This was such an interesting book!

It follows Jane, who lives off the grid in a remote part of Montana with her brilliant but unhinged father.

Breathe a sigh of relief, he's not sexually creepy, just worried about the implications of the internet and AI on the world.

However, these beliefs inform his entire existence, and as Jane gets older, she starts to question the things she has been taught all her life.

As she discovers bits and pieces of their past by snooping in her father's office, everything begins to change.

When her father informs her that he's leaving their remote home to go work on a project, Jane begs to accompany him.

I won't spoil what happens next, but it's safe to say that it changes both of their lives forever.

A thrilling and emotional ride, #whatkindofparadise captures your attention from the start and doesn't let go until the very end.

I highly recommend it!

Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC!

I loved this book until the end when it felt like it just abruptly ended. After the long build up, it was over in 2 or so chapters.
I couldn't put the boom down and was rooting for Jane/Esme. Such a fun story, until the end.

This book makes me think of Where the Crawdads Sing with a thriller vibe. I like how different genres are represented, & I loved Brown’s writing style. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy!

Thank you to the publisher and to netgalley! This book is about a father-daughter relationship built on secrecy and raised in isolation leading to a journey to uncover the truth about her past. The Montana setting felt like a character and really added to my experience reading this story. Jane wants to break free from her father but when she joins him on a venture, Jane uncovers a lot more then expected.

This will be one of my favorite books of 2025. Just a wonderful story that will surely become a contemporary classic. The plot, the characters, the ending... it's all so well-done. Great writing, no notes.

I have enjoyed other books by this author and her latest is no exception. I did feel that the 1st half kept a better pace than the 2nd but was still very enjoyable. It did feel like it could have been ripped form the headlines on multiple accounts and usually that is a turn off for me these days, I was still intrigued.

This book didn't quite live up to the premise. I was very intrigued by the idea of a girl being raised in the wilderness and finding out her life isn't what it seems. Unfortunately, the pacing was all over the place. Everything happens either too fast or painstakingly slow. There were no plot twists, and nothing really surprising happened; the story is pretty straightforward. The characters weren't particularly likable, nor were they interesting.

I found the discussion of the early internet and its potential for both good and harm to be interesting. I think the philosophical ideas raised were thought-provoking, particularly as AI is getting pushed more and more frequently.

The book was well written, and I stuck it out til the end out of sheer curiosity, but this just wasn't for me.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

The premise of this book had SO much potential, but it did not live up to the hype for me.

It was not bad, just ok. It was too slow to be suspenseful and I didn't connect with the main character in a way I wish I had since it felt more of a coming of age story.

I do get why a lot of people love this one and why the average rating is so high. It just wasn't my favorite.

Jane grows up in an isolated cabin in Montana with her dad in the 1990s. As she gets older, she becomes more curious about their past and about the world beyond their remote existence.

One day, Jane’s father allows her to join him on one of his ventures. Jane unknowingly becomes an accomplice to a crime and decides to escape her restricted Montana cabin world once and for all. She attempts to find answers in San Francisco based on the few clues she has and while doing so, tries to live a normal life in the modern world. I was cringing at some of Jane’s choices and comments, yet felt for how much she had to learn and was rooting for her.

What Kind of Paradise is a father-daughter story, though not the heartwarming kind. It’s a slow burn suspense and has doomsday, conspiracy theory vibes. My favorite book by Janel Brown is still Pretty Things but I really enjoyed this one too.

I really enjoyed this book and was fascinated by the story. The second half in particular flew by for me and I finished it quickly. The pacing of the first half was a little more uneven, and sometimes plot points felt a little too convenient, but overall the story caught my attention and I liked the framing of the coming of age story against the broader context of what was going on with the dad and society. Overall a very solid read.

Read this in a day this past weekend!

The book is set in the early days of the internet and dotcoms, with peak ‘90’s nostalgia as a backdrop to the central story of a father and daughter living off the grid rejecting technology. The daughter, 17 year old Jane aka Squirrel, is written so well. I was completely invested in her, especially as she started making her own decisions and her world grew beyond her father and their cabin in the woods. The characters and the story are layered and complex and make you think about who the “good guys” actually are.

