I’ve never read from Brown before but that definitely changes now! this character driven, long spanning book was exactly how i like my mysteries these days, where you as the reader are able to get really invested and care about the characters’ motives and what happens to them.
I love following a ‘growing up in isolation’ trope (it reminded me a lot of <i>These Silent Woods</i>), and Jane was a fully fleshed out character. We follow her growing up and then the book turns into a silicon valley thriller which i found fascinating and bingeable!

"If there’s one clear lesson that I learned from my hermetic childhood, it’s that you need lots of people around you if you’re ever going to find your true self. Listening to one voice, and one voice only, doesn’t make you a human being. It makes you a parrot."

4.25 stars. In a world where AI and technology is scaring the pants off of everyone, Janelle Brown's WHAT KIND OF PARADISE is quite the timely read. Set in the 90's and right before Y2k culture, Brown muses on technological developments like the internet and whether or not it has become our oppressor or liberator. And because this book takes place in the 90's, we get lots of nostalgic throwbacks like beanie babies, the Spice Girls, and Zima. Our protagonist is nearly 18, having lived most of her life as a recluse in the woods of Montana with her tech-paranoid father. Shut away from the real world, Jane has a limited understanding of life until she's thrust out of her simple existence and into reality after her father is caught up in a series of bombastic crimes. Jane is confronted with the reality of what happens when the person you've modeled yourself after becomes someone you've never really known.

I'll always find a fish out of water tale interesting, and this was no exception. I could not wait to see our girl run away from the woods and start a new life away from her dad because he's the fucking worst. The tragedy is she had no idea, but how could she know right from wrong when she had only been subjected to the wrong unwillingly? Having seen what technology and AI has turned into in 2025, I can sadly say that some of her dad's concerns were valid...but that doesn't justify his unspeakable actions. I DO think that Brown ultimately makes a case for both sides when it comes to technology and its role in society - like anything, it's a fine balance and it's only when things swing to extremes when we get into trouble. I was strapped in the entire time I was reading and enjoyed watching Jane carve out a new identity for herself, without the influence of her dad or anyone for that matter.

As a millennial, this book had me in its clutches and I was having so many flashbacks to dial up internet and hotmail while reading so I was gooped. It was also a welcomed reminder that humans are meant to live big and beautiful lives that aren't limited to the cages that are made for us. Break out of that damn cabin, listen to more people, and most importantly...listen to yourself. Always be growing, never stay stagnant, and never hide from the world because it's both frightening and fascinating and not to be missed. Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Some quotes that I pulled:

“Life was a party to which I had not received an invitation but hadn’t missed at all until I was made aware of the event.”

“My desire to leave wasn’t about abandoning my father. I still love him, despite my wilting worship. No, it was more about finding me.”

“Never underestimate the power of love to lead you down the path toward willful blindness. Faith in the people you adore doesn’t disappear slowly, with each tiny disappointment; instead, it collapses all at once, like the final snowfall that triggers an avalanche when the weight suddenly becomes too much to bare.”

“Memory is a fickle beast. So often we choose what we want to remember; but sometimes memories, choose us. The memories we most want to forget are the ones that fold themselves into our subconscious, waiting until we least expect them to rise up."

“I’d been given a phoenix-like opportunity to reinvent myself from the ashes of a life that had never, it turned out, been mine at all.”

"But speculation is a fools game, like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurts."

"Life isn’t always a series of binary choices. Sometimes it’s not about either/or but about learning how to manage the complexities of both/and."

📚: What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown
⭐️: 4/5

Jane’s childhood has been… different, to say the least. Growing up in the 1990s with only her father by her side in rural, middle-of-nowhere Montana, Jane hits her teenage years and finds herself questioning the isolation she knows so well. As she yearns to push the boundaries of her normal, her father spirals further into an extremist manifesto, and the results of their wants prove catastrophic.

A coming-of-age story that ties together both Jane’s coming of age as well as the societal technological coming of age in the 1990s. While the plot could have gone all over the place, Janelle Brown does a great job keeping the storytelling tight and clear.

Overall, this was a slow burn mystery with an ending that, while satisfying, felt rushed. (Part 3 really could have used another chapter or two.)

