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.

Oh wow, this was utterly captivating.

Jane lives in Montana with her father Saul. They've lived in a remote cabin since the death of Jane's mother when Jane was four. Their house is a hour away from the nearest town, powered mainly by solar energy, and Jane is taught solely by her father, who rages against technology and preaches over and over that his daughter must fear "the feds" and other people. Now 17, Jane slowly begins questioning her father and his teachings. When she realizes he's unwittingly drawn her into committing a crime, she runs away and heads to San Francisco, looking for answers about the mother she never knew. It's the mid-90s, the Internet is just starting to come into power, and Jane--sheltered from so much--must decide what choices she'll make for her own survival.

This story was so mesmerizing, weaving a tale of isolation and fear. It was easy to feel how trapped Jane felt and see the power of only one voice in her life. She had so few choices, no other way of life to even dream about, with no access to education (except for the philosophy and anti-technology rants of her father). Still, through Saul, Brown makes excellent points about the control technology has over everyone's lives, including the Internet--it's all very timely for a novel set in the 1990s.

This is a powerful and emotional story, powered by its teenage protagonist. While often naive about the world, Jane is a tough kid and a fascinating person to follow. Her story highlights the importance of education and the stark contrast between parental love and parental control. It's also a relevant story for our technology-focused times.

This is a well written story with multifaceted characters. Suspenseful and thought provoking.
Jane has grown up in a remote cabin in rural Montana, her mother having died in a car accident when she was 4 years old, leaving her father to raise her. Jane's father eschews technology and his homeschooling of Jane has focused more on philosophy than science. She is now 17 and eager to experience the world, but he keeps her on a short leash on the rare trips when she accompanies him into Bozeman to deliver the anti-technology zine he writes, but it's 1996 and things are starting to move online so he brings home a modem, a laptop, and books on how to make code html, and he gets Jane to make a website for the manifesto he has written. When he disappears for a few days on one of the mysterious trips he sometimes makes, Jane uses her access to the fledgling world wide web to explore the world she has been cut off from, but what she really wants to know is more about her mother. Not long after, Jane convinces her father to take her along on one of his trips, intent on running away to San Fransisco where she thinks her mother died, but instead Jane finds herself on the run, trying to navigate the Bay area as a naive girl on her own for the first time in her life. What Kind of Paradise is a sweeping coming-of-age story that explores themes of family and how one's identity is shaped, as well as the influence of technology on human evolution.

I will be recommending this book to everyone! I could not put it down. I was drawn to the main character because of her innocence — seeing the world through her eyes was fascinating and it will push you to think about both the drawbacks and advantages of technology. I also love a San Fransisco setting, so that was also right up my alley! Great mix of family drama and mystery. Read this book!!

This is my second Janell Brown book and she is quickly becoming a must read author for me. I really enjoyed the first half of this book! It had an interesting premise, a great main character, and enough mystery to keep me turning the pages. I also loved that it was set in the 90s. A bit of nostalgia for us elder mellenial/gen x folks. However, once I hit the 50% mark it started to drag a bit. I found myself skipping pages and pages of descriptive writing just to keep the storyline moving along (this might be my problem not the writing haha). I was invested enough to keep going and found the resolution satisfactory enough. There are a few things left unanswered that could've rounded out the ending a bit more, but overall a good read and a much different type of story than your typical suspense/thriller novel. I'm surprised by some of the negative reviews but I wonder if these readers are too young to fully understand the nuances of 80s/90s culture and how the internet/computers completely changed our lives.

3.5 stars rounded up

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a free digital copy in exchange for an honest review

Every novel starts with a what if. What if Harriet Tubman came back to life and decided to record a hip-hop album? What if you were a retired assassin, and someone was trying to kill you? The premise of Janelle Brown’s What Kind of Paradise is, what if your dad was the Unabomber?

Jane lives with her father in a remote cabin in Montana; it’s the only life she’s ever known. He told Jane that her mother died when she was very young, and ever since, it’s been the two of them against the world.

