Laura van den Berg is a storytelling witch; she always immediately puts me under a spell with her characters and settings. State of Paradise is yet another disturbingly enchanting work from her.

I loved our main character and her family, and her tragic past was explored in a really satisfying way. Things get strange for our characters in Florida, and van den Berg doesn’t shy away from the weird elements of this story that make it so delightful.

It’s a quick read, a mystery with ghosts and alternate realities. It’s truly selfish to ask for anything more.

Thank you #NetGalley and #MacmillanPublishers for the opportunity to read this gem of a novel and introducing me to an author that I've somehow missed (and am now excited to dive into). "State of Paradise" read like a fever dream. It's a trippy, other-worldly story (literally and figuratively!!) -- based in Florida (which is a character in itself). The themes hit squarely on the essence of pandemic living within an increasingly unpredictable world of wacky politics and crazy climate events. Significant, deadly climate events.
This book was a sensory extravaganza and I saw the pub date as this summer and am grateful to have read it in the spring. I loved the narrator/protagonist and her vivid recollections of trauma, her fears, family relationships, and sometimes tenuous grip on reality. The novel, throughout, felt very unreal and haunted (including a very well-described and highly believable VR headset that takes on fantastic and diabolical proportions). And, as mentioned, the state of Florida (flora, fauna, summer heat, swampy, sinkhole-ridden -- a feeling of ever-present danger lurking about) made the book truly come to life. The Cro-Magnon leader, the disappeared, things emerging and vanishing. I'm looking forward to listening to this on audiobook. It was a quick, addictive read and I can't wait to dive deeper into Laura van den Berg's past books. This one is absolutely solid!!!!

Post-Covid - satire that takes place in Florida + Cats. the metaverse? and weird bellybutton adaptions? - What else can you say!
This screams weird Lit Fic and I know a lot of people who will enjoy this.

This was really frigging weird and all over the place, and I loved it. Reading a Laura van den Berg book is a unique experience. State of Paradise has this train of thought like narrative that follows our protagonist as she gets us up to speed on her life. She bounces effortless through past and present, creating this fever dream type story that ramps up as the book goes on. At points, I was questioning what reality even was, saying that I love how matter of fact our narrator is about everything. Based in a post covid society where people are being aducted by virtual reality, she navigates ghost writing whilst living in a very flooded florida, with her mother who is running an 'end to humans' cult, things are bound to be a little weird. This is one for fans of One's Company, Leave the World Behind, and Death Valley. Thank you to FSG for the gifted e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really solid, unique blend of sci-fi and litfic, with even some horror elements. I felt like the synopsis doesn’t really do the book justice, and it does take a while for all of the plot to be introduced.

Van den Berg paints a quirky picture of an alternate post-pandemic Florida, where lots of people have become addicted to a VR-esque technology and its users have suddenly started seemingly vanishing into thin air. I’d say that is the *main* thread of the story, but there are bits of other things interspersed like information on our narrator’s past, some bizarre cultlike behavior from her mother, and her bellybutton becoming a void. I’ve never read anything quite like this before and this has me excited to read more from her.

State of Paradise starts off in a familiar place in the recent past; a ghostwriter and her husband move to her childhood home in Florida during the early days of the pandemic. This quickly evolves into something much more surreal and wonderful in this fantastically weird novel that I couldn’t put down and was lucky enough to read in the Miami sun.

I would be hesitant to describe the plot, even if I could, because it was such an enthralling experience to see how this story unfolds. There’s the mysterious author the main character writes for, a sister that’s increasingly escaping into a virtual world to outrun her grief, bodies changing in strange ways after infection, and this is all set during an epic deluge that might wash away an entire state.

Can’t recommend this one enough and honestly can’t wait to read it again. Somehow this was also the first book I have read by van den Berg and I look forward to diving into her back catalogue as soon as possible. Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is really exciting. Takes the concepts of ecological rewilding, virtual reality, and verisimilitude to an entirely new level. I can't wait for more people to have this reading experience. Maybe just because it's my first time reading Laura van den Berg, but I was wowed and surprised and invested in this novel from beginning to end. And I'll be thinking about it for a long while after.

laura van den berg’s STATE OF PARADISE applies van den berg’s signature uncanny style to a post-Pandemic Florida.

a ghostwriter finds herself stuck living with her mother in Florida after the deep throes of the pandemic. amidst destructive storms, the woman discovers the strange reality of her childhood memories as she begins uncovering her family’s secrets and fissures. her mother becomes involved in an ominous cult while her sister loses herself in a mysterious virtual reality headset. the surrounding town increasingly mirrors these uncanny happenings and soon, she is down a rabbit hole of perception, place, and reality.

STATE OF PARADISE addresses the malleability of perception and grief in a “post”-pandemic world. i typically avoid new pandemic books, but van den berg’s writing is anything but pandering. instead, her observations are strikingly original and profound. STATE OF PARADISE is brimming with sentience — the setting visceral, the implications unsettling, the past ghostly. somewhere among the floods, sinkholes, and wormholes, i was left gutted, but also with a new outlook on the buried grief of 2020 and beyond.

STATE OF PARADISE is about so much more than the pandemic. it is ghost story, family drama, and funhouse mirror. i don’t know how van den berg pulled this genre-defying story off, but i’m glad she did, because she captures contemporary existentialism like no other

5/5 ⭐️

Laura van den Berg can do no wrong!

