Based on the book’s description, I thought it would be very boring, but it had high praise, so I gave it a shot.

The ability to follow Brianna's story over Instagram for several years has inspired thousands of women to seek out adventure off the beaten path, and I can't wait to see what new tales she has for us in this book. Life is messy and no one is perfect, and Brianna isn't afraid to lean into that reality with the stories she tells here. I believe for one’s own light to shine you don’t have to dull others’ and it really feels like Brianna Madia doesn’t know how to let both her light shine and others’ at the same time. Brianna leans into the realities of van life and is frank with her mental health struggles, but it’s written often with a lovely lyrical quality that put you right in the desert with her dogs that make you understand the appeal of solo desert living.Perhaps if it was more marketed in the essay fashion it read as, my expectations could have been managed a bit more. Nowhere for Very Long is her deeply felt, immaculately told story of explorationof the world outside and the spirit within. Brianna describes her situations and feelings in such a way that she makes you feel like you're there, spurring on Bertha and Dagwood. Then came the horrible reviews (which she does discuss later in the book, but at the time I wasn't there yet.

I felt this memoir was less a telling of the author’s life and more a series of essays she wanted to use as fodder for how desperately she feels she is different. Brianna Madia has lived a life of relentless intention, traveling the deserts of the American Southwest in an old Ford van. A woman defined by motion, Brianna Madia bought a beat-up bright orange van, filled it with her two dogs Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into the canyons of Utah with her husband on a journey of discovery.There is a freedom to it all, a delightful space created in this book to show up as we are, and to move forward in creating the kinds of lives we want - without having to wait for ourselves and our plans to be perfect and fit in prescribed boxes before we jump in.

BESTSELLER In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life. Like a lot of us the bright orange van and the carefree aunt that lives inside it has been a constant inspiration. Parts 1 and 2 felt like the quick stories you get when you’re a guest at someone’s house and they force you to sit through their family picture books with stories that really only hold water for them because they experienced it. Nowhere for Very Long is the true story of a woman learning and unlearning, from backroads to breakdowns, from married to solo, and finally, from lost to found to lost again . I’m sure this will be explained in her book but Brianna clearly has a cult following of haters that literally have nothing better to do with their own lives besides try to sabotage hers.But I guess with her being fully indoctrinated into what it takes for “Instagram success” that dog tracks. Instead, Brianna gives herself and her stories space to be gloriously messy, heartwarming, impulsive, painful, joyful, wild, and everything in-between.