When Jane becomes a teenager, however, she longs to experience life beyond the cabin. She’s occasionally able to catch a peek on her dad’s old TV, when he’s away and she manages to to break into the locked room where it’s kept. It’s the 1990s, and she secretly loves “The X-Files,” even though her father feels that television is a form of societal mind control: “The classic fiction my father had fed me—Anna Karenina and The Red and the Black and The Scarlet Letter—hadn’t prepared me for these wild flights of imagination.”

Her father begins to disappear from the cabin for longer stretches of time, and one day, when he returns, Jane begs him to let her come along on one of his trips. It turns out he’s headed to Seattle, home of Microsoft; his goal is to try and stop the march of technology by any means necessary, and his daughter, who only wanted to visit the big city, becomes his unwitting accomplice.

Shortly thereafter, Jane finds herself in San Francisco at the dawn of the dotcom era. As someone who has first-hand experience with that time and place, I found the portrayal of the hope and promise of the World Wide Web 1.0 to be so accurate that it didn’t surprise me to find out that Brown lived through it as well. (She notes in the acknowledgments that she worked at Wired and Salon at the time.) At one point, Jane picks up a copy of a Wired-like magazine called Signal and reads about “The Future Coming Our Way in the Next 25 Years”: “An economic boom due to new technological breakthroughs will enable everyone to join the middle class, so that there are no more working poor. The proliferation of new media will allow truth to disseminate in new ways, through new voices, bringing an end to widespread ignorance. A rise of liberalism due to a connected global citizenry will usher in the New Enlightenment and the end of fascism and authoritarianism.” The glimpse of 1990s-era techno-utopianism seems heartbreakingly naive in retrospect, but it’s definitely representative of its time; Brown’s Signal issue is clearly inspired by Wired’s notorious “The Long Boom” cover.

In 2025, the writings of Ted Kaczynski seem to be enjoying something of a renaissance. The New York Times recently referred to it as “Tedpilling”—“Kaczynski’s manifesto, dismissed in the 1990s as impenetrable, is now the subject of YouTube videos drawing millions of views apiece.” Luigi Mangione gave it a four-star review on Goodreads, noting that “it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”

Brown’s novel is a work of imagination, even if it was inspired by factual events, but she writes with such insight and empathy that I couldn’t help but think that if Kaczynski had a daughter, yes, this is exactly how she might have felt. This is a tremendous book, a thoughtful page-turner that I hope will find a place on the bestseller lists.

I absolutely loved this book. It was so compelling and I could not put it down. Jane/Esme was such an intriguing character, and her first person narration about the way she grew up with her unstable father and how she navigated her world post-Montana was heartbreaking. I highly recommend this book and it is certainly one that I will not forget.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book was published June 3.

This is the first book I’ve read by Janelle Brown and I really enjoyed it. I was immediately drawn into Jane’s story. We meet her as an adult with a daughter of her own and then the story flips back to the early-min 1990’s, when she is a teenager, living off the grid with her father in Montana. She’s as far from the typical teenager as you can get and her story is a page-turner.

Themes include technology, family relationships, friendship and nature.

This is a good summer read.

This is a captivating book that grabbed me right from the start, and my interest never waned. It’s a story about family, technology, and finding one’s way in the world when all you know is what you’ve been taught. It’s also partly a mystery with all details being explained by the end. I’ve read two other books by Janelle Brown, and this was by far the best. The storytelling is top-notch and never loses steam.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 Crazy story of a girl brought up by an anarchist, isolationist father who finally gets to enter the real world as an 18 year old. Her childhood is a mix of beauty and learning mixed with hardship. I couldn’t put it down when she started into the world and wanted so much more of her life when the story ended.

Jane and her father live an isolated existence in a remote cabin in the Montana wilderness. They subsist largely off the land, off the grid and with almost no connection to anyone beyond one another, save for a few places in town that Jane is permitted to visit with her father. Jane’s father is staunch in his view of the world and of the ways he believes a technology-centered society will be a harbinger of destruction for humanity.

