Death Valley

An author escapes the ailments of family members and books herself into a motel close to the desert. On a hike she encounters a cactus. What follows is a hallucinogenic desert survival story infused by grief.

Broder's writing is very funny in a deadpan way, and her audiobook narrator voice fits that style perfectly too. So there's a lot to chuckle along with. And yet I wanted more plot outside the navel-gazing and the drugged fever dreams. Thankfully the meta of the protagonist also writing a novel about a women going to the desert - was kept light.

I changed my rating of this several times because I was very conflicted about how I felt about it. I eventually decided on 2.75 stars bc overall, it just left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. 
The writing was... good, but a lot of the “humour” just wasn't for me, I guess? 
There was a point in the book that I did* like, where the character was like “people are always eating & drinking in books, but no one is ever peeing” to which I was like yeah true, you right you right lol 😂
But yeah, I found myself bored, confused and moderately grossed out [maybe it's just a me thing, but MC sexualizing -AKA fantasizing about in a sexual manner- both of the hotel desk attendants, as a married woman, was just very ick for me] 
I found myself just wanting to reach the end of the book by the 75% point, but at the same time, I was too invested in her desert survival predicament to DNF it. I actually listened to the last hour and 30 mins of it on 1.75x speed, which was an experience 😅😭 (I typically don't listen to any audio books faster than 1.25x)