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A Novel
by Janelle Brown
A teenage girl breaks free from her father's world of isolation to discover that her whole life is a lie in this propulsive new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear.
The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.
Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.
As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother's death: San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.
In this sweeping, suspenseful novel from bestselling author Janelle Brown, we see a young woman on a quest to understand how we come to know ourselves. It is a bold and unforgettable story about parents and children; nature and technology; innocence and knowledge; the losses of our past and our dreams for the future.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (11/13/2025)
I'm just finished Dust Child by Nguyen Phan Que Mai on audio, which I very much enjoyed. And for a physical book I'm reading What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown. I'm loving it and suspect it will be one of my favorite books of the year.
-Randi_H
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (11/6/2025)
I read Dominion by Addie Citchens :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: . What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown :star: :star: :star: :star: DNF'd Life, and Death and Giants Ron Rindo The Witch's Orchard Archur Sullivan
-Michele_P
"From the opening pages, Brown sets the suspense at a tantalizing slow boil, and Jane is a winningly well-shaded protagonist, but most of the plot's big reveals are predictable. Still, mystery readers drawn to character-driven stories will find much to like." —Publishers Weekly
"Brown's latest is part coming-of-age story, part psychological thriller, and part social commentary. The engaging characters and fast-paced plot take readers on a journey from the isolated mountains of Montana to the energetic tech boom of 1990s Silicon Valley." —Library Journal
"This is the kind of book I've been waiting for—an intelligent and thoughtful page-turner that explores the sometimes blurry lines between right and wrong, truth and fiction, choice and fate. In What Kind of Paradise, Janelle Brown methodically unravels my favorite kind of mystery—that of who we are and what we believe at our deepest core." —Jessica Knoll, New York Times bestselling author of Bright Young Women and Luckiest Girl Alive
"What Kind of Paradise is a swiftly moving, gorgeously told story that wrestles with the repercussions of progress, technology, capitalism, and power. But at its heart, it's the story of a father and a daughter fighting to understand where they belong in a world on the brink of revolutionary change. Longtime fans of Janelle Brown will be thrilled to find her blazing on all cylinders here and newcomers are in for an addictive treat. I couldn't put it down!" —Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of Good Company and The Nest
"What Kind of Paradise is an engrossing story of family secrets, assumed identities, and violent crime—the work of a writer who truly knows how to thrill. At the same time, Janelle Brown has constructed a tender novel about parents and children, one that leaves readers thinking about technology and the future, the individual and society, and weighing unanswerable questions of ethics and responsibility." —Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Entitlement and Leave the World Behind
This information about What Kind of Paradise was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of I'll Be You, Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This Is Where We Live. An essayist and journalist, she has written for Vogue, the New York Times, Elle, Wired, Self, Los Angeles Times, Salon, and more. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.
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