I was really looking forward to reading this book, I find people's perception of grief and death endlessly interesting but this Death Valley fell short for me. It's the first of Melissa Broder's books that I've read but after hearing countless compliments for Milk Fed, I was delighted to recieve this ARC.
I enjoyed the book most when it discussed the burnout associated with caring for others and anticipatory grief which I have felt myself but never knew it had a name. For me, the comedic tone didn't quite land and the sexual references made me a bit uncomfortable.

I finished this book three days ago and have thought of nothing else since. This is definitely unlike Broder's other works but her narrative voice is still recognisable. Without getting into spoilers about the book, it deals with themes of grief and it was an incredibly poignant and helpful read as someone who has recently been struggling with the illness and death of a loved one.

Broder's prose is probably some of my favourite of all time, and her ability to place us not just deep inside the desert setting of the book but also inside the mind of the narrator is unmatched. I will need to order a physical copy of this one to lend to friends 😭

Melissa Broder massively delights with Death Valley. An incredibly funny and surreal novel on grief, marriage, and cacti. Thoroughly enjoyed every page!

I really enjoyed Milk Fed so I was looking forward to this and I absolutely adored this novel, although it's completely different from its predecessor. I don't think it'll be for everyone - it would be possible to lose patience with the narrator pretty early on - but I loved it and was super invested in her journey. I genuinely didn't know what would happen until almost the last page, which is fairly rare for me, and I was sorry to be walking away from this story when I did. Highly recommended and thanks for NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I love when a book is just as weird as i am. It felt at times Broder was in my head writing my own thoughts. Death Valley covers so many topics but mainly deals with a fractured father daughter relationship and grief with her signature sprinkle of magical realism thrown in. Definitely a book that will stay with me, I’m off now to buy a cactus or two.

You can guarantee that a Melissa Broder novel is going to involve some odd transformations of people and things and some weird situations and dilemmas, and Death Valley doesn’t disappoint.

The un-named narrator goes from Los Angeles to somewhere, which is approximately Death Valley, in order to inform her latest novel. She is also trying to escape from a chronically sick husband, a father who is close to death after a road accident, and a mother who is worried about returning some sweatpants to Amazon.

How you relate to people like this? Empathy? Sympathy? Practical advice? Clichés? The narrator is constantly struggling, trying to find the right attitude, words and forms of support.

Escaping is one answer and the first half of the book is a funny but warm-hearted tribute to Best Western hotels and the simple notion of living they promote while the second half is about the difficult task of surviving, or trying to continue to live, in the desert after a couple of stupid decisions. There’s also a giant cactus and a moustachioed oriole for good measure.

That’s it really. It’s a book about loving and about living and how the two overlap and, when you’re dying of thirst in the desert, things become clearer and you realise what is important in life. That sounds a bit platitudinous but it is not. It’s an excellent read!

i just love books, with women, that are just weird as shit and this is certainly one of them. i had a great time reading

"If he were here with me now, I would tell him; I would say, you are miraculous. Miraculous what you have done with love."

This is the third novel by Broder I've read and I think, upon a lot of reflection, that it’s my favourite of hers so far, despite the fact that it’s a good deal less weird than her other work. Rest assured, it’s still weird as hell, but this time the weirdness is more existential than usual.

Death Valley reads as a kind of autofiction - an unnamed author is spending time in a Best Western in the Californian desert, ostensibly to work on a new project - in reality, she’s running from the twin horrors of her dad’s impending death and her husband’s progressive chronic illness. She finds a giant cactus; it disappears again; she meditates on life and death in scorching temperatures. This was an excellent book to read in a heatwave.

Death Valley is a book that grapples with difficult topics, told from the perspective of a woman who, by her own admission, wants to make it all about her. Her writing on grief is profound (Broder lost her dad in 2021), while also managing to be quite funny in parts, encapsulating the strange quirks of pre-grieving a loved one.

If you have a loved one with a chronic illness, Broder’s writing will hit like a truck - her uncanny ability to hit the complex feelings around this topic were far and away my favourite part of this strange little novel. The author’s husband seems to cope with his illness better than our protagonist does, and she ties herself in knots over it. Broder doesn’t offer the solutions, really but she works through her various grievances; we come on the journey to heal with her, and in the end, both reader and character find some semblance of peace.

Broder’s prose is, as always, clean and supple, her humour remains pitch-dark and extremely smart. She balances surreal scenes and painful topics with goofy jokes and enjoyably grounded observational jokes, too. The protagonists’ use of reddit to ask big existential questions really made me chuckle. It’s a hard rope to walk, but Death Valley nails it.

The novel is definitely less weird than either Milk Fed or The Pisces, but there’s still a huge amount of surreality in this shimmering, strange novel - enough to keep the reader equal parts confused - in the best way - and enthralled.

I enjoyed this book overall and would describe it as weird, odd, chaotic and confusing - as you would expect if you have read any other work from Melissa Broder! I loved the writing style and short chapters and how the narrative explores the father daughter relationship. Some scenes gave me Alice In Wonderland vibes but at other points I was a little confused about what was going on, which I guess was the point...

"If he were here with me now, I would tell him; I would say, you are miraculous. Miraculous what you have done with love."

Death Valley is a story about an author who arrives at a Best Western in the middle of the Californian desert to escape from reality. She is struggling with writers block with her latest novel, her husband is dealing with chronic illness and her father is fighting for his life in ICU. While on a hike, she discovers a giant cactus that sets her on a life-changing trajectory.

Death Valley is weird in all the ways you can expect - and hopefully enjoy - from Melissa Broder. Melissa Broder's writing is at times uncomfortable but always incredibly compelling. Death Valley has a high dose of magical realism which isn't always my cup of tea but I did enjoy it here. For all of the "what on earth is going on?!" questions I had, there were also a lot of really touching and life-affirming moments which again is what you can expect from Melissa Broder.

