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 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 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.
Book Info: Print length: 544 pages. Publisher: Diversified Publishing. Publication Date: 3 June 2025
My Thoughts:
This book kept appearing on my newsfeeds and suffering from FOMO I really, really needed to read it, despite it not being available in the UK on Kindle.
What Kind of Paradise is Janelle Brown’s latest novel published in June 2025. With a dual timeline, the book is narrated by Jane. During the mid-90’s she grew up with her father in an isolated cabin in Montana and she starts the book in the present explaining how and why she is telling her side of the story years later.
Having grown up with a single father who controlled every aspect of her life, from what she reads to what she learns (through home-schooling) she doesn’t know any different. However when she reaches her teens she starts to realise that this isn’t “normal” and begins to silently question her father’s strong and unconventional beliefs.
When she is exposed to what her father does when he leaves the cabin, Jane realises she needs to get away to save herself.
This is a slow-burning, character led drama which takes the reader on an emotional and atmospheric journey. It’s thought-provoking and disturbing in places and reminded me of The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne, Adrift by Will Dean and Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.
