Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America

by Lauren Hough

From The New York Times bestselling author of a Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing comes an update of John Steinback’s trip in Travels with Charley, a cross-country journey exploring modern America with Lauren Hough’s signature observational wit, searing social commentary, and perspective as someone who knows what it’s like to truly exist on the margins in this country.

Lauren Hough has always been haunted by the road trips she never got to no money, no vacation days, no car capable of making the trip. So, upon finally finding herself in a situation where such a trip might be possible—being a writer may not always pay better than being a bartender or a cable guy, but at least the schedule’s flexible—she leaps at the chance, refurbishing a ramshackle 2001 Dodge van and setting off from Austin, Texas with her Husky mix Woody by her side.

Her influences feel obvious—but a lot has changed about the United States since the 1962 trip John Steinbeck chronicles in Travels with Charley. And Lauren Hough isn’t John Steinbeck—unless the Noble Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath had a secret past as a six-foot-tall lesbian and Air Force vet. But even better as a social lubricant than beer, a dog is the ultimate conversation starter. With Woody as wingman, Lauren chats—at gas stations and restaurants and auto shops and bars—with an incredible cross-section of Americans from all walks of life and every possible political perspective. And as she circumnavigates the country, she documents, with all-too-rare empathy, what it means to be poor, to be marginalized, and to be seen as Other in America.

Part travelogue, part social commentary, and 100% Lauren Hough, Monster of a Land unites her poignant vulnerability, her hilarious narrative voice, and her razor-sharp insights into a journey that will show us how far we’ve come as a country, and how far we still have to go.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Biography, Road Trip

336 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2026

About the author

LAUREN HOUGH was born in Germany and raised in seven countries and West Texas. She’s been an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a green-aproned barista, a bartender, a livery driver, and, for a time, a cable guy. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The Guardian, and HuffPost. She lives in Austin with a dog named Teddy.

Reviews

[Sarah Bloom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might be biased.
Well I'm definitely biased. I think Lauren Hough is cool as fuck. I thought that before her first book came out and reading it, I wasn't disappointed. I have been anticipating this new book since she let out that she had a deal.
I'm not disappointed.
It's everything I love about Hough's voice:
Blunt yet poetic, a Bukowski-like rawness but without being a total prick or alcoholic.
Sarcastic and funny as hell.
Cynical yet not done with us yet - there is a tinge of hope and a deep love for fellow humans that comes through even when she's bitching about how awful we are (I relate to this so hard).
If you love dogs, if you love people's stories, if you love 6-foot lesbians who make you laugh...
you'll love this book.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook. Narration was excellent. I enjoyed this book so much. It felt like listening to an old friend telling you stories and sharing her thoughts. It was a mix of many things. Some great laughs as well. A few things I didn’t especially like though — her detailed (but thankfully short) description of her sexual encounter with a girlfriend, her use of drugs (mostly mushrooms and joints) the episode with the bunny and the fact that she finds it acceptable to eat foie gras. But honestly now I’m to go read her first book.

[Darrell Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found Ms. Hough's writing on Substack a few years ago and was impressed by her openness and honesty as she struggled to do her thing well. Her thing is writing, and she is quite successful at doing it well.

Like any good road trip book, this is part travelogue, part memoir and part conversation snippets as she circles the USA.

The problem is that there's not enough of it. Maybe visiting friends and family insulated Ms. Hough from the stated goal of searching for a modern America. Maybe going West first would have encouraged more interaction with strangers; by going East first, the book was 3/4 done in Minnesota, and enthusiasm began to flag.

I enjoyed the encounter with the hunters, as it went against her stereotype of 'right v left '. I wanted more of that. The book would have been helped by more engagement with rural folks in the West.

In my experience with 2 or 3-week road trips lately - one in each of the past 3 years - the last few days have been all about just getting home. As it was for Ms. Hough.

[Katy O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED IT. One of my favorite road trip books ever.

Source: purchased hardcover

[Bubba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish I could articulate why I enjoy her writing so much. Chuckles, agreement with her rants, what’s next. Great fun and entertaining and thought provoking.
Have an autographed copy…guess I really like her stories

[Miri M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a fun as hell ride through the USA with the author and her dog.

[Cmeilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love love this book. Love this author. This is a love letter to Woody but it's also a call to action to the rest of us. I came away feeling like so much of what is wrong in our country is fixable. We just need to come together to do it.

[Rachel C · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eloquent, vulnerable, and almost sobering travel narrative. Hough is so fascinating as a narrator: she’s ex-military, openly queer, and grew up in a cult. Her observations of the U.S. are simultaneously hopeful and devastating.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Open Road Has Locks
In “Monster of a Land,” Lauren Hough Finds Not America, but the Conditions Under Which Americans Can Still Speak
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | June 13th, 2026


A van, a dog, and a woman held in public light, where “Monster of a Land” begins to trade the fantasy of American mileage for the harder question of who can stop, sleep, speak, and stay.

Driving across America has always tempted writers toward a handsome mistake. Enough odometer, the fantasy goes, and the map will start talking; the right sequence of diners, motels, fields, weather, gas stations, and strangers will coax the land into confession. Lauren Hough’s “Monster of a Land” borrows the old kit – dog, rig, loop, appetite, the ghost of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” rattling somewhere near the glove box – and treats the form as a suspicious inheritance. Mileage unlocks no national secret here. What matters is smaller and harder: a person at the pump, a dog at her knee, a conversation that does not begin as a fight.

Everything begins with trips not taken. Hough remembers the friend who wanted to see the ocean and died before she could; the cars that would not make it; the jobs that would not allow it; the money that was never there; the life that kept happening while a map stayed theoretical. By the time Hough has returned to Austin, written a memoir, lost her beloved dog Teddy, and adopted Woody Guthrie, a large and not-remotely-as-advertised husky-pit mix, the road is not leisure. It is grief with wheels. A battered 2001 Dodge van, purchased with disastrous optimism and repaired with increasingly comic realism, becomes the vehicle for a late, wary answer to Steinbeck: not a rediscovery of America as a face willing to hold still, but a test of whether conversation can survive somewhere contempt has been made so easy.

Much of the intelligence here lies in how little Hough trusts her own premise. She knows the road-book inheritance too well: the solitary observer, the noble itinerary, the stranger conveniently available to become meaning. She also knows the open road has locks. A queer woman sleeping in a van with weed somewhere in the vehicle, a dog on the floor, a nervous eye for cops, and a long memory of being broke is not crossing the same place as Steinbeck in his truck-camper named Rocinante. Her quarrel with “Travels with Charley” is not simple literary correction, though she can be enjoyably pitiless about Steinbeck’s evasions. Some travelers get to turn the key and feel curious. Others have to calculate the cop, the dog, the parking lot, the weapon in someone else’s truck.

Early in Childress, Texas, the book turns on a gas-station scene. Hough, returning from a “Texas Highways” assignment in Shamrock, meets a queer kid who is joining the military. His nails are painted; his hair has a pink streak; his boyfriend is frightened. He has never seen the ocean. Hough, an Air Force veteran herself, understands the enlistment not as a tidy political proposition but as a poor kid’s exit route from a place that may otherwise keep him. She tells him not to come home on his first leave, but to see the ocean. The scene could have hardened into a lesson on rural America, queerness, recruitment, and class. Instead, it stays stubbornly inconvenient. The kid is neither emblem nor lesson. He is a person trying to get out.

The trip proper begins on March 19, 2023, and eventually covers thirty-seven states, Washington, DC, and 14,001 miles before returning to Austin in June. The itinerary looks tidy only from a distance; up close it is all missed exits, dog needs, bad sleep, helpful strangers, heat, repairs, and machinery with opinions. The book happens where one pays, waits, asks, parks, and hopes not to be moved along. Hough is finding out where she may sleep, where Woody may walk, where the van may sit, and how long a person can remain in public before someone decides she should not.