This one was a doozy. While I didn’t vibe with this book, the prose intrigued me enough that I am excited to pick up Broder’s other works, despite this only being a 2 star read for me

When I started reading this book, I didn't feel it felt very "Melissa Broder" - I found it somewhat different in tone from The Pisces for example, but that's only because the magic happens a bit later. In that sense I found it was maybe more similar to Milk Fed - the heroine feels stuck, lost, her father is in ICU and comes in and out of consciousness, her husband is in poor health and deteriorating, she is trying to progress with her novel. She has decided to go to the desert for a few days, and ends up in a motel - Best Western - where she observes the receptionists, goes hiking, gets lost in the desert, finds a magical cacti where she enters and finds she can communicate with the past and with ghosts...

I won't keep going because I would not want to spoil it for anyone, but it becomes psychedelic, crazy, and at the same time it is touching, about death, anticipatory grief, finding peace and being able to keep going. I loved the universe that Melissa Broder created and I loved the writing - clean, funny and at the same time sad and relatable.

Melissa Broder is never boring. At first I thought Death Valley was going to be most similar to Milk Fed but then it veered off down the magic realist route that she flirted with in The Pisces. I will read anything she publishes and whilst full- on magical realism isn’t really my thing, her writing and humour kept me engaged throughout. She writes about chronic illness and grief really well too.

melissa broder has really out melissa brodered herself with this one. I found the first couple of chapters very engaging however then the book took a very absurd turn and kept getting more and more crazy until it totally lost it - and it’s very sad and i’ve enjoyed all her precious works.

I really think this story would have worked better as short under 200 pages, overall i’m still fascinated by melissa borders weird and unique brain.

Melissa Broder your brain is so strange I love it x

Death Valley is one of those books where you’re reading along and you look at the page number and realise you’ve somehow read 100 pages. It is so addictive and chaotic in the best way.

To start off with, I was not expecting this book to go the way it did. For a book that remained in a similar setting for the majority of it, it did not get tiring or boring and the pace stayed pretty fast throughout.

I somehow felt really reminded of Alice in Wonderland whilst reading this? The language and loopy word play was reminiscent of the confusing language used in Alice in Wonderland and I loved the chaotic and confusing feel of the whole story.

I felt unsure as to what was and wasn’t real but I feel like that was the beauty of this book, and the ending was absolutely perfect.

What an Intresting read. I enjoyed the idea of it but at times it was confusing, but I liked the read and was happy to finish it.

Didn't ever think that Melissa Broder could make me feel the way I did whilst reading The Pisces but she might have done it here. Death Valley is about an author who arrives at a hotel in the desert looking for respite from her sick husband, dying father and unfinished novel. Hiking on a trail one day she comes across an enormous cactus which changes the way she sees absolutely everything.

Broder is pretty infamous for writing horny novels but in Death Valley she has moved onto more abstract and existential matters. The book ponders sanity, where we go after death, the true meaning of love and compassion and the value of aloneness. Whilst the narrator becomes lost in the desert we follow her through insane delusions of her father and husband, exploring the relationships she has with the men around her in such profound detail it was hard not to be moved.

At it's core I think this novel is about fatherhood and the bond between and father and a daughter that can defy time and space. The narrator is always cosmically connected to her father in this book, sometimes through ways she and the reader can't rationalize, but his looming death and her swelling love for him completely engulfs this book and seeing Broder explore this in a novel was just absolutely magical. The intense emotions from The Pisces transfer so well onto this book but it is a more sentimental than sexual kind of emotion which I think demonstrates how versatile and talented Broder is becoming as a writer.

I sat in my room with 'Life Could Be a Dream' and the other songs mentioned in the novel on repeat and it really made me feel like I was sat in a hazy desert day-dream with her. If you asked me before I started this if I thought Broder could pull of such an amazing novel about a woman getting lost in the desert then I wouldn't know what to think, but this was such a powerful book to me and also so distinctly Broder. I feel so moved and blown away after reading it. I don't think it gave me the same experience as The Pisces but now I'm glad it didn't, because it gave me a much deeper and existential connection to her work which I really find hard to describe.

Cannot wait to see where Broder takes her writing next and just know from reading this that I am going to be one of her lifelong fans. I don't know how she speaks to specifically to my soul but she just does. Everyone needs to lose themselves in this psychotic, surreal, heatwave of a novel.

I’m a big fan of Melissa Broder and have read everything she’s written. I love her unique voice and her unusual way of exploring everyday themes. Death Valley was quite different for her previous books, with decidedly less sex. This being said, I still really enjoyed it. Death Valley is a poignant and deeply moving, semi-autobiographical novel about trauma, grief and, as the title suggests, death. I found this very relatable and the relationship between the main character and her father made me quite emotional. So often, literary novels focus on the mother/daughter relationship, so it was refreshing to read one that looked at the father/daughter relationship instead.

I wasn't sure what rating to give Death Valley at first. As I really enjoyed the internal monologue style throughout, but it took a bit of a turn towards the end that I'm not too sure about. Having sat with it for 24 hours, I do get why it was done this way, and I do like the journey our protagonist went on, so overall, I'm settling on a low 4 star, and I will definitely be getting my hands on the Pisces at somepoint. If you love a purposefully lonely gal on the edge of a breakdown, this is one for you. Reminded me a lot of One's Company in many ways.

I haven’t read from this author before despite all the rave reviews and this slightly bizarre synopsis grabbed my attention. I enjoyed the first 1/3 of the book and could relate to a lot of the discussion about anticipatory grief but then the book just got more and more absurd and fantastical and just wasn’t for me.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.