What Kind of Paradise

A Novel

By: Janelle Brown

Narrated by: 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.

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!

What a great story!

Never a boring page or chapter. Loved the book and narration was great. Highly recommend.

Unbalanced story.

So much lovely writing and fine storytelling but the main characters remain a mystery and the story resolution given a desultory lick or two to a quick end.

Absolutely wonderful.

The story. The characters. The narrator. Everything about this one is good. Definitely worth the read! (Listen)

Thought provoking, fast paced

Great story and characters that kept my interest with interesting twists and turns. Excellent narration as well!