A dazzling debut novel about best friends, adolescent longing, and the Florida pawn shop that promises to make their dreams come true—if it doesn’t break them apart first. Fall in love with Paradise Pawn, Meg Richardson’s debut novel based on her own experiences working behind the counter of a pawn shop.
ISBN
9781963108736
Page count
256
Edition
Paperback
Sale date
July 14, 2026
Dimensions
5-1/2 x 8-1/2
About the Book
Teenage best friends Jackie and Kayla can sell anything. Alongside their fathers, they work at a pawn shop in Cherry Beach, Florida, handling everything from Cartier jewelry to chainsaws to cars. When the girls learn that Kayla’s family can’t afford a private school opportunity that Jackie’s can, Jackie becomes distraught about losing her best friend if they go to different schools. With their sharp minds but youthful lack of foresight, they scheme a way to embezzle money from the pawn shop. As the hot Florida summer unfolds, the girls steal thousands of dollars from the shop. But when their heist is discovered, Jackie is faced with a situation that no amount of negotiating or charisma can fix.
With incredible heart and wit, Richardson navigates current-day themes of trust, familial love, female friendship, and class differences, and asks us how far we would go to protect the ones we love most.
Teenage best friends Jackie and Kayla can sell anything. Alongside their fathers, they work at a pawn shop in Cherry Beach, Florida, handling everything from Cartier jewelry to chainsaws to cars. When the girls learn that Kayla’s family can’t afford a private school opportunity that Jackie’s can, Jackie becomes distraught about losing her best friend if they go to different schools. With their sharp minds but youthful lack of foresight, they scheme a way to embezzle money from the pawn shop. As the hot Florida summer unfolds, the girls steal thousands of dollars from the shop. But when their heist is discovered, Jackie is faced with a situation that no amount of negotiating or charisma can fix.
With incredible heart and wit, Richardson navigates current-day themes of trust, familial love, female friendship, and class differences, and asks us how far we would go to protect the ones we love most.
Reviews
“Meg Richardson’s Paradise Pawn joins the ranks of novels helmed by heartbreaking child narrators (think Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster, Lisa Shea’s Hula, Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!) who are up against themselves and the world trying to figure out who they are and who they might be. In a voice filled with authority and authenticity, Jackie tries to navigate an unfair world while caring for and about her single father and her best, best friend, sometimes succeeding brilliantly and sometimes failing spectacularly. With deft compassion, Richardson paints a clear-eyed portrait of the world of pawn shops and beach towns, allows Jackie to get into all sorts of messes, and sticks with her while she figures her way out, reminding both her characters and her readers of something we all could use a reminder about: You can’t control what the world throws at you, and everyone makes mistakes, so being a grown-up might mean nothing more and nothing less than owning what is yours to take responsibility for.”
“A lovely book that captures the rhythms and travails of working-class life. Meg Richardson is a rising new talent.”
“Paradise Pawn cleverly captures the absurdity of adulthood through the eyes of a child. As an employee in a pawnshop—where love and desperation, poverty and wealth are on display just as much as the wares—our young narrator bravely clings onto how the world should be, even as she is reminded daily of how it really is. Hopeful, heartbreaking, and oftentimes hilarious, Richardson artfully paints a vibrant, colorful world with only black ink on a white page.”
Meg Richardson
Meg Richardson is a writer, translator, and cartoonist from Iowa. She currently lives in Vermont. She holds a BA from Williams College and an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. Paradise Pawn is based on her experiences working behind the counter of a pawn shop.