Thanks to Random House via @netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. What Kind of Paradise is out now.

Book rec! #PRHAudioPartner

I'd recommend WHAT KIND OF PARADISE, but it's tricky: I went in going so little and really enjoyed letting the story unfold. Thus I don't want to say too much about it!

Would recommend to those looking for:
- a book that can pull you in right away
- an exploration of tech's role in our lives and culture
- fiction set in the 90s

This was my first by Janelle Brown and it did leave me wanting to check out her backlist. The narration was great - I found both narrators (Helen Laser and Peter Ganim) to be well cast for their roles.

*Review posted to Instagram and Goodreads on June 10, 2025.*

"What Kind of Paradise" by Janelle Brown is a suspenseful coming-of-age novel set in the mid-1990s. It tells the story of Jane, a teenager raised in extreme isolation in a remote Montana cabin by her fiercely anti-technology father, who indoctrinates her with his paranoid worldview. Believing her mother died in a car accident, Jane's sheltered existence is shattered when she discovers her deep devotion to her father has made her an unwitting accomplice to a horrific crime. Fleeing to San Francisco, the city her parents once called home, Jane embarks on a quest to uncover the truth about her past and her mother's mysterious death, forcing her to confront the burgeoning world of the internet and question everything she thought she knew about family, trust, and the elusive nature of paradise.

4.5 / 5 stars

Jane has spent her entire life in an isolated Montana cabin, raised off the grid by her fiercely self-reliant, enigmatic father. She’s never been to school, has only one friend from town, and knows the world only through dense philosophical texts and her father’s warnings about modern life — and stolen opportunities to watch the TV set her father locks in his office. But now that Jane is on the cusp of adulthood, she begins to question his worldview — and his motives for keeping her so cut off. After a shocking crime, Jane flees to California in search of ties to her father’s past. There, in the early days of the internet boom, she’s drawn into a radically different world — one that offers connection, confusion, and long-buried truths about who she really is.

What Kind of Paradise is a slow-burn mystery layered with themes of isolation, identity, and the strange hope of a newly connected world. I really liked the coming-of-age arc here — Jane is written with so much nuance and heart. She’s sympathetic from the start, navigating the dissonance between who she thought she was and who she might become. Her father’s crime is slowly and thoughtfully built toward, and while the story accelerates in the final stretch, the emotional beats still land.

As a 90s kid, I loved the details that grounded this in a very specific era: Geocities neighborhoods, zines, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and of course, The X-Files. But it never feels like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake — the time period is essential to Jane’s journey and to the larger questions the book is asking about the tension between technology and human connection, between utopia and control.

This is a quiet, thoughtful read that still manages to pack an emotional punch. I’d recommend it to fans of layered, complex family dramas, and to book clubs looking for something that offers both character depth and big-idea discussion. It’s an introspective mystery that walks the line between literary fiction and slow-burn suspense — smart, haunting, and deeply human.

This was a very unique book! Included multiple genres and kept me engaged the whole time. I really liked the characters and especially enjoyed that it was set in the 90s at a time where technology was just starting to get big. A very enjoyable read that I will recommend to people!

A really unique coming of age story, mixed in with some historical fiction and lots of thought provoking moments. Written more like a mystery that slowly unfolds. The whole premise was fascinating and I really enjoyed uncovering more and more as I went. I was a little disappointed that the ending seemed to happen so quickly.

I wish it would have had more of the story from basically age 18 to roughly 35? It was summarized up in just a quick few paragraphs which was disappointing since so much of her earlier years were so detailed.

