Customer Reviews

The Return Of Jonah Gray

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THE RETURN OF JONAH GRAY is a gentle love story, a visit with a dysfunctional family and seeing how much a career affects your personality all rolled into one. A play on words, Jonah is the recipient of an audit by Sasha Gardner. Jonah left his high profile job in Virginia as a journalist to work for a small-town paper in California. Add to this mystery he now blogs on the internet about gardening. Loved by all his followers, there has to be something wrong with him, right?

Sasha has a career working for the IRS. Just how much the job affects her personal life is seen in her relationships with boyfriends and family. I empathized with Sasha; how do you turn off your job when you are around someone new? And now the mysterious Jonah Gray enters her life on paper. What's a person to do?

Audit....Return....Gardening....Gardner. A contemporary romance without graphic sex, a slice of life among multiple characters; this book has it all. If you are unfamiliar with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) you'll take a peek at a couple of characters with the symptoms. Funny but not so funny since people really do suffer from this. And if you think your family is a little crazy wait until you meet Sasha's. And what a family it is! Secrets surface, hurt feelings need to heal and life changes bloom. Heather Cochran did a superb job of keeping me interested.

I don't really think of this as chick lit since there is so much depth within the story. I would recommend this book to the 35(+) age group for women. Call it a contemporary romance with a healthy dose of drama and peppered with some funny moments. The surprising part is when and how Sasha and Jonah finally meet. This is a keeper because it works!

It had the perfect balance of humor and drama from start to finish. The lead character, Sasha, is someone you connect with in the first 25 pages and from that point on you don't want to put the book down. All in all a wonderful read.

A quirky, troubled, likable heroine, a carefully-paced plot with a compelling human mystery at the heart of it -- nothing's missing here for a reader (me, for one) who loves to dive into a book and not come up for air until it's over. Cochran took on a real challenge by choosing a tax auditor as her protