39. What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown

listened on Libby

368 pgs.

2025
Adult CRF
Finished 8/19/25
Goodreads rating: 4.14
My rating: 4
Setting: late 1990s Montana

My comments: Jane/Esme, raised by her dad in the middle of the Montana woods, gives us her life story from her point of view, telling how she lived and grew up with her dad until she discovered what was really going on.  Is technology going to "get us" in the end?

Goodreads synopsis: 

A teenage girl breaks free from her father's world of isolation in this exhilarating novel of family, identity, and the power we have to shape our own destinies—from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear

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 the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence existence, 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 Thoreau-like 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 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.

96. A Merciful Truth by Kendra Elliot

#2 Mercy Kilpatrick, Oregon FBI
read on my iPhone (have on Kindle)
2017 Montlake Romance (See, I've being saying this is more a romance than a mystery!!!)
322 pgs.
Adult Mystery with a lot of romance
Finished 10/4/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.25 - 15,481 ratings
My rating: 2.5
Setting:  Contemporary rural Oregon

First line/s: "Police Chief Truman Daly slammed the door of his Tahoe and raised a hand to protect his face from the heat of the fire."

My comments:  This took me forever to finish, I slowly plowed through over a month's time while listening to others.  Mystery, yes, but also a great deal of romance, a little more than I was happy with.  The story was easy to follow and predictable.  Family means everything to mercy, no matter what injustices they enact.  It's a little nauseating.

Goodreads synopsis:  Raised by a family of survivalists, FBI agent Mercy Kilpatrick can take on any challenge—even the hostile reception to her homecoming. But she’s not the only one causing chaos in the rural community of Eagle’s Nest, Oregon. At first believed to be teenage pranks, a series of fires takes a deadly turn with the murder of two sheriff’s deputies. Now, along with Police Chief Truman Daly, Mercy is on the hunt for an arsonist turned killer.
          Still shunned by her family and members of the community, Mercy must keep her ear close to the ground to pick up any leads. And it’s not long before she hears rumors of the area’s growing antigovernment militia movement. If the arsonist is among their ranks, Mercy is determined to smoke the culprit out. But when her investigation uncovers a shocking secret, will this hunt for a madman turn into her own trial by fire?

93. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

read by Julia Whelan
Listened through OverDrive - borrowed from Tucson Library
2018 Random House
334 pgs.
Genre/Level
Finished 10/17/18
Goodreads rating:  4.47 - 102,590 ratings
My rating:  4.5
Setting:  contemporary rural Idaho

First line/s:  "I'm standing on the red railway car that stands abandoned next to the barn."

My comments:  Well.  This was quite the memoir.  Totally believable, unlike some of the reviews I read.  Extreme religion, Mormonism, survivalism, bullying, huge families, brainwashing, abuse both physical and mental, conspiracy theories, and all sorts of atrocities that are the "will of god" ..... taking place in Idaho, in the same environs as Ruby Ridge.  Tara Westover escapes, but suffers, trying to rebuild and relearn a life that has harmed her greatly.  Powerful.  Memories relived vividly with the help of journals and journaling.  Read beautifully, a really good story to listen to.

Goodreads synopsis:  An unforgettable memoir in the tradition of The Glass Castleabout a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University
          Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.
          Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.
          Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
          Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.

30. A Merciful Death by Kendra Elliot

read on my iPhone
2017, Montlake Romance
342 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 5/29/17
Goodreads rating:  4.22 - 6951 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting: Contemporary rural Oregon

First line/s:  "Mercy Kilpatrick wondered whom she'd ticked off at the Portland FBI office."

My comments:  Characters and setting were interesting and well written.  The idea of a community of people who are survivalists is intriguing, and although the protagonist, Mercy, had left this way of life when she was only 18, it was still a big part of her and she was still drawn to many of its tenants. Sheriff Truman Daly was almost a little too good to be true and hard to believe that he had not already been snatched up by some female or other.   The plot moved along at a decent pace, and though the "surprises" weren't really surprises, it was fun to see how Mercy pulled all the little ends together.  At times it was a little disconcerting that the point-of-view would change for a very short time, switching back very quickly to one of the two main protagonists.  I'll be interested to see whether this is something that will continue in the next book or it it was the only way Kendra Elliot though she could subtly include needed information.  I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, which comes out in a few months.

Goodreads synopsis  FBI special agent Mercy Kilpatrick has been waiting her whole life for disaster to strike. A prepper since childhood, Mercy grew up living off the land—and off the grid—in rural Eagle’s Nest, Oregon. Until a shocking tragedy tore her family apart and forced her to leave home. Now a predator known as the cave man is targeting the survivalists in her hometown, murdering them in their homes, stealing huge numbers of weapons, and creating federal suspicion of a possible domestic terrorism event. But the crime scene details are eerily familiar to an unsolved mystery from Mercy’s past.          
          Sent by the FBI to assist local law enforcement, Mercy returns to Eagle’s Nest to face the family who shunned her while maintaining the facade of a law-abiding citizen. There, she meets police chief Truman Daly, whose uncle was the cave man’s latest victim. He sees the survivalist side of her that she desperately tries to hide, but if she lets him get close enough to learn her secret, she might not survive the fallout…