WHAT KIND OF PARADISE

A teenage girl breaks free from her father’s world of isolation in this novel about family, identity, and the power we have to shape our own destinies.

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 existence, 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.

PRAISE FOR WHAT KIND OF PARADISE

"What Kind of Paradise is a twisty, sharp coming-of-age story for our strange techno-utopian times. It brims with suspense and family secrets, all the while asking big questions about the cost of progress. Janelle Brown writes with clarity and prescience about inheritance, technology, and moral gray areas. I raced through this."  — Rachel Khong, NYT bestselling author of Real Americans

"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 Alan, NYT bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and Entitlement

“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 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

“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 

"Janelle Brown’s new novel is a complete knockout. Written in Brown’s characteristically hypnotic scenes, What Kind of Paradise features a fierce young woman fleeing her self-proclaimed prophet father.  This novel should be required reading for anyone with qualms about extremism or Big Tech.  A sinuous, intensely satisfying, spectacular read."

—Amity Gaige, author of Heartwood and Schroder