I've read 1 or 2 of the author's previous books and enjoyed them. The slow story and build in this one kept me from feeling connected to the characters and story. I liked the protagonist a lot but it felt like we jumped years in her life, when her true character was being built. Good setting. Different topic for me. But all in all, it didn't grip me as a suspense or mystery story should.

I really enjoyed this book. Very thought provoking with a gripping story. Loved the protagonist, Jane.

This was such a unique and fascinating book. A nostalgic mystery that takes us back to the 90’s. Jane is 17 and lives off grid in the desolate woods of Montana with her father. She is homeschooled and knows no one besides her dad. He is anti-government and warns of the dangers of technology. As she gets older she starts to wonder about the world outside of her sheltered life. She leaves her father and has to navigate this all new life. I was invested in reading about the difficulties Jane faces and how the author explored the birth of technology. Having grown up through those times it definitely brought back memories of those times for me. As Jane uncovers secrets, she is caught in the middle. She doesn't know if she can believe the things her dad has said. It was full of suspense and I loved the true crime vibes too. I wouldn't call this a thriller, it was more a character study, and a coming of age. The pacing was steady and the mystery was gripping. I really liked this one

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

This was NOT what I expected at all but I found it absolutely gripping. In the 1990s, a teenager lives in the wilderness with her paranoid/prepper/Luddite father, who wants her to help him spread his anti-technology manifesto on the brand new world wide web. This process will lead to a series of dramatic events and her uncovering of some secrets her father has been hiding.

My full review will be up May 27, but if you remember dial up internet, surfing the net, etc. you should try this one. (Or if you're a young millennial or Gen Z curious about life before AI, smartphones, and social media.)

It's the mid-1990s, and seventeen-year-old Jane Williams is living a secluded life with her father, Saul, in a remote cabin in Montana. After the death of her mother in a car accident when she was very young, Jane has been homeschooled and rarely interacts with others, except for when she visits the local bookstore. Saul spends his time writing his thoughts about society and his concerns about the dangers of emerging technology. He often leaves Jane alone for days at a time. After his last absence, he returns with an IBM computer. After Jane teaches herself how to use it, the world opens up. When Jane begs to go with Saul on his next outing, everything turns to disaster. Seeing no other choice, Jane runs away and heads to San Francisco.

I've read Janelle Brown's books, but none of them could have prepared me for her latest, What Kind of Paradise. It is a deep and thought-provoking story that delves into the mind of a brilliant man (perhaps a madman) who is trying to protect his daughter and others from a doomsday scenario where machines/AI control our lives. The story is intentionally claustrophobic as Jane is essentially a captive of her father's beliefs. Once she breaks free, the story is extremely intriguing as Jane has to exist on her own, clearly benefiting from the survival skills she had learned throughout her years with Saul. This is a well-done blend of genres set during the period when home computers were increasingly being brought into households and the World Wide Web started to change everything. It was a captivating read. 

4.25 stars.

Jane lives in a cabin in the Montana woods with her father, a zealot, as her only company. When she gets wrapped up in one of his schemes, they lose one another, with Jane alone for the first time in her life. This book isn’t a mystery, nor a thriller like it’s being marketed. It’s a story about a teenage woman coming into her own, finding her identity and shedding the false beliefs that were jammed into her brain from childhood from a paranoid delusional father. I enjoyed the story, once I understood that it wasn’t going to be the fast paced of some of her others. I’m still searching for that high I felt reading PRETTY THINGS! Instead, this story will make you sympathize with Jane, it will also make you want to jump into the pages and shake her. The journey was a long one, but one I gladly took in parallel.

What Kind of Paradise is about Jane, who grows up in an isolated Montana cabin, believing her father is her whole world. But when she uncovers a terrible truth, she runs to San Francisco searching for answers—and starts to question everything she thought she knew about her past, her parents, and herself.

