I have had such a great month of reading. Last week I picked up Janelle Brown's newest book What Kind of Paradise and devoured it. It was difficult to tear myself away long enough to teach summer school on Wednesday and I wasn't horribly productive until I turned the last page.
Jane and her father are living off the grid in Montana, and although this is all Jane has ever know (or can remember), as she becomes a teenager she starts to question some of what her dad tells her. It's the 1990s and her dad is anit-technology and self publishes his own newsletter proclaiming the evils of the modern world. Something is definitely not right with Jane's dad (I was getting Unabomber vibes), and when he writes a manifesto of sorts that he publishes online with Jane's help, Jane has some unsupervised time on the internet.
What she discovers sparks her curiosity and as she accompanies her father to San Francisco, she becomes an unlikely accomplice in his plans. She also begins to question everything she has been told by the one person she thought she could trust.
I loved the 90s setting, the suspense of this story as Jane begins to question what her dad has told her. I have thoughts about Jane's mom, and felt like Brown did a great job tying things up in the end without making everything too "nice."
This one was a five star read. Enjoyable from the very first page until the very last.
But What Kind of Paradise isn't Brown's first novel. Back in 2008 I read (and also devoured) All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. And since then she's been writing consistently high quality fiction; I look forward to reading anything she's written. So if Janelle Brown is a new-to-you author, pick up any title from her backlist. You won't be disappointed.
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