I really enjoyed this gripping novel.

Jane has grown up isolated from the world in a cabin in Montana with her father. She knows little of the outside world or her past. He’s only told her that her mother died when she was four and that they are from the Bay area. She’s been homeschooled and mostly understands the world from long-dead philosophers. But her father seems to be becoming more mentally unstable. When he brings home a computer, she connects to the internet to publish his anti-technology manifesto. For the brief time she has access to the 1990s internet, she gains insight to outside world she previously could only imagine. When her father’s actions implicate her in a horrific crime, she runs away to California to see if she can find any answers.

NetGalley provided an advance copy of this novel, which RELEASES JUNE 10, 2025.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for inviting me to read and review this book.

I have read at least one other book by this author, so my expectations were high. Other reviewers have written more detailed synopses, and I will not repeat their efforts here. As someone who was a full-grown adult when the background events of this book were happening, I did enjoy the portions of the story that detailed the beginnings of the World Wide Web and how the Internet changed lives, sometimes for the better, and sometimes not so much. I will add that, like another book by this author that I have read, the story does not end with everything neatly tied up in ribbon and a bow and everyone lived happily ever after. There are unresolved situations that will never see closure. And as much as I like to see those neatly-tied bows, I am quite familiar with the fact that life is very much like a box of chocolates in which several candies have been replaced with mud. But for those who do not require a book to end with no loose threads left dangling, I can enthusiastically recommend this book. Just don't do what I did... start reading shortly before bedtime. I'll let you guess the outcome of that questionable decision on my part.

Thank you, Random House Publishing Group for providing the copy of What Kind Of Paradise by Janelle Brown. I was immediately drawn into the storyline of a father and a daughter living off the grid, and I loved the writing style. Their lives were intriguing at first, and I loved how Jane navigated society. It pointed out how we take pop culture for granted! I didn’t love the conclusion and how things finally wrapped up. It seemed too facile so it wasn’t satisfying. I had trouble figuring out the timelines because the chapters didn’t have dates. I still enjoyed reading this book and will look for Brown’s other books! 4 stars

What Kind of Paradise will draw the reader in right from the start! It twists and turns and will keep you guessing. I flew right through the first half. The second half did drag a big, but still highly recommend for a fun quick read!

Thank you to net galley for the arc in exchange of an honest review.

I love an ambitious thriller, and this is certainly one of those. I read the first two thirds in one day-- it was just absolutely paced beautifully for a reading binge. Do I think it stuck every landing? No-- but I appreciated the bigness of the vision. Would recommend.

ARC REVIEW

What kind of Paradise
By Janelle Brown

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 ( 4 out of 5)

Publishing date: 6/3/2025

*A teenage girl breaks free from her father's world of isolation in this exhilarating novel of family, identity, and the power we have to shape our own destinies—from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear*

Ohhh this was better than I expected!

I was immediately sucked into Jane's story. She is 17 years old and lives in a remote cabin in Montana with only her father. (In 1996) She doesn't go to school, doesn't have friends and her father has been prepping her in case " the feds " show up. But who are the feds and why would they show up to their cabin?

As the story unfolds, all is revealed and questions get answered. The beginning of the book was my favorite part. I NEEDED to get my questions answered!

Technology is the main theme throughout the story. Although this isn't a topic that holds much interest for me, I still enjoyed the story. SInce the book is set in 1996, it was fun to see the world now as described in the 90's. I enjoyed the connections the author made between now and then. It was entertaining!

I definitely recommend you check this one out in June! I think it will be popular and will be well deserved!

Thank you @netgalley and @randomhouse for the early read opportunity! Always appreciated ☺️

Rounding up from 4.5. This will be a great selection for any book club because there are so many nuances to dive into! I absolutely LOVED the first half of the book, which focuses on Jane's isolation and coming of age. Brown's characterization effectively navigates the tension between Jane's naivete and her wealth of knowledge, allowing Jane's intelligence to guide her through stages of processing and understanding when she can't rely on experience. I've seen a number of blurbs comparing the first part to Educated, but here the father's protectiveness comes not from an uninformed rejection of education and knowledge--he is logical and educated and in many ways prescient--so it isn't as easy to dismiss him (as it wasn't for Jane). The middle lost me a little--when she got to San Francisco, a number of things happened that reminded me of how I felt trying to watch Forrest Gump--can this many things work out this particular way under these circumstances for one person? But most people love that movie so I'm sure I'm an outlier there. It picks up again as the pieces of Jane's puzzle come together, and I was completely invested for the rest of the journey. Thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the advanced copy and the opportunity to share my review.

Is this Paradise? Janelle Brown does it again! What a deep and intricate thriller, I really enjoyed it. A very intelligent man Adqm who at one time worked in the Silicon Valley takes his little girl Jane and lives off the grid in the woods in Montana. She doesn't have any friends except for one girl who gets to see once a month when they go into town to get supplies. Other than that, she has no contact with the outside world. Her father is her caregiver and provider, her teacher, and her mentor,, and he has her reading philosophical books by the age of five. He also teaches her to prepare to escape for the Feds are after them for some reason. He raises her alone in the woods for thirteen years. Then, when she is older, Jane finds out things are not what they seem. And her name is not even Jane. This thriller has so many twists and turns, I know you'll enjoy it as I did

Hmmmm. I liked the first half way better than the second half. It really started to drag for me when she escaped her dad. It got a bit wordy & not a lot happened. The only other book I’ve read by this author is pretty things which I really loved so I had high expectations going into this which were only met in the beginning

Some books are best entered blindly, their secrets gradually revealed. What Kind of Paradise is one such book, so I'll be treading lightly here and keeping this a little vague.⁣
⁣
From the very beginning, I found myself drawn in by this story, and it kept me turning the pages. I was riveted by the mystery surrounding Jane, who has lived in seclusion with her father in remote Montana since the age of four. As the story unfolds, her world is rocked when she discovers truths behind who her father is and her own personal history. ⁣
⁣
The choice of Jane's lens is what truly elevates this novel, in my opinion. It allows for a powerful sense of compassion, empathy, and shared grief in a narrative that could easily have been purely suspenseful or sensational. I became invested in seeing how her story would ultimately resolve. What Kind of Paradise is a true page-turner and would be a great pick for anyone who enjoys literary fiction with a bit of mystery and intrigue at its center.

Thank you NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read, "What Kind of Paradise" by Janelle Brown. WOW! What a ride this was! This book was different than anything I have ever read. I will be recommending it to other people!

Put Janelle Brown with the ranks of Kristin Hannah who you may think of as popular fiction writers but can really WRITE, and make you think.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley I had the pleasure of reading this ARC ahead of the hype I expect “What Kind of Paradise” to receive when it launches later this year. I want to avoid spoilers, so I will only describe it to say we spend more than the first half of the book getting to know teenage Jane who has been raised completely off the grid in Montana, by her brilliant but possibly a bit unhinged father. The beauty but also the deprivation of this life he has shaped for them are in contrast. Will this be Jane’s whole existence? When she insists on going on one of her dad’s mysterious trips with her, everything changes, and smart but naive Jane finds herself in SF at the beginning of the tech boom, where she learns a lot more about who she is, and who her father is.

Interweaving themes of philosophy (Thoreau, the benefits vs societal risks of technology, including concerns about AI back in the 1990s) and identify, Brown has become a favorite author and this might be her best work yet.

Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid.

As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother’s death: San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.

I had high hopes for this book and for the most part it lived up to the hype. This story was intriguing and had me reading for hours at a time. I was so interested in Jane and how she and her father made it to their lives in seclusion. The story starts with current Jane and she tells us the story of how she got to be where she is now and when we finally got to the end and up to date, I was kind of disappointed. I had hoped for maybe a little bit more between her and dad in the end. I felt maybe it was a tad anticlimactic in the end but that’s just me. The writing was excellent and I will be recommending this to friends and other readers. 4 ⭐️ Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an ARC.

Janelle Brown’s “What Kind of Paradise” explores themes of isolation, family dynamics, and freedom. Jane, a homeschooled teenager in rural Montana, faces adulthood and existential questions. The author’s prose immerses readers in Montana’s beauty and Silicon Valley’s tech revolution. Highly recommended as a book club read.

Janelle Brown had been on my list of "authors to try" for quite some time. The premise of her newest novel seemed so interesting, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to request the advance.

This novel was reminiscent of These Silent Woods (which I loved) with paranoia mental illness instead of PTSD. It was a very dysfunctional family coming-of-age story. The 2 main characters were living way off the grid but outside life always has a way of catching up with you. Jane, and her father, were so well fleshed out. I found myself hoping Jane could overcome her naivety.

There were many thought provoking ideas that book clubs could talk through. The whole idea of father-protector/hero figure vs prison guard was a major theme, along with capitalism, tech pros and cons, finding your true self and handling the grey areas of life.

I found this a fairly quick read although the plotting was choppy in some spots. Overall, this would be a great recommendation for just about anyone.

I want to thank Random House and NetGalley for advancing the Kindle edition of the book in exchange for an honest review.

My reviews will be posted to Goodreads and Litsy and will both run indefinitely.

Jane and her father, Saul, live a simple life off the grid in a cabin in Montana. Living off the land and fending for themselves, they're a content family unit of two. Until things start falling apart as technology is introduced into the home. Saul starts behaving strangely, and Jane starts exploring a world that was previously unknown. Never did she imagine what she would find, and how it would ultimately change their lives forever.

Honestly, I did not read the premise of this book before I went in and I think I liked it better that way. It was fun going in blind and just letting the story unfold. I thought it would be another straightforward mystery but this was so much more. While there was mystery in this for sure, there were also relevant topics like the advancement of technology, coming of age, and the concept of grappling with right vs wrong.

The pacing of this book fluctuates - there are parts that are meant to get your heart racing, and other parts that may be slower but are meant to build upon each other as Jane works to figure things out. Either way, I found it all engaging, even during the slower parts.

Overall a good read and something unique to add to the TBR!

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for my eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Book blew m y mind. A 17 year old girl being home schooled living with her father that disappears days at a time. Jane asks her father if she can accompany him on 1 of his trips but will she survive after getting separated from him in the big city. A page turner for sure.

This book starts out very strong and captures your interest right away. The suspense and writing are very strong. In the end it was a like not a love as the book dragged in the last half and then felt rushed to wrap everything up.

Wow, this is a great book. First of all, it is very well written, with great character development. Set in the 90s, Jane has been raised off the grid in Montana by her father, a brilliant man but a zealot regarding the perils of the advance of technology. As someone who was in high school in the late 90s, I related a lot to the topics of the novel ( the internet, cell phones, webpages, chat rooms, etc) and the nostalgia of the times. Also a bit of a love letter to 90s San Francisco, with great descriptions. There is so much going on in this book that I don’t want to spoil! Someone else drew a comparison to Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which was the best book I read in 2022, and I can see the parallels. So if you loved that book, definitely give this one a read. This book will stick with me, maybe Janelle Brown’s best yet.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book!

3.5 ⭐️

When I read the description for this new novel by Janelle Brown, I thought of THESE SILENT WOODS. A girl and her father in a remote cabin in the woods, and the dad has to be hiding from someone or something.

Even though the description seems very similar, this does veer off in a different direction. Teenage Jane leaves the remote Montana cabin at the request of her dad, and then they go over to the Seattle area for a project that goes awry. Jane ends up on her own and forging a new life with the skills her father urged her to get.

A few times the coincidences were a bit much. I was a bit stymied at side characters that got thrown in, and as a reader I got invested in (Heidi!), but they vanished. Some things were zoomed over in the epilogue. I’d say that could be summarized as pacing problems for me.

This is a coming of age story, of sorts, which I liked. Jane had been kept in such isolation, and I wanted her to spread her wings. That part was gratifying. The treatise on artificial intelligence in the 1990s? I just don’t feel that we were “there” at the time. Of course, it tries to link the 1990s thoughts on artificial intelligence as prophetic, which I don’t really buy.

I really liked the coming of age parts of this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

It publishes June 3, 2025.