I loved Janelle’s previous books so I was really looking forward to What Kind of Paradise. I had mixed feelings about this one. The premise was interesting, but the execution felt meh. It’s not really a thriller as it leans more toward general fiction with a hint of suspense. The pacing was uneven where the beginning drew me in, but the second half dragged and felt way too slow. All the tech talk made me lose interest. I just couldn’t connect with Jane as she felt too emotionally distant for me to feel much empathy toward her. The ending also wrapped up a little too neatly. Overall, this one just didn’t work for me the way I hoped.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story of father-daughter relationships, the positive and negative impacts of technology, and coming of age in the turbulent 1990s.

After living in isolation with her tech-fearing father, Jane discovers information that, through her father, links her to a terrible crime. This motivates her to step out of isolation and head to the Bay Area, where her father said her mother died in a car accident. Once there, she starts to question everything she knows about her upbringing, her parents, and the Internet at large.

What Kind of Paradise is an emotionally resonant coming of age story, with a richly textured 90s backdrop and a twisty plot that will have you on the edge of your seat!

📱What a fascinating concept! Thank you to @randomhouse for the sneak peek, and @reliablebookgirl_rbg for the great rec. This is out June 3rd!

📱 This book takes place in the 90’s tech boom and it’s got all the nostalgia ($3 Starbucks drinks y’all). It’s also about someone who saw some of the dangers tech was going to bring to society — and how he chose to handle that.

📱 There was some inconstant pacing with this, but overall I tore through it pretty quickly and really enjoyed it. I liked that it made me think but was also just very entertaining. Overall, I definitely recommend it..

"What Kind of Paradise" is a great coming-of-age and loss-of-innocence story. The protagonist, Jane, has grown up living off the grid with her father in a remote Montana cabin. It is a suspenseful story that keeps your attention. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys stories of fathers and daughters, coming-of-age stories, and stories of outliers. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

#WhatKindOfParadise

I had never read anything by Janelle Brown before and I can’t wait to catch up on her backlist now. Set in the 90s, this coming-of-age story about a girl raised off-the-grid by her tech-averse father is fast-paced and beautifully written. For me, it’s that perfect sweet spot of literary but still packed with plot. Jane, our main character, is an intelligent young woman struggling to come to terms with the outsize influence her father has had over her life. After she turns 18 she moves to a nascent Silicon Valley, ends up working at an early tech startup, and discovers some unsettling truths about her father and her mother. One more note: Ladies of a certain age (like myself) will appreciate all the 90s references, including Liz Phair lyrics. 🙌

Five stars! This will be a bestseller of the summer - maybe even the year. I was at the edge of my seat (okay, bed) after midnight, waiting to see what would happen next. Don't sleep on this hit!

Jane grew up living off the grid with her dad in a cabin in Montana in the 1980s and 1990s. They have no TV or internet and her dad is her everything - her teacher, her family, her friend, the only source of knowledge for her. When he brings home a laptop one day and she starts to learn what else is out there - what will happen?

I really enjoyed this story so much. I also enjoyed that Jane was telling it when she is older and was able to reflect on what was happening with her later wisdom - I appreciated this approach a lot. This was one I couldn’t wait to get back to and thought about when I wasn’t reading it. Thank you to the publisher for the free ebook to review.

This book is going to be a best seller, I have no doubt. What a fantastic story line but also so relevant to events in the past and how many people think today surrounding the internet.
Jane lives in a secluded cabin in the woods with her father. She knows no other life. Everything she learns is from her father and the text books he wants her to read and remember. But as Jane gets older she starts to question her past and present situations.
Unsure what her father is doing when he leaves her all alone for days, makes Jane request you assist him but ends up being an accomplice to his wild shenanigans.
A book of figuring out right and wrong and where your loyalty lies.

Couldn’t put it down.

What Kind of Paradise follows Jane, a teenager living with her dad in a remote cabin in Montana. He homeschools her and keeps her secluded. As she is getting older though, she is wondering more about teens her own age - how they live, and what future she wants to have. As the book goes on, we find out more about her and her dad’s background and what he was doing before he moved them to Montana. 🤔

I was super invested in this book every step of the way. This book takes place in the 90’s, which offers some early Internet nostalgia, but also offers a reason for why Jane can’t just look up things she desires to know online.

When I got into reading this e-ARC, I didn’t realize the overall message would be what it was… but it’s certainly a good one to ponder in our current technology age. (I’m not telling you what the question is, so you can find out yourself as you read the book!)