Jane Williams has never known any other life than the one she has led in a Montana cabin with her father Saul, since she was four years old. They hunt, chop wood and live off the grid, but for a phone line he installed for emergencies, they have little to no contact with the outside world. Jane is homeschooled which means she hunts, chops wood and learns anything her father is in the mood to teach. With three Harvard degrees it could be any subject in science, history or philosophy. Jane is also a whiz at math. As Jane becomes a teenager her father’s mysterious ways shine a light on all the things they are missing. She accompanies him into town to get supplies and befriends a girl in the bookstore. Jane begins to wonder about other young people her age, what they do and what they think. She is an avid reader and gleans what life could be like through books. Jane begins to explore his locked office when he is not at home. She is confused by a photo of her supposedly dead mother as the back inscription has a different name. Saul becomes more withdrawn and his rants about technology worsen, he truly believes modern society is being destroyed. Jane begins to devise a plan, partly to find proof of her mother’s death and more specifically to escape the precious cocoon that has become a trap. A fine line between what the internet can do for our world and the dangers of our addiction to even the simplest devices. Mesmerizing doomsday peek at an intimate father daughter relationship and the impact of technology.

What a ride…
I devoured this story of teenage Jane, raised by her father Saul …off grid in Bozeman, Montana in a 700 ft cabin.
Jane is home schooled and kept isolated, has lived there with her dad since she was four after her mother died.
Saul wanted to keep her away from technology.. he believed that it would enslave humanity… tethering people to their screens.
He has schooled Jane well, she has read everything, and likes to draw, very intelligent.
Being a teenager now, Jane wants to experience the world outside and finds a way out.. helps her dad in an endeavor which goes terribly wrong ..
Well, this story ends up being a real mix of coming of age, thriller, family loss, self discovery.

Note… the author said that Saul was loosely inspired by the Unabomber!

Big thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing group for the free digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

What Kind of Paradise is set at the time that the internet was really starting to become accessible to the masses. The main character's father had a past with working in the technology sector and went off the deep end and left everything behind, moving his young daughter and himself to rural Montana and living off the grid as much as possible.

As the years pass, the internet really starts to take off and the father gets more and more paranoid in his beliefs. His daughter, now a teen, is starting to wonder if her father really is right or if there is more out there than what he believes to be true.

I found this one to be a bit slow moving in the middle after getting intrigued by the plot in the beginning. Some of it was hard to wrap my head around, but then I had to remind myself how just because certain things that happened in this book wouldn't even remotely fly in today's world, that back then, things were a lot easier to get around and there was a lot less suspicion as a whole.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I could see how some might feel a little letdown by it if promoted as a thriller since it does move at a slower pace than one would want with that genre.

This book has some great elements. Jane is a teenage girl living off the grid with her father in Montana who starts to question everything she has been lead to believe. Told that her mother died in a car crash when she was 4, Jane has only had her dad to show her to ways of his world. The story opens with modern day Jane living a quiet life until someone forces her to remember her past. The rest of the book is set in the 90's at the time when the internet was new and tech was booming. Jane insists on traveling with her father on own of his trips and ends up being an accomplice to a horrific crime. This crime sets her on a path to San Francisco to find out what really happened to her mother.

Janelle Brown's writing is always strong and her characters compelling. Jane felt somewhat stunted in her emotions and behaviors but I attributed that to her upbringing and lack of interaction with the world and others. There was definite suspense as the story was doled out, both from the events in Jane's life but also the setting of the computer era really taking off. Conspiracy theories, radicalism, and isolation are themes in this book and I think the author did a great job of bringing you into Jane's small, but rapidly expanding, world.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

Omg!!! Probably going to be my fave of the month. This book had everything, family drama, conspiracy theorist/radicals, tech, y2k era vibes…. I loved the way the story was told, the twists and turns. It was surprising and I didn’t really expect it to go where it went. I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND this one.

Wow. I was not expecting this. Loosely, based on the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, this story sheds light on extreme paranoia and isolation. There are so many surprising themes covered in this book. I enjoyed this. It's also so different from what is out there. I love reading suspense in such a different way. Thank you, NetGalley!

The new releases this year have been so so good and What Kind of Paradise does not disappoint. This book hooked me from the first page and never let me go until the last word.
I thought this book was going to be a wilderness survivalist story but it was really nothing like that. This book tells the story of Jane, who lives in a secluded cabin with her father in the Montana wilderness. As Jane begins to learn more about the world and realizes that her father has been hiding things from her, everything changes and the story really takes off. This story explores identity, family ties, love, the evils and wonders of technology and asks the important question, are you one of the good guys? I look forward to reading more of what Janelle Brown has written because I absolutely loved this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for an advanced copy of this book.

