Review: Why this deceptive beach read is poised to become a cult favorite

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Set us as preferred Book ReviewPeople Watching in the Desert: A Novel By Cali Adeline Harper: 400 pages, $30If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.“Writers are always selling somebody out,” Joan Didion once wrote.She was talking about journalists, but it can be just as true of novelists.

Whether the genre is romantasy or autofiction, making up stories often demands making up stories about real people — exploiting them — to serve a narrative purpose.Cali Adeline’s debut novel, “People Watching in the Desert,” gives this thorny ethical business an impressively complex treatment for a book that comes on like a beach read.Sonny, its hero, has checked into Sanctuary, a spendy Phoenix-area resort, for an extended stay.

She’s 25 and unemployed, and it’s unclear at first how she acquired the funds to splurge on an on-site cottage with a pool, 90-minute massages, and various forced-fun adventures.It’s also unclear why she chose a five-star resort for the splurging, given her discomfort with everything from the menu on down.

Sitting down for dinner alone, she “discreetly googled some of the words on her phone under the table: cotija, calabacitas, tabbouleh, bisque.”Adeline lays out a breadcrumb trail that eventually reveals that Sonny has lugged some especially heavy personal baggage to Sanctuary.Her neglectful, addict mom died when she was a child, only to be replaced with a repressive, overprotective grandmother who stomped on her every ambition.

Early adulthood has been defined by failed relationships and uninspiring work.People are to be feared: She’d sooner indulge in croquettes at the resort’s cocktail party than make small talk with other vacationers, and when she braves the world outside her cottage it’s u...