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.

I got this book several months ago in my Book of the Month box and for whatever reason it sat untouched for months. I was in the mood for another family drama, so I picked it up. While it didn’t blow me away, it’s a very well-written look at what growing up in isolation can do to a person.

Jane has grown up with just her father in a remote Montana cabin. He’s a prepper. Suspicious of everyone. Doesn’t trust the government, and mostly keeps out of the public eye. As Jane grows, her father teaches her to distrust the government, convinces her that public school and college are wastes of time and money, and most importantly, the only person she can ever really trust is him. He keeps her isolated and homeschools her using old philosophy books. He’s also really vague about their past, only telling her they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident.

But as Jane nears 18, her father decides to build a website to spread his anti-government propaganda since no one is buying his zine anymore. (This is set in the 90s, by the way.) Jane learns HTML to help him. And in doing so, she discovers the world wide web. Her father doesn’t really understand the internet and doesn’t expect Jane to go deep diving on what happened to her mother. He definitely doesn’t expect her to start connecting with people outside of their small town.

When one dangerous night with her father makes Jane an accomplice to an act of terrorism, she escapes. She runs to San Francisco, the only other place she knows. She’s looking for answers about her mother and her past, but escaping from your past and the sins of your father is never easy.

I thought the author did a great job portraying Jane and what her life would look like, especially regarding the simple things we take for granted that she would have no idea exist. She’s been so isolated and so brainwashed her entire life that the world feels completely foreign to her. I felt for her. She was a very interesting character to spend time with.

Likewise, her father was also interesting. He’s paranoid, controlling, and completely convinced he’s right about everything. Honestly, his personality grated on my last nerve, but any character who can make you feel intense things one way or another is a well-written character. And he absolutely made me feel things. (None of them good.)

I also enjoyed reliving the 90s and the rollout of the world wide web. The internet was this new, wild thing. Chat rooms. Dial-up. The sound of a modem connecting. Watching Jane discover all of this for the first time was fascinating. She’s experiencing something completely revolutionary, and she doesn’t even fully understand what she’s stumbled into.

That said, I thought the story was compelling, but it didn’t really blow me away. This was labeled as a thriller and I didn’t feel that was the case at all. Mystery? Sure, there are elements of a mystery here. Jane is trying to figure out what happened to her mother and who she really was. But I never found it particularly thrilling.

The writing is strong, the character work is solid, and the exploration of isolation and control and how that shapes a person is really well done. But it didn’t grab me the way I hoped it would. I finished it feeling satisfied but not blown away. The pacing is slower and the tension is more internal than external. It’s more about Jane’s journey of self-discovery than it is about edge-of-your-seat suspense.

If you’re drawn to character-driven family dramas, stories about escaping controlling parents, or books set in the 90s during the early internet days, this is worth picking up. All in all, I liked it, but it wasn’t a standout for me.

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