This will be a top book of the year! It surprised me in the best kind of way. Jane lives, secluded from the world, with only her father. The story changes when she goes to California and experiences life outside of her bubble.

ALL THE STARS!! Wow, a very immersive & un-put-downable read, literally finished it in about 24 hours (who needs sleep LOL). This one is primarily told by Jane, the 17 y.o. MC who’s being raised “Off the Grid” and home schooled in rural Montana in the 90’s by her conspiracy-addled Dad. I initially had some issues with her blind loyalty and naiveté, but when the setting changed to the emerging tech world of San Francisco, it really picked up. That part I really appreciated, and author Brown captures that zeitgeist of dial-up modems, MapQuest, and early dot-com visionaries well. I was reading another NF tech book at the same time and found that they both had a lot to say about how we got to our current dystopia. Highly recommend this phenomenal book!

This was exactly what I wanted: girl growing up practically feral in the backwoods of Montana.  The chapters zipped right along, and I was fascinated.  Jane's life is pretty claustrophobic: it's her dad, and her, and the ramshackle cabin in the woods.  But gradually, as Jane reaches adulthood, she starts to ask questions, and the answers are not always forthcoming.  

The opening chapter is present-day Jane, a mother herself, living a "regular" suburban life, so you know eventually Jane gets out of the woods, and you know her father does ... something newsworthy, in a Unabomber kind of way.  When Jane rummages around her cabin looking for things, and sets aside jars of random bent nails, you know more than Jane does about what those nails are for.  It's a subtle sort of foreshadowing.

The middle of the book, right after Jane gets out of Montana, sagged a bit.  Things go too well for Jane, and I started to get fidgety and bored. But it picks up again!

In general, parts of this book could have been edited to be a lot more concise.  Her dad's long and whiney and self-congratulatory screed that he left for her to read was ... long and whiney and self-congratulatory.  I would have preferred the Cliff's Notes version, and I skimmed parts of that.   I would have given this five stars if it had not felt so bloated.

The writing is generally straightforward, which is how I like it, with a few moments of startling beauty, such as:
<blockquote><i>We are undone by the specificity of our dreams. Reality can never live up to the shining edifices we forge inside our fantasies: Life, in all its confusing complexity, is destined to be a disappointment in comparison.</i></blockquote>

This story of the baby Internet in mid-90s San Francisco is laced with real companies and sites (hotmail, AOL, geocities, Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, AltaVista, MIT Media Lab, Yahoo, IBM) and fake companies (Peninsula Research Institute, Signal, Kaboom). As someone who grew up before the Internet, it was tempting to try to line up the fictional companies in this story with real companies.  Is Floozy a stand-in for Jezebel?  Is Kaboom! a stand-in for Yahoo!?  (The exclamation point indicates "yes," but the fact that Yahoo is mentioned in this book indicates "no.")  At first I thought Signal was Oracle, because the names, locations, and timeline are similar, but Signal is a media and blog company, while Oracle is a software company.  Is Signal a stand-in for Gawker?  (This is what I thought next, the details synch, but the timeline is all wrong.)  Most likely, Signal is Wired (the big clue being Lionel's userid is "SFWired1", also, the author worked at Wired and Salon).  Brianna serves "Two Buck Chuck" wine, which didn't exist back in 1997.

In the author's note, Brown confirms that Ted Kaczynski was her inspiration for Adam Nowak.  No surprise there. I wish there had been more original story and less Unabomber story. I wanted MORE about Jane/Esme's mental & emotional growth.

This was a really well written story with interesting characters The premise was unique and I felt like I learned something as well.

I have heard so many good things about Janelle Brown’s novels and this book did not disappoint. I loved this book about Jane who is raised off the grid with her survivalist father who has unique ideas about society. I’ve seen this billed as a thriller it is more of a family mystery/slow burn with lots of character development. I also found this book to be very unique. I’ve never read anything quite like it. The thoughts about technology were very interesting and how society should proceed forward. I also really adored Lionel. I loved this book and absolutely cannot wait to read Janelle Brown’s backlist.