Rarely has a dog done so much actual work while still being allowed to remain a dog. Woody is companion, scheduling system, leash-shaped passport, and, when necessary, the brake. He accepts treats, refuses bad van architecture, presses himself against Hough’s leg, delights in beaches, worries at strange noises, kills an iguana in front of children, and makes strangers brave enough to approach. If Steinbeck’s Charley sometimes feels like a literary accessory with paws, Woody feels like the creature who edits the itinerary. A chapter cannot simply go where the writer wants. It must answer to the animal in the van: Is he too hot? Is he scared? Has he run? Has the writer mistaken ambition for care?


A stranger’s hand moves toward Woody before it reaches Hough, making visible the book’s quietest argument: contact begins through bodies, hesitation, and the dog who softens the air.

It is a funny book, often very funny, but not a light one. Hough’s humor is not garnish; it is holding up the roof. Her sentences move with the momentum of a person telling a story at a table where the drinks are strong and false reverence has been asked to leave. She likes the profane aside, the comic overrun, the quick little detonation of vulgar accuracy. Yet the joke often has a trapdoor. A riff about van-life influencers opens onto housing costs. A story about burying Teddy and accidentally terrifying a pizza delivery guy becomes a thought about what a body is after love has left it. A complaint about bad roads can lead, by a perfectly sensible route, to a place’s indifference to poor people’s time, teeth, cars, and choices.

Prose this voice-driven gives a great deal and asks a great deal. Hough offers speed, intimacy, timing, and a foul-mouthed precision that can be exhilarating. She also repeats herself. The rhythm becomes familiar: she arrives braced, cracks a joke, diagnoses the damage, meets someone who complicates the damage, and leaves the scene a little less sealed off. Often, the encounters earn the turn. Sometimes the people have already beaten the paragraph to the point. Her summaries are rarely wrong, but they can be less surprising than the clerk, mechanic, ranger, veteran, hitchhiker, old neighbor, or kid who has just made the summary unnecessary.

As a stylist, Hough is not interested in shine as proof of seriousness. Her diction is working-life and bodily: oil, fur, teeth, motel air-conditioning, bad brakes, camp toilets, gas-station coffee, cheap food, smoke, sweat. Landscape matters most when it presses on a body or a vehicle. Heat changes the trip. Rain changes the trip. A cop changes the trip. A new noise in the van changes the trip. Every idea has to buy gas, find shade, pay for repairs, coax the dog back inside, and hope the next stranger is not the kind who mistakes vulnerability for opportunity.

Part of the charm, and part of the argument, is that Hough is not nearly as unreachable as her persona sometimes pretends. She can be abrasive, spectacularly impatient, allergic to easy uplift. She is also porous to need. She needs Woody, mechanics, friends, old neighbors, weather reports, dog-friendly patios, motel clerks willing to waive fees, people who know how to fix what she cannot. The DC sections are among the warmest because they make neighborliness look neither quaint nor inspirational. It is repair, food, teasing, local memory, the competence of people who have been useful to one another for years. It is community with grease under its nails.

Again and again, “Monster of a Land” returns to the difference between thumb-scrolled contempt and a person standing close enough to be heard. Hough knows categories can be useful: red-state voters, liberals, cops, veterans, men, tourists, van people, strangers. Categories are sometimes helmets; they can also harden around the head. The book does not ask anyone to abandon judgment, least of all Hough. It asks what happens when judgment has to share space with a voice, a scar, a favor, a badly behaved dog. The answer is not the soft-focus handshake of reconciliation. Sometimes the answer is danger or disgust. Sometimes it is a Canadian mechanic who does not want to be near Woody because he was once mauled by a dog, yet still gets the van moving.

Digression blows through the book like weather. The road gives Hough somewhere to go; memory gives her somewhere to fall through. Air Force years, family, the Children of God, dead dogs, dead friends, old jobs, old cities, old humiliations – all enter the van. The form behaves less like architecture than pressure: visibility changes, old grief returns as suddenly as rain, the middle sags here and there in the upholstery. But the best repetitions gather force. The ocean first belongs to the dead friend who never saw it; later, at Venice Beach, Hough leaves a necklace in the sand and gives that withheld ocean a belated witness. The road has not cured grief. It has given grief a place to stand.

In California, where the Steinbeck frame can no longer stay politely in the rearview mirror, Hough’s argument grows more complicated. At the National Steinbeck Center, Rocinante sits behind plexiglass like a relic from an older license to wander America. Hough can admire the rig and still resist the myth. More important, she begins to reconsider Steinbeck himself, not to absolve him, but to wonder whether shyness shaped the distance between his project and the people he claimed to seek. Her critique of “Travels with Charley” is sharpest when it is not merely corrective, but curious about the human limits behind literary authority. Perhaps one reason Hough can speak to so many strangers is that Woody, with better manners than most writers, speaks first.


Steinbeck’s old road myth sits museum-lit behind plexiglass, admired and resisted, while “Monster of a Land” asks what kind of traveler still receives permission to wander.

Modern pressure gets into the van through bills, heat, enlistment papers, and sleep. Hough writes through housing unaffordability, vehicle living, debt, military recruitment, queer safety, climate unease, immigration, policing, guns, loneliness, and the afterlife of pandemic isolation, but she does not stack issues like cans in a pantry. Her subjects enter through motion. Housing is in the price of the van. The military is in the queer kid at the gas station. Immigration is in a woman and child who need a ride. Loneliness is in the way a dog can become a clock, a bridge, a chaperone, and a reason not to vanish.

If the book overreaches, it does so because Hough sometimes mistakes the force of perception for the need to say everything it implies. She has a superb eye for American meanness in its work clothes: debt, swagger, magical thinking, cruelty marketed as common sense, the worship of freedom by people who cannot afford a dentist. She is also alert to the small mercies that complicate contempt. But there are passages where the verdict arrives after the scene has already done the job. One occasionally wishes she would let a stranger’s line hang in the air, let the dog’s body in the doorway carry the meaning, let silence have the last word before the engine starts again.

That limitation is real, and it belongs to a book that takes this much road seriously. Hough has written a road book that replaces mastery with exposure. She does not possess America by crossing it. She lets the map interrupt her, irritate her, help her, scare her, bore her, feed her, overcharge her, and surprise her. The van is freedom until it breaks; the road is possibility until a trooper searches the vehicle; the stranger is threat until he is lonely, generous, or both. The result is less elegant than alive, less shapely than weathered, and often more moving because its movements are not too clean.

Reaction to the book will likely split along the same seams that give it force. The profanity will delight some and tire others. The dog material will charm one reader and irritate another who came for social argument without quite expecting so many treats, beaches, beds, and canine moods. Some will admire the politics and others will feel cornered by them. Most interestingly, readers sympathetic to the book’s anger may be startled by its turn toward kindness. Coming from a gentler writer, the instruction to go outside, talk to strangers, talk to neighbors, and stop blaming the powerless might curdle into mug wisdom. Coming from Hough, who has spent the book snarling at counterfeit comfort, it feels more like a dare.

Other books haunt this one, but none quite claims it. “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck is the necessary ancestor, while “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat-Moon offers a quieter backroad kinship. “Nomadland” by Jessica Bruder shares debt, vehicle living, and precarious arrangements, though Hough is not doing immersive journalism so much as dragging memoir through them. “Wow, No Thank You.” by Samantha Irby comes to mind for comic candor, though Hough’s jokes are more likely to check the oil before the punchline lands. These comparisons mostly clarify what she is not: not a genial guide, not a neutral reporter, not a tourist in her own outrage.

Pacing is the book’s most visible wobble. A road narrative needs accumulation; it also risks becoming a glove compartment full of receipts and a screwdriver no one can identify. Hough’s route includes enough motels, repairs, meals, weather, encounters, beaches, breakdowns, and digressions that the reader occasionally feels the miles as mileage. Yet the unevenness is not emptiness. The weaker stretches are overfull rather than thin, too eager to connect rather than unable to matter. One forgives more sprawl in a book that has actually gone somewhere than in one that has arranged itself beautifully in the driveway.

“Monster of a Land” earns 83/100, or 4/5 stars. The score fits the rattle: very strong, not without loose parts; alive in voice, looser in architecture; more trusting of talk than of silence; occasionally too willing to caption its best scenes. But its strengths are substantial. Hough has taken a familiar American form and made it riskier, poorer, queerer, funnier, angrier, and more exposed. She has written a dog book for readers suspicious of dog books, a road book for readers suspicious of the road, and proof that the trip cannot fit the place into the van.

Under the van repairs, motel rooms, beaches, border crossings, and dog treats runs a plain, severe question: what if talking to one another has become one of the hardest habits to keep alive? Not civility, that exhausted little napkin of a word, and not unity, which too often means the powerful asking the injured to lower their voices. Something humbler and harder. The person at the pump, the hand extended toward the dog, the neighbor who knows which bolt to loosen, the clerk who gives the better rate, the old friend with a driveway, the stranger who warns you not to park on yellow sand.

Late in the journey, Hough’s hope works because it arrives with dirt on it. She does not discover that America is secretly kind. She discovers, more modestly and more persuasively, that people are often kinder than the systems training them to be cruel. That distinction is the book’s hinge. The place remains monstrous: broke, armed, lonely, hot to the touch, and forever repackaging captivity as a freedom upgrade. Yet again and again, someone offers directions, repair, a place to park, a warning, patience. Often, the hand reaches first toward Woody. Hough is wise enough to follow the leash.

On returning to Austin, after all the miles and weather and repairs, Woody goes straight for the treat jar. No flag, no vista, no revelation – just a dog who has learned that the road can end at home and a writer who has learned that home is not the opposite of motion. The van later dies, as old vans do, in a small comic afterlife that rescues the book from solemnity one last time. Mercifully, no one builds the van a shrine. The book does not need one. It needs the dog, the jar, the laugh, the relief.


After the miles, weather, repairs, and fear, Woody returns to the treat jar – no flag, no vista, no revelation, only appetite, relief, and the small comedy of arrival.

Still, the leash is what lingers after “Monster of a Land.” Hough does not ask us to love America in the abstract, which is often where love curdles into slogan or sale. She asks something less grand and more difficult: open the door, step outside, risk the conversation, let the dog make the first introduction, and see whether the stranger on the other side is already reaching down.


Early thumbnail studies testing how the van, Woody, the light pool, and the empty roadside lot could become one compressed visual argument rather than a literal scene.


The skeletal map of “The Open Road Has Locks,” with van, dog, door, border, and parking lines still exposed before atmosphere and color begin to decide the image.


The first wash establishes the image’s emotional weather: cool roadside blue, rust pressure, exposed paper, and a night that has not yet fully closed around the figures.


A cover-palette study of indigo, slate, pale turquoise, rust, terracotta, mauve, coral, and paper-white, showing the color logic behind the whole watercolor series.


A border experiment where road atlas, motel receipt, field sketch, and handmade review plate begin to merge into a frame that feels carried rather than decorative.


A literary watercolor portrait inspired by “Monster of a Land,” with Hough, Woody, the van, the map, and the roadside light gathered into one handmade companion image for the review.

All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not necessarily drawn to travelogues but I liked Lauren Hough's first book well enough to give this one a try. I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author and I'm glad I did.

Some of it was funny, some of it sad, some of it uncomfortable to listen to.

There was a couple of paragraphs that caught my attention so much that I had to rewind and listen to them a few times over and then write them down. She sure can write.

[Rabin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Lauren Hough's writing - it's so authentic and human - the anti-AI. I was excited to read Monster of a Land, but I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing because Leaving was just so good. But Monster is just as good. The stories and observations are so engaging and so personal, it's like going on a road trip with an old friend. If you love road trips, love dogs, love people or don't really care for people - this book is for you.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Near the end of his life, John Steinbeck published "Travels With Charley: In Search of America," a travelogue featuring his canine companion. In 2026, writer Lauren Hough has published an updated version, complete with her dog, Woody Guthrie. I was not previously familiar with Hough's work, but she has clear-eyed way of depicting people and situations.

[Bibliohiker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. I enjoy reading about those who traverse the land and tell about their adventures along the way. The author goes on a road trip doing the van life with her dog,Woody,along for the ride. She also reminisces about where life has taken her and the interesting people she meets along the way.

[Khải Đơn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as a person who lives with a husband and have traveled with him 7 road trips in America in a campervan. I laughed out loud and enjoyed many paragraphs when Lauren Hough wrote about the dream of living in a campervan or road-tripping in the US. Yeah, 50k-100k USD campervan that nobody talks about when they boast about their beautiful van on YouTube. Yet Lauren decided to go, with her 2001 Dodge Ram that "looked like it might belong to a retiree or a meth cook, and over the next few months would confound every mechanic who agreed to look at it, and not all of them would bother."

But that is not the point of the book. It was just a tiny part of a chapter to start the trip.

And the amazing thing? - Lauren traveled with Woody, her dog buddy, on an American road trip. I love to read about Woody indulging whipping cream cup while Lauren had to buy one more drink in a new bar in New Orleans. It is fun to have a buddy to travel with. And I also notice that it is such a different experience if you travel with a dog. There are places you can't get in if you have a dog, with travelers this must be taken in consideration. I have never had a dog, and this new "dog-eye" view brings a lot of joy to me.

But then, this book brings up so many facets of American lives, there is no unified perception of the US in this book; there are bizarre people, cultural differences when she traveled from town to town, state to state, and there are social frictions happening that Lauren quietly wrote down with rough and honest sketches.

I read this book when I am in the resting state from a trip but I would imagine I will enjoy it so much if I carry it when I am in a road trip. There are places that Lauren went through and I managed to see it, she brings up nuances and respect for lives and people she met on the way.

[Machaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very intrigued to read this because I read Travels with Charley a few years ago in a book club and really struggled both to identify with it and with the fact that it was largely made up. I was curious to see how this sort of story would feel different from a modern, female perspective. I'm so glad I picked it up. Hough is a talented writer, and there were several quotes and sections that moved me. Furthermore, something I love about reading is the pieces of ourselves we find in books and also the opportunities reading gives us to see things from a perspective completely different from our own. I also grew up in the panhandle of Texas, and Lauren's perspective brought up so much nostalgia for me, but she has also had so many unique life experiences, and helped me see things through her eyes in ways I hadn't considered before. Her travels were varied and thoughtful and real, and she even made me reconsider how I feel about Steinbeck, which is quite a feat.

Favorite quotes include: "A dog who survives a book lives forever" and "I wished people would come to Texas, not so we could shoot them, but because it's easy to laugh at someone's misery on the internet, easy to forget they're human beings"

There were only a couple of reasons it didn't get a full five stars. 1.) It's very difficult for road trip books not to drag at all, and there were a couple of times my attention waned. 2.) It was a lot more melancholy than I anticipated, which isn't in any way bad, it just isn't my personal preference. But even to that point, Hough acknowledged this several times in the book and even included this lovely quote from a man she met on her journey, "I hope, and I hope this for your own sake, that you'll find something hopeful to say."

[Sacha · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

I love Lauren Hough's work. I expected to love this book. It exceeded my expectations.

The focus of this book is the author's road trip with her dog, Woody. As the two travel extensively, Hough considers the world they inhabit. What assumptions do we make about each other? What assumptions are folks making about her and how to they impact her safety? What are Woody's thoughts and experiences as they proceed?

Since I'm more concerned about my dogs' happiness and wellbeing than almost anything or anyone else, I was living for everything tied to Woody in this book. Anyone who spends this much time in close proximity to an animal gets to know them well and vice versa, and I loved watching this relationship develop. Also, this book contains perhaps the best explanation of a Husky of all time. Woody's needs shape the journey as much as Hough's, if not more so, and it's fun to see how the travels and travelers converge.

The social commentary is top notch, as one expects from this author. I was surprised - in a good way - by the hopeful tone and messaging. The closing of this book really worked for me. I read this mostly on Memorial Day, and there's something about the imagery associated with this day that, uh, has changed over time. This book was somehow exactly what I needed: a reminder that people are good, that interpersonal connections can make all the difference, and that dogs are way WAY better than we are.

Someone please make sure the charcuterie guy gets a copy. Oh, and be sure to grab yours. This was a very satisfying read.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

[Frank Duke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed. I was looking forward to this book as an updated take on Steinbeck's Travels with Charly. Instead, I got a confused narrative about a lesbian driving cross country in a haphazard manner. For example, in writing of driving from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, a city roughly 60 miles southeast of Baton Rouge, she tells of passing through Lafayette at the roughly half-way point on I-10; the only problem is that Lafayette is west of Baton Rouge and not between that city and New Orleans. Equally annoying, she expresses shock at driving into Indiana on the drive from Detroit to Chicago, but there is no way to make that trip unless you drive through Ohio, Kentucky, and all of Illinois with passing through Indiana.

I was also annoyed at her stereotyping of southerners as racist MAGA supporters who wave the Confederate battle flag. As a man born in Alabama who lives in Louisiana after spending my career in the South, I was offended.

Hough describes herself at one point as a lesbian author who writes for lesbians. Clearly, I was not her intended audience.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lauren Hough's second book is simply wonderful. Although it's been years since I've read Travels With Charley, I feel no need to revisit it after finishing Monster of a Land. I am confident that Hough's update offers a more thoughtful and nuanced look at America today. I found myself with wells of empathy and curiosity about the people Hough meets - they are, after all, our neighbors and fellow Americans. Her voice is uniquely queer, and she brings that lens to her journey, something this queer reader appreciated deeply. Hough's Charley, a husky mix named Woody, steals the show: he is a hero, even when he's rolling in mysterious substances and getting hosed down in a car wash. Hough's writing on dogs offers some of the finest observations I've seen. If you read Hough's first book, you'll notice that her writing feels tighter and more precise, as though she is becoming even better at saying that which needs to be said -- a thing she was already pretty darn good at doing. Monster of a Land made me feel closer to my fellow Americans, which is no small feat in this day and age.

[Armando Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Open-road trip books can be hit or miss, but Monster of a Land by Lauren Hough is definitely a hit. Hough does an excellent job crafting a narrative that follows her journey across the United States with her dog, Woody, blending physical travel with deeper personal reflection.
This was my first introduction to Hough’s writing, and it certainly won’t be my last. Her voice feels sharp, honest, and engaging, making it easy to stay invested in both the road trip and the stories she weaves throughout.
What really stood out to me was how she incorporates past experiences and world travels into the present-day journey, connecting them thoughtfully to the current social and cultural landscape. It adds depth to what could have been a straightforward travel memoir and turns it into something much more layered.
I’ve always enjoyed books about people traversing the country, but Hough brings something unique to the genre. Her perspective and storytelling elevate the experience, making this a compelling and memorable read. A strong four stars from me.

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a wee bit biased because (unbeknownst to me when I started the book), my hilarious little dog Max makes an appearance toward the end. But beyond that, my goodness, what a sophomore effort from Lauren Hough. This is a road trip memoir, sure, but really it is a keenly observed story about America and the complexity of her people. Hough brings genuine empathy and nuance, to recognizing that most of what divides us is orchestrated by the obscene wealth disparity shaping our lives. She offers a unique portrait of the forgotten places from one coast of the country to the other, blended with a moving, sometimes haunting, and often hilarious portrait of herself and the dogs she has loved. You will be changed by this remarkable book, and for the better.

And the haters are gonna be soooooo maaaaaaad because this is even better than Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing.

[Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't previously read anything by Lauren Hough, and knew nothing about her. But the moment I saw that title and the description I was all in. Steinbeck is my favorite author, and I love Travels with Charley. Also, I am a veteran of the USAF, have a dream of living in a van for an extended time, and love my two naughty dogs.

I enjoyed this book. Hough is blunt, cynical, funny, and has a very real and raw approach to her writing. On some pages the sarcasm drips, and on others I felt a deeply resonant love for my country and the people who occupy it. There were insightful, angry moments and nostalgic, sweet ones too. Even when she makes biting commentary about hotly political issues I felt a sense of hope.

It's also a bit of a love letter to her dog, and that always works. Dogs are so much better than people.