Thank you to @netgalley and @randomhouse for the advance copy of this book - I loved it.

Janelle Brown's What Kind of Paradise is the kind of terrific book that you love reading but also don't want it to end. Jane (Esme) has been mostly raised in a rural Montana cabin with only her anti-tech, militant father for company. As she begins to unravel the secrets of her past, her story moves to San Francisco at the beginning of the dot-com boom. An absolutely terrific book that you won't want to end.

The setting is in an isolated area in rural Montana in the mid 90’s. Jane and her father, Saul, are living off the grid, surviving mostly off the land. She only knows her dad, as she is told her mother died in a car accident. As Jane grows up, she begins to wonder about the world and where her father keeps disappearing to for weeks at a time. They keep to themselves with very little interaction with others except the family who owns the local bookstore. When her father is gone for a period of time, Jane goes through his belongings and discovers some interesting information about him and his life before they came to Montana. She also discovers that she is not who her father claims she is. On a few occasions, Jane is allowed to accompany her father on trips. On one such occasion, she becomes an accomplice to a crime her father commits against a former colleague. When she discovers that someone died, she makes the decision then to run away from the only life she remembers in Montana and travel to San Francisco. She does not know where her father is and has to rely on herself only to live.
This novel introduces the reader to the beginning of the internet and the computer age. While Jane’s father was one of the founders of dot com technology, he now questions the validity of it. He wonders, “Has the internet and technology improved our lives or has it ruined us”?
At times, this book moved slowly, often bogged down with a great deal of information related to computers and the technology behind it. The author did a great deal of research on the beginning of the computer world. Silicon Valley was the birthplace of the computer.
This novel is a blend of historical fiction (mid 90’s) and fiction. It is a very character driven book with Jane and her father Saul as the main characters. There is a touch of mystery involved as to why they are living off the grid in an isolated cabin. Who is Saul believed to be? There is much discussion as to whether or not moving ahead with technology is a good thing or a bad thing. Some trigger warnings for mental illness.
I would recommend this book for those interested in the birth of the computer age while immersed in a story involving a dad and his daughter and the effect on their lives with this invention.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Marketing for bringing this book to my attention and for allowing me to read the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Published on June 3, 2025.

In the mid-1990s, Jane and her father lived in an isolated cabin in Montana, homesteading. Her father offers few clues about their pasts, saying that her mother's death in a car crash in the Bay Area led to their move. When Jane realizes she might be an accomplice to her father's crimes, she flees for San Francisco to look for answers. The city itself is in the middle of many changes, including the burgeoning Internet, leading Jane to question everything she values.

Jane and her father were incredibly isolated, even by Montana standards, living off the grid and rarely going into the neighboring town. Her father raised her on philosophy, calculus, and paranoid isolationist theory, saying he was brilliant and prescient. He was essentially her entire world, until the flashes of the outside world in the form of TV and the nascent internet let her see how others lived and thought. Her father was essentially an anti-futurist, Luddite, and simply writing a zine or manifesto wasn't enough. He had to resort to bombs to get attention for his ideas and to try stemming the tide of computing and AI; we know full well how futile that can be.

Jane essentially grows up over the course of the novel. She initially defends and believes her father's opinion because it's all she knows. When questioned about that way of life by outsiders (her first friend, a chat room stranger), she grows to realize just how odd it is. The realization escalated until she made her separation, a bid for independence that luckily turned out well for her. She finds friends, gets a job and a place to stay, and makes it through without being assaulted. The outside world isn't the terrible place her father painted, but it's not a utopia either. She sees the shape of her father's plan eventually, then is torn between the duty to report him and the duty to protect him. Her life and decisions are ultimately her own, and we are with her as she comes to realize this. Neither life is a paradise, no matter what's promised.

One of the most unique books I’ve read in a long time. This pulled me out of my reading slump and had me flipping through pages ridiculously fast!

I liked the story and man is a lot of the subject matter timely. The middle drug a little bit, and I was frustrated with the main character at points but realized I was expecting adult behavior from a kid. I wanted more at the end - it felt like it wound down quickly.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

What Kind of Paradise was my favorite book of June. I started it as a buddy read, where we were supposed to read about 60 pages a day and discuss each section all week. After day two, I abandoned my buddies, finished, and then rejoined when they finished too. It's the story of Jane and her father. They live off the grid in Montana in the 1990s. I *highly* recommend not reading the synopsis and just go along for this ride. It's a quirky coming of age story, as Jane's experience is so unique. It's modern historical fiction that shimmers with the before and after, as the readers bring our insights of what the Internet will become, as of now. It's a thoughtful meditation on education, parenting, and technology. It's simultaneously a family saga and a plot-forward mystery. I absolutely loved it.

***I was intrigued by the novel's premise, in which a father weaves elaborate lies to raise his daughter in a remote wilderness, away from technology. When the story moved out of the woods, it felt more fractured to me and didn't hold together as well.***

<blockquote>The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.</blockquote>

Jane doesn't remember living in the Bay area, where her mother died. She doesn't remember life with electricity, or neighbors, or technology. In mid-1990s rural Montana, Jane only knows the books her father gives her instead of sending her to school, the woodstove that provides lifesaving heat, and the peacefulness of the familiar woods.

But when Jane becomes a teenager and starts to push her father for freedom--and for answers--she begins to suspect that their life has been built on tragedy--and lies.

I was captivated by the first part of the book, in which Jane and her father are entrenched in their own world, driven by her father's mysterious, paranoid thinking and his development of his anti-technology Luddite Manifesto, as Jane begins to cobble together pieces of her past and suspicions about her true identity.

When the story moved away from the wilderness, the story felt increasingly fractured to me. Jane's sheltered background--and her doubts about what is true about the world and what was made up or exaggerated by her father, the only influence in her life to this point--means that when she leaves the woods, she is naïve and reliant on others for almost everything. This makes sense, but doesn't make her a particularly sympathetic or dynamic character. Jane is also buoyed by magical thinking, often expending emotional energy (and spending plenty of page time) wishing the past were not what it was, feeling sorry for herself, and hoping she emerges unscathed from an enormous mess. I also didn't completely buy into the depth of her new key connection to a romantic friendship--nor the lengths the other partner was willing to go to in order to protect her after a short period.

The figure of Jane's mother is easy to dislike; she reads as almost a caricature of an emotionally distant person. Jane's belief that her mother, to date a stranger, would magically resolve her many urgent challenges and problems, is part of Jane's naïvité, but it still feels far-fetched. When she disappoints Jane by failing to swoop in and save her, it doesn't feel surprising to anyone but Jane.

I appreciated the complicated feelings Jane felt around holding her father accountable, as he plausibly went to such extremes to save her from the perceived dangers of society, but the resolution to the story and Jane's unscathed state felt a little bit too easy.

The premise of the story was fascinating, and I felt drawn into the part of the novel set in the woods with a father, a daughter, and the world outside of society that they managed to create and cultivate, however misguided the reasoning for doing so may have been.

I received a prepublication version of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Random House.

Janelle Brown is also the author of Pretty Things (check out my review) and other novels.

You may also like these other Bossy reviews of novels about the woods and wilderness.

I really enjoyed this! What Kind of Paradise is a unique and intricately plotted story that kept me guessing the whole way through. It’s both gripping and thought-provoking, with a narrative that blends suspense, coming-of-age, and cultural commentary in a way that feels fresh and compelling.

The novel follows Jane, a teenage girl raised in near-total isolation by her father in the Montana wilderness. When she uncovers disturbing secrets about her past, she flees to 1990s San Francisco—a world that is overwhelming, unfamiliar, and rapidly changing with the rise of the internet. As she navigates her new environment, she’s forced to confront questions about identity, morality, and the consequences of truth.
This was my first book by Janelle Brown, and I was impressed by how layered and emotionally resonant the story was. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of her work.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Wow this book was so good. I have read Janelle Brown before and thought her writing was just ok but she definitely raised the bar for herself with What Kind of Paradise.