FICTION

What Kind of Paradise

Random. Jun. 2025. 368p. ISBN 9780593449783. $30. F
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Jane has spent most of her life with her widowed father in a remote Montana cabin. Secluded and with only old philosophy books for education, Jane, now a teenager, knows little about the outside world of her era, the mid-1990s. The rural lifestyle that her father perceives as utopian feels to Jane more like prison. As her socially withdrawn father becomes increasingly paranoid and unstable, Jane begins to question their isolated existence and the secrets surrounding her mother’s mysterious death. Determined to uncover the truth, Jane looks for clues using the very technology her father abhors and follows a trail of breadcrumbs to San Francisco, putting both herself and her father at risk. There, she is thrust into a world unlike anything she’s ever known, where the rise of the internet, shifting cultural landscapes, and new relationships cause her to reevaluate everything about her past, her identity, and what it truly means to be free.
VERDICT Brown’s (I’ll Be You) 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.
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