Now on the brink of adulthood, Jane is curious about the world outside of their remote existence, especially as she starts to get a taste for it by helping her father publish his manifesto on the internet - namely Geocities, a site this millennial remembers in the 90s when internet proliferation really took off.

The series of events that follow the publication of his beliefs and a trip to Seattle with her father - her first foray into a big city - goes horribly wrong and sends Jane’s world into a tailspin.

This offers her the chance to forge her own path in San Francisco during the dotcom boom of the late 90s, deconstructing her indoctrination and developing her own view of the world, building relationships and community, and reconnecting with the past she had little idea existed.

What Kind of Paradise was a great read from start to finish. Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for an advanced copy. Strongly recommend readers (of any kind!) pick up a copy this summer.

This was an entrancing story. I loved the concept—it felt refreshingly different from the norm. I also really enjoyed the setting in the dotcom era; it added a nostalgic and unique backdrop. There are so many great quotes throughout, and at its core, this is truly a coming-of-age story.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House. This is out now!
P.S. It is also a Book Of The Month Choice for June!

17-year old Jane has been raised by her father in a cabin in remote Montana. Jane’s mom died when she was 4 and her father is very mistrusting of the “feds” and of technology. He is a smart man and has degrees from Harvard in three subjects and has taught Jane everything he knows. But Jane is itching to do and see more outside of their secluded life. When she accompanies her dad to Seattle when he is seeing a friend, things go very wrong when she is attacked and shoots the guy in self-defense. But what her dad has done is much, much worse.

This was really good. There was kind of a before and after section where life was very different for Jane. I could even almost agree with parts of her dad’s anti-technology rants (with hindsight), but of course he takes it to an extreme. I maybe would have liked a bit more in the wrap-up at the end

I love anything Brown writes and this was no except. While different then other work of hers, this coming of age story was heartbreaking.

Thank you @netgalley for my copy!

I didn't really know what to expect from this book, but was drawn to the title and cover. I tried starting it a few times and was at first having trouble getting into it, the beginning had this impending sense of doom but slow build that made me start and stop. But, once I got passed the 25% mark I was thoroughly hooked and finished in a day. I liked the commentary on technology, parenting choices, and free will. I can see this being a polarizing read for some, but I liked it.

Thank you Netgalley & Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Random House for the advanced reader copy.

What kind of paradise is my favorite of browns yet and I think this should propel her to a different tier. Reminiscent of the last thing he told me, this book is about a complex family and their secrets during the Silicon Valley dotcom boom. Jane lives isolated from the world with her dad after the death of her mother reading 19th century literature and watching 90s sitcoms. Her father is an extremist protecting Jane from the threat he views of the growing technology crisis even going so far as to publish a manifesto against it. Jane is shocked when her dad decides to take her out of their rural utopia and take a road trip to the west coast-the heart of everything he views as wrong. Suddenly, Jane’s entire world opens up and everything she thought she know and realizes was a lie.

I loved this book-fast-paced but told with heart and depth. The plot is absorbing-not a thriller-but a psychological family drama. You will feel empathy for Jane and I loved the setting of the dotcom boom San Fran and tech dystopian feel of the novel. Really well done!

Really well-done and highly recommend!

Janelle Brown is one of my favorite writers. I’ve given all her previous novels 5 stars, and What Kind of Paradise is no exception, though it definitely feels like a departure from her usual work. This one is intense. It's more raw, more emotional, and somehow both a slow-burning character study and a pulse-pounding journey of self-discovery. I literally couldn’t put it down and read the entire thing in one sitting.

Jane’s story is heartbreaking and riveting, especially as she begins to unravel the truth about her past and her father’s carefully constructed world. The Montana wilderness setting is beautifully rendered, as is Silicon Valley in its infancy. I also loved all the discourse about the destructive side of technology and found a lot of the AI stuff to be a little concerning. Really interesting to read at this time in history.

Brown’s writing is as sharp and immersive as ever, and she handles this heavier material with grace and grit. This powerful, haunting story is going to stay with me for a long time. I'd give it more than 5 stars if I could.