What Kind of Paradise

A Novel

De: Janelle Brown

Narrado por: Peter Ganim, Helen Laser

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A teenage girl breaks free from her father’s world of isolation to discover that her whole life is a lie in this “absorbing and well-crafted” (The Washington Post) novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear.

“A mesmerizing blend of coming-of-age and psychological suspense, set against the birth of the internet age.”—People

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.

Couldn’t put it down

Love Janelle Brown and this new release didn’t disappoint. I was hooked from the beginning and finished in a weekend . It did start off feeling similar to The Great Alone but the plot takes a sharp turn in another direction a few hours in and gets so good! Great performance too. The ending felt a little rushed over with all the build up but loved the book overall.

Cool story !

The narrators were great. The story had the perfect balance of suspense, realism and character development. It held my attention from beginning to end!

Esme’s Crazy Upbringing Helped Her in the End

I liked this historical look back into the beginnings of the internet. The juxtaposition of all the promise it could bring with all the scariness people dreamed up at the same time takes me back to the mid 1990s when my family first got our home computer. The warnings weren’t all crazy. Many of the scenarios we were afraid of, have come home to roost. That’s a neat parallel running in the background of the book the whole time.

The book is really well written with a character you can root for. You’ll like Esme from the beginning and she never falls out of favor, though her naivety is frustrating at times, it’s understandable. She’s smart and strong.

The book also makes you really wonder about the families of domestic terrorists - the children and wives and husbands whose lives they forever change with their actions.

Compelling Story

Compelling story that has a good cadence and great narration. Beautifully written, leaves you with questions to ponder in your own life.

Janelle Brown is BRILLIANT!

I read her books without knowing what they are even about! This one is just brilliant! It’s different but sucks you in and leaves you unable to stop listening until you know how it ends! Enjoy every second!