A review by emilypoche
What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown, Janelle Brown

reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. 

What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown follows a teenage girl, Jane, who has spent her childhood in seclusion in the Montana wilderness with her father. After introducing the early internet into their lives, Jane realizes that she’s part of something much greater and more sinister than her father’s led her to believe. Fleeing to San Francisco, Jane seeks to find a truth about her identity by both learning about her past and about who she wants to be on her own. 

(Spoiler alert here:) This book’s main premise is a fictionalized version of the Unabomber saga. The father, Adam, is the same ‘tortured, radicalized genius’ with a similar career and backstory. He writes a manifesto and turns to domestic terror. Where things depart history is that this posits, what if he had a daughter? What if he had an ex-wife as part of his lore? This is what is probably the most interesting element of the story, which is seeing how easily the concept of a younger, unwitting accomplish slots in. A brainwashed, sheltered teen with esteem for her father creates a nice, complicated narrator grappling with her identity. 

Without spending too much of this review going through the individual questions the book posits, this story does bring up a lot of discussions of agency, technology, parentage, and radicalization. While the author can sometimes be a little too over handed with trying to pose some of the questions, it would be an excellent option for a book club, as it covers a lot of pretty big ideas. 

I think that this book, despite dealing with some pretty heavy themes, is very readable. The prose is relatable and engaging, while still not trivializing what Jane is going through. 

Where this book was disappointing was in the pacing. It felt like the book came to such an ending, and then the ‘postscript’ was so abrupt. It felt like a quick summary that didn’t do justice to the rest of the story, and it seemed a little hurried comparatively.  It’s my opinion that the two book end chapters in present day did little to add to the narrative. I felt like they made the pacing somewhat uneven. The information that was  given in these chapters didn’t improve the story, and I think the narrative is best ended on the very finite but open ended note of the final 1990s chapter. 

I think for people who enjoy crime stories, this is a wonderful choice. Despite the fact that it’s not true crime per se, it uses a real life inspiration that makes it compelling option. I’d rate this a 3.5/5.