about grief.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Death Valley by Melissa Broder

Content warning:

- Death
- Mental illness
- Suicidal ideation

Death Valley starts with our narrator arriving at a Best Western in the middle of the desert. She’s navigating the complicated space of anticipatory grief after spending months visiting her father in the hospital. One of the clerks at the hotel mentions a hike in the desert, and the narrator decides to go out on an adventure. While hiking, she experiences some visions of her father and husband, and comes to some realizations about love, grief, connecting with others and dying.

I was surprised to enjoy this book as much as I did, as I normally don’t like magical realism. But the writing style, nuanced ideas, and imagery in Death Valley earned it four stars from me.

Our nameless narrator arrives in a desert town and waxes on about her love for Best Westerns. We learn that her father was in a car accident and has been in the hospital for months, trying to recover. We also learn that the narrator’s husband suffers from an undiagnosed illness that makes it to where he spends long periods of time in bed.

There are two clerks at the Best Western—Jethra and Zip. When the narrator announces she’s going for a hike, Jethra recommends a hike in the desert that’s not far from the hotel. Our narrator, despite not really being an outdoorsy type, decides to go for an adventure and follow the hike.

While hiking, she comes across a giant cactus. She goes inside the cactus through a hole in the side, and while inside, she sees visions of her father as a little kid.

The next day, she gets news that her father has woken up from his most recent coma. She goes back to the desert and when inside the cactus, she sees visions of her father as a teenager, and visions of her husband as a little kid.

She decides to check out of the hotel and head home, but stops at the desert trail one last time. This time, the cactus is not there, and she wanders out farther out in the desert. She ends up getting lost, spraining her ankle, and falling down the side of a hill.

“It hits me then. Whatever I am doing, this is actually dangerous. Something bad could happen.”

Because she’s never gone past the cactus during her other hikes, she’s not sure where she is, and the darker it gets, the more difficult it is for her to figure out where she is.

“I don’t know if there is such a thing as ‘officially lost,’ or what makes a person maybe lost vs. sort of lost vs. lost. There were times in my life when I felt totally lost and then realized I was only sort of lost, or not lost at all. There were other times when I felt not-lost and later realized I was completely lost. Most of these were emotional.”

Her phone cracks and goes dead, and though she’s able to start a fire at night, she runs out of water quickly. As she crawls around in the desert, trying to figure out how to get back to her car, she reflects on her father’s illness, her husband’s illness, and the reality of death.

“The flower falls to the ground. I continue on my arid crawl. And it dawns on me then that I must really want to live. And it surprises me.”

The narrator finds a cactus to eat, which makes her stomach hurt, but gives her enough moisture to continue crawling on. While crawling, and thinking, she realizes that she’s not totally empathetic, or compassionate, to her husband as he struggles with his disability.

She sees a bird in the desert, rides on it, and takes it to mean that her father has died. Then, she realizes she knows where she is. She finds the giant cactus again and spends some time sitting inside, until she hears Jethra and Zip out looking for her.

Upon hearing their voices so close, she crawls out of the cactus and throws a rock at Zip, who’s trying to convince Jethra to leave, even though they saw the narrator’s car in the parking lot. The rock alerts them to the narrator’s presence, and she’s taken to the hospital.

Her mother comes, and she learns that her father isn’t actually dead, he’s fine. The book ends with her husband joining her in the hospital, the two of them curled in the hospital bed together.

I always like to start with what I like first. One of the things I liked most about this book was the imagery. While exploring the desert and experiencing some of these magical realism elements, the narrator describes different kinds of cacti, animals like lizards and rabbits, and various types of rocks and shrubs you might see on a hike like this. I thought the descriptions were vivid and gave the book a lot of life.

Grief, illness, death, and empathy were all themes in this book. We see the narrator struggle with being empathetic when it comes to her husband with the undiagnosed illness. We also see the narrator struggle to connect with her father while he’s in the hospital, wishing he would connect with her more than he is. By the end of the book, she’s come to the realization that being on his deathbed doesn’t change who he is and what he wants.

The primary bulk of the book is the narrator’s thinking, which is fine, because she has a lot of interesting thoughts.

When it comes to criticisms, I don’t really have a whole lot for this book. I feel like it set out to do something, and it accomplished it. All in all, I thought Death Valley was a good read. If you like magical realism and you’re ready for a book about grief and loss, it might be the right choice for you.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

This is the third novel I have read by this author. I previously read The Pisces and Milk Fed. This novel has many of the elements I have enjoyed from the author in the past. The author is very skilled at writing quirky characters and humorous passages. However this book was very dry like the desert setting of the novel.

The main character is a writer who goes to the desert to complete a novel. She is leaving behind a father who is in ICU after a horrific accident and a chronically sick husband. The book has a lot of ramblings about life while the main character talks to animals, rocks and other desert inhabitants. I felt bogged down when reading those passages and wishing for the book to come to a close.

Even though I did not enjoy this book as much as I did her previous books, I will definitely read another book by Melissa Broder.

I requested and received an advanced copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I knew what I was getting into with "Death Valley." Melissa Broder is known for her unique writing voice, so I was prepared for whatever madness was headed my way. And while there are a few things I didn’t like about the book – namely, the occasional bathroom humor and an abuse of parentheticals – I appreciated it for its thought-provoking insight.

Broder takes death and grief, depression, and the need for parental approval and rolls it all into a fever-dream tale of an unnamed woman fleeing to the California desert to escape her life. Her father is in the ICU and her husband is ill, and she’s also trying to finish a novel – a lot is on her plate. So when she encounters a gigantic cactus on a desert trail with an opening slashed into its side, she enters it. And thus begins a journey that is at once emotional and funny, existential and life-threatening, and totally absurd.

Broder says a lot in "Death Valley," and though she’s a very intellectual writer, she frames her complexity in accessible language and avoids a highbrow style. She doesn’t go on and on, either. She makes her point and moves to the next.

And her observations are so astute. She points out how it’s impossible to outrun a feeling because the feeling is inside you, and since you take yourself with you when you run, the feeling goes with you. That love isn’t always an emotion, sometimes it’s a verb. And what’s so frightening about existing is that life never stops for you but it does end, and then it continues to go on without you.

There’s so much good stuff here. So much to think about. I’ll be mulling it over for days.


My sincerest appreciation to Melissa Broder, Scribner, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

A woman vs. the void, meets western masterpiece!

This book has everything: grab-and-go breakfast bags, grab-and-go breakfast bag forms, hotel desk attendants that are just your type, cactus discourse, two mini bottles of water

This book gets an A+ in every subject: stunning cover, intriguing storyline, unique characters, emotion, humor

Broder has such a talent for getting thoughts onto paper in a realistic way. There were a lot of moments where I could relate to the MC and her thought process. I laughed, I grieved, I empathized. This is a def recommend!

Thank you NetGalley & Scribner for the digital ARC. A special thanks to Melissa Broder! All opinions are my own.

I’d been looking forward to reading Death Valley for awhile. But wow, no summary could prepare me for this awesome ride. I flew right through this book, unable to put it down- and unable to stop thinking about it when I did. It’s moving, funny, surrealist, and yet deeply human. And what an adventure it takes is on! I will definitely be revisiting this one in the future. Shh-boom, indeed.

Thank you Melissa Broder, Scribner, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.