[Marcy Dermansky · Rating 5 out of 5]

After having read both of Lauren Hough's books, I want us to be friends now. Which is a very goofy way to start a little review. Scandalous to know that dogs Max and Woody are friends (well not really friends) because it is two different worlds colliding.

I loved this book, listening to Hough ponder what is wrong with everything now. And I am not going to agree. Sometimes I look at mini malls, every store corporate and then the road it's on and then the other stores, and I think, wow, we have made this place so ugly.

I love the idea that if you don't want to kind to other humans, be kind to dogs. I might change it to cats and dogs that don't bark loudly. Monster of a Land is an important book and the author is our new and improved Steinbeck.

[HP Bookcraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging and a fast read.

While I can't speak to Hough's engagement with Travels with Charley by Steinbeck (mainly because I haven't read that book), Hough shows an America where the truth is in the microcosm: how meeting people we might assume will act one way, but goes entirely differently than expected. Usually in good ways.

These vignettes in specific places also show the monster of a land that you can only truly see out of the corner of your eye. The deplorable state of things in the U.S. is itself a hyperobject that transcends the reality experienced by one person.

But then there's Woody. And there's dogs. Your dog, your cat, your weird best friend you can yap with for hours--they're all pulling us toward something better.

A day on the beach. A moment of connection.

[Sandra de Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much, I wrote a review of it for Shoutout. If it's not published there, I will publish it on my Substack next week.

Excerpt from my review: "Hough couldn't have picked a better time to write this book. We are in a state of turmoil here in the United States. We have become a nation of people pitted against each other, as we wake up each morning to more bad news. Our "leaders" intentionally antagonize us, encouraging us to believe the worst of each other. The fact we spend our days (and nights) staring at our screens only contributes to our being afraid of our neighbors."

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in one day. First, I enjoy the way Hough puts her words together. I'm not usually a fan of the F word and its many forms being used as modifiers and nouns and whatever but somehow I love how Hough does it. I also appreciate how she takes us on a road trip but goes beyond the map to provide context - the country we live in now- how it really is and how it affects us. Hough shows us how we are all trying to survive here and how deep down and not even really that deep down- we are all humans wanting the same things. How we should not allow ourselves to be manipulated to hate and fear one another but to see our shared humanity and care for each other instead.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Travels with Charley, and I love this book. I really appreciate the author’s easy writing style- I felt like I was there. This book should be really eye opening for those who prefer to ignore the poverty, disconnection, and homelessness in our country. Most of us just walk right by the unfortunate, never dreaming of talking with them. What a revelation- they are just people too. The book did get a little preachy at times, even though I generally agree with what is being said. The encounters the author describes stand on their own without quite that much commentary. Otherwise a very good read.

[Mirae · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nonfiction road trip with a dog book, an interesting one, and well written. I just didn't connect with the author, except for her love for her dog. She writes about modern day America from an outsider's perspective, and has some valuable insights, many of them funny. There were some graphic details about her trip I could have done without, and I found the frequency of her swearing to be lazy. I imagine that Gen X or millennial readers might enjoy this more than I did, but I did enjoy most of it.

[Perri · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. I don't know anything about this woman but she seemed very impressed with herself while trying constantly to say obliquely that she's not impressed with herself. Her writing just isn't very strong. Dialogue sucks, anecdotes she zoomed in on with her road trip not the most interesting, felt very disparate, compared herself to Steinbeck with zero chops to do that, etc. That said, a few well written scenes sprinkled throughout.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would follow Lauren Hough, and her voice and humor and sharp commentary, anywhere. And I'm glad I got to tagalong on this road trip across America with Hough and her dog, Woody. I found Monster of a Land endlessly entertaining - and a very smart, nuanced, and empathetic take on the complicated country us Americans live in. Plus, Woody. What a dog. I would highly recommend this book, especially now.

[Kathleen]

Hough uncovers many of the current inequities of today. I was thrilled she discusses lack of affordable dental care and its consequences. As a public health dental hygienist advocating for better access to dental care it was my favorite chapter (24). Overall. it's a tough read but, societal problems should be addressed not denied or with this current administration exacerbated. If I had been familiar with Steinbeck's "Travels with Charlie" I would have been better prepared for the somberness.