She's quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. "State of Paradise" is a simple and yet stunning novel. I love her previous books and this one is no exception. I love how she weaves such off-the-wall topics (oddball scenarios/characters) with serious topics like depression and suicidal ideation. I loved how we don't even know anyone's name throughout this novel, not even the protagonist. This book also felt like non-fiction. I also liked how dark and absurd it was. One-minute you're laughing, and the next you're moved by so many different emotions. This book is hard to explain but I will tell you one thing: its brilliant and unforgettable. Laura van den Berg makes the mundane things in life feel extraordinary.

Thank you, Netgalley and FSG for the digital ARC.

Laura van den Berg is a chronicler of the strange corners of our world, the possibilities of ghostly liminal spaces and feelings and experiences that could be lurking just around the corner from the universe we all inhabit. STATE OF PARADISE is a thrillingly odd book, readable in a sitting or two but worth pondering for weeks after. It takes place in a pandemic-struck Florida that looks not unlike our own, featuring a willfully ignorant governor and natural disasters flooding the scene, but also a VisionPro-esque VR headset that threatens the stability of the narrator's reality. It's a great, great look at reality and perception, at storytelling and the omnipresence of ghosts. I loved it, as did the other members of my household who all read it in the space of a long weekend!

Following these southern women, this beautiful book holds so much importance and weight. The sharp words will pull you in and remind you of why its great to be alive!

Another stellar novel from Laura van den Berg and one in which the jacket copy fails to do it justice.

It's a post covid Florida, in which the goverment took advantage of everyone while they were isolating and got them hooked on a new meditative, immersive technology called MIND'S EYE, and where people are suffering strange side effects that are believed to have been caused by the crazy high fevers they survived. Our narrator herself discovers that her outie is becoming a cavernous innie and her sister's eyes have completely changed color.

As she deals with these subtle physical changes, and ignores her mom's strange antics, and puts off urgent requests from the assistants of the author she ghosts for, MIND'S EYE users all around town begin mysteriously disappearing, as though into thin air... her sister being one of them. Some of the missing begin reappearing days later, a little dazed, not much worse for the wear, but with strange stories of where they've been. And our narrator's sister is one of the ones who've returned. She swears she entered another reality at their dead father's bidding and she's determined to return, with or without our narrator.

This book was just so deliciously weird. It's a fabulous mashup of grief fiction, sci-fi post-pandy fiction. Much like Florida and the pandemic itself, State of Paradise is a humid and feverish thing and oh gosh I was sooo there for it!

oof, I absolutely adored this one!! such a fun creative read, I was fully invested from start to finish. I love books that have a dystopian but realistic feeling to them, where things are just barely worse than they are now. in 'state of paradise', our unnamed protagonist (come to think of it, I think every character in this book is unnamed) lives in a post-pandemic, slightly apocalyptic Florida and reckons with her own past, present & inner-world. this book deals with family, self, escapism & disaster - all things I am v into so suffice it to say, I ate this right up.

4.5 rounded down because the middle-ending area got kinda weird and hard to follow, but it came together well in the end.

thank you netgalley and FSG for the arc! <3

I loved Laura van den Berg’s fever dream of a novel, State of Paradise. At one point, the unnamed narrator’s father says of her writing, “This is some weird shit, but I think you should keep going.” I cackled because it is exactly how I felt while reading this book. I did not want to put it down. I was so caught up in the beauty of van den Berg’s language and in the astuteness of her observations that I did not even notice the fact that none of the main characters are ever named until I began writing this review. As a Florida native, I particularly enjoyed van den Berg’s characterization of my home state (and the state does indeed loom large enough to feel like an actual character in the novel): from the sinkholes, manatees, Nextdoor messages, Cro-Magnon governor, and Extreme Weather Events, it is both surreal and spot on. Thank you for the opportunity to read this digital ARC! I am excited to check out more of van den Berg’s work.

"State of Paradise" is a wonderfully strange and compelling read. It includes pandemic time, virtual escapism, cults, addiction, family dysfunction and rich atmosphere. If you love Florida (which I do) the setting and descriptions will feel like home. If you love inventiveness, and the turn of a gorgeous sentence, you will not be able to put this down. Highly recommended. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Engaging and immersive. A recommended purchase for collections where crime and thrillers are popular.

First of all, thanks to NetGalley and FSG for letting me read an eARC of State of Paradise. The novel was a very fun, short, and quick read that deftly blended humor, dread, and surrealism. I loved the way the main character places so much detail into the descriptions of her surroundings in Florida it almost becomes a central character in the narrative. I wholeheartedly recommend this to readers who love weird novels that straddle the lines between realism and fantasy.

I had a difficult time connecting with this from the outset and was not able to finish it - I think others will enjoy this unconventional narrative, but it was not for me, unfortunately.

Oh maaaaan I hope this book reaches the audience it deserves. It was weird and trippy and introspective and I loved it. The author absolutely nails the feral, swampy atmosphere of Florida right now both physically and politically. As someone who practically grew up there and am very familiar with its current political and social climate, this was spot on. The only almost-negative I could see is some people wishing that more of the speculative elements were more developed, but I think it would have made the pacing of the rest of the book feel wonky. It did delve more into the themes of navigating mental health issues and trauma than I expected, so if that is something that is a potential trigger, I’d keep that in mind. That being said this was my type of literary fiction and I really enjoyed this!

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. A ghostwriter for thrillers, moves, with her husband, back to the small Florida town of her youth during the pandemic. She moves in with her mother and with her sister next door. Everyone deals with the pandemic in their own ways. Her husband runs miles and miles every day, her sister loses herself in a virtual reality game, her mother starts a cult that advocates the extinction of the human race. The ghostwriter is challenged by her employers to write an original story. She decides to write about the time she was institutionalized when she was a teen. And things get odder and odder from there in this funny and wild ride.