I think the only thing holding me back from a 5⭐️ review is that I didn’t feel as emotionally invested in the characters as I usually am for 5⭐️ books (though I do just want the best for Jane!) However, it’s still a super good book. And I’d recommend reading it, especially if it’s offered in one of the June book boxes. I could see it being a hit when it comes out on June 3rd.

Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐️

Thanks to Net Galley and PRH for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Having read three other book by this author, I think she’s more “ok” for me than “wow”. I know I’m in the minority with my feelings about this book, but it was slow and I had a hard time with the extreme thoughts/beliefs; it made it hard for me to connect to the story and characters. Some parts were better, I enjoyed the character connection, the experiences and the growing. Overall this was a decent read, but will not be in my top reads.
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Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

The premise was interesting and the characters were intriguing, but the first half of the book was so slow that I almost didn't finish. The pace picked up a little in the second half but still not what i would call a page turner. This one just didn't grab me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced reader copy.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I believe I was invited to read this title by the publisher. Janelle Brown is a favorite author of mine in the way she tells stories. It's never too long or too short. I honestly could not predict what would happen at any given moment, which is what had me on the edge of my seat, needing to get back to this book. I have to warn you that you may experience feelings of sadness at the end - not just that you finished a remarkable book but sadness for the narrator/ main character. Without giving it away, the reason.

This book is mainly set in 1996-1997. I was just a little older than the main character, - "Jane", who lived with her father in an isolated cabin in the woods in Montana. Her dad would go away for a few days and return later with supplies. It is definitely something sketchy that he is hiding.

When Jane discovers her life is a lie, she doesn't take immediate action. She ropes herself into becoming an accomplice in something she doesn't understand at first. Even though she's brilliant and very smart, she is sheltered. The story is a little slow until she leaves for San Francisco and then really takes off. I liked her friendship with Lionel and the misfits she met at Signal. I appreciate the cultural references as well. "Jane" is trying to balance her curiosity about the world and the internet with her more simple upbringing. Not to mention her ethics.

When Jane discovers that her dad had lied to her about someone major in her life who had died, she looks for that person. I was hurting for her because what she sought vs. reality was a stark difference. I don't know if Jane's life would have been different if her father had made other choices. She was put in an impossible situation with no family support. She never really got justice and was a victim of her father's paranoid delusions, as well as selfishness and ego.

one thing for sure I will be thinking about this book for a long time. In a small way, it reminded me of The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, one of my favorite books ever. 5/5 ☆ available June 10th.

Set in the late 90's, 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐞 starts off with Jane and her strange father living in a shack in the woods in Montana. Jane, at 17, knows no one except her father, and has near no contact without the outside world. Jane believes her mother died in a terrible car accident, and her father has filled her full of his strange political ideas of the dangers of the technological world.

Her father brings a computer into their home for the very first time and asks Jane to learn HTML so he can publish his “manifesto.” This first exposure to the outside world gets Jane asking some very difficult questions about who her father is and what her background is. I won't give any other spoilers, but once Jane is exposed to the outside world, she starts to question everything.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐞 is a more literary thriller with deep, thought provoking questions about our society and the positives and negatives of technology. I also think touches on some interesting themes that the reader is left to ponder such as healthy parent/child relationships, how we process information and determine what is true or not, where the line is between mental illness and sociopathy, and so much more.

I will say that this is not a page turning thriller in my opinion - it borders more on literary suspense or even a suspenseful drama is more accurate. I found Jane a very interesting and compelling character - her experiences growing up and then coming of age after being so sheltered pose many thought provoking situations. I loved the way the ending unfolded.

Jane is very much a product of her father’s upbringing. She forgives sketchy behavior when she shouldn’t, because she’s brainwashed. Her father has spent her life gaslighting her. He’s pushed his ideals on her, under the guise of homeschooling.

This has made her incredibly naïve. So it was nice when she finally starts making decisions for herself. I didn’t agree with all those decisions, but I don’t need to because they all stem back to the way she was raised.

I really enjoyed this one as it is a captivating read.