My Readers Guide to What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown discusses that this is NOT your typical suspense book or thriller. It’s a slow build, slow burn suspense story that I found completely gripping. This Readers Guide will include Jen’s Quick Spoiler Free Take, a plot summary with spoilers for What Kind of Paradise, plus the ending explained.
Readers Guide for What Kind of Paradise
What Kind of Paradise is not the typical suspense story. It’s a look back at the way technology in our society has dramatically changed in the past three decades. It’s also an in-depth character study of a very unusual father and daughter and I had a hard time putting it down. Yes, it’s a slow burn but I found it gripping.
This Readers Guide to What Kind of Paradise will have my Quick Take, a plot summary and the ending of What Kind of Paradise explained.
I love book discussion, so I welcome ALL your comments (even if you disagree with me!)
Jen’s Quick Take on What Kind of Paradise
- What Kind of Paradise is an intriguing book. It’s historical fiction. It’s suspense. It reminded me both of Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter with a hint of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
- A great book club pick, What Kind of Paradise would spark great discussions about family dysfunction, mental health, vigilante justice, and the role of technology in our society.
- It’s not a fast-paced thriller, but I found Jane’s very unusual predicament completely gripping.
- Publication date: June 3, 2025 by Random House. Thanks so much to the publisher for the advance review copy.
Plot Summary With Spoilers for What Kind of Paradise
What Kind of Paradise is a frame story, opening with the narrator in the present day. She opens her door to find a reporter there and thinks that what she dreaded for years finally happened: she’d been found.
1996
Jane Williams lives alone with her father Saul in the wilderness in Montana.
Jane‘s father, Saul, thinks he’s in all kinds of danger from the authorities and modern life. It’s unclear whether that’s true or he’s just suffering some kind of mental illness. Or both.
Since it is Jane’s birthday, she and her dad drive to the bookstore in Bozeman and meet Jane’s friend Heidi and her mom Lina. Lina suggest they might want to move closer to town for the winter, but her father has no interest.
That night, Saul wakes Jane up and says that it’s time: they have to flee. They grab their go bags and sneak into a secret tunnel that they’ve been digging. Jane is angry to find out that it’s only a drill.
Spoilers for What Kind of Paradise
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Jane breaks into her father study
Whenever Saul leaves the house to deliver his ‘zines (remember those?) Jane sneaks in and watches the TV he locks up in his study.
Jane finds a photo of herself at age three with her mother. She always thought her mother‘s name was Jennifer, but the photo says “Esme and Theresa.”
When Jane tells Heidi about this, Heidi asks what else Jane’s father is lying about.
Jane’s father brings home a laptop computer
No one is buying his homemade publication so he wants to get his manifesto on the World Wide Web..
Jane’s father asks her to research how to make a website (from a computer manual) and she learns that she loves coding.
Jane meets Lionel, a 21 year-old Stanford graduate, in an online chat room (remember those?)
After Jane gets her father’s manifesto up on the web, he takes the laptop away. Then he smashes the TV.
Jane’s father said he has some kind of “meeting” in Seattle
But he needs her to come, to wear a red dress and distract a security guard.
Jane ends up shooting the security guard while her father creates some kind of an explosion.
Afterwards, they split up. Her father says if he’s not home in two days, she needs to get her go back to their cabin, “light the fuse” and run to North Dakota. There’s an address in his desk.
Jane is tempted to drive their truck to California but does head home. She drives to the high school and asks Heidi if they can watch her TV.
Jane learns that the chief scientific officer of Microsoft just died in a bombing. He was a pioneer and artificial intelligence research. Plus, a security guard got wounded. The perpetrator left behind the URL of his website.
Jane debates: follow her father‘s instructions or break free
She breaks into his office and his desk and finds her birth certificate. Her real name is Esme Nowak.
Jane searches her name and learns that she and her father are missing and presumed dead
When Jane realized that her father killed a man as a stunt to draw attention to his website and manifesto, she lights the fuse and blows up the cabin.
She drives for a while, then decides to abandon the truck and get on the bus to San Francisco.
On the bus, she meets a girl named Desi who convinces Jane to take a sleeping pill and steals the $20,000 and hard drive that Jane took from the cabin.
Jane Becomes Esme Again
Jane goes to track down her friend from the chat room, Lionel. She introduces herself as Esme.
Esme’s first attempts to find her mother are unsuccessful, but she does get a low level coding job with at Lionel’s workplace, Signal.
Esme learns her father, Adam Nowak, murdered another man with a mail bomb. She recognizes him from on old photo that she had seen in her father’s office. Is he targeting his former colleagues?
Esme and Lionel track down Desi, the girl who stole her money and the hard drive. Shockingly she’s able to get most of her money and the hard drive back. In the bag, she finds a letter that her father wrote to her, which is really long and mansplain-y and all about him
Esme starts tracking down the men in the picture from her father’s office. One says that her mother is Theresa “Tess” Trevante, a well-known “futurist.”
Lionel figures out who Esme is and they decide they should to warn the other people in her dad’s picture.
Esme deletes her father’s website.
Esme manages to meet her mother
Tess isn’t the most maternal person by far. Then Adam/Saul shows up and tries to justify what he did, claiming that Tess wanted to make Esme into a “science project.” He wants to know where her mother lives and says he needs the hard drive because it has AI research on it.
What Kind of Paradise: The Ending Explained
Esme tells her mother that her ex-husband Adam is the bomber. Her mother offers to get Esme a lawyer, but clearly wants to distance herself from the entire mess.
The FBI tracks the location where Adam’s website was deleted. To protect Esme, Lionel confesses to deleting the website.
Esme confesses and helps the authorizes capture her father
Tess pays her legal bills, but basically dumps her. Lionel ends up getting arrested, but they let him go after Jane goes to the authorities to confess.
Present Day
Lionel calls to check on Esme. We learn that Esme went to art school, broke up with Lionel, and got pregnant by another guy, the father of her daughter.
Adam is still in jail. He sent letters to Esme, which she saved but did not open.
Tess pretty much cuts Esme off and styles herself as “Adam’s first victim.”
Adam’s manifesto is being taught in college, inspiring an anti-technology movement called “the Adamites.”
What did you think of What Kind of Paradise? Please leave comments, questions and suggestions in comments. I answer them all (and you will be notified when I do!)
What was her name in the end?
That is a great question and I don’t know. Esme discusses with Lionel the fact that she needs a new name but I went back and looked and I don’t think she ever says that she picked one or what it is.
If anyone knows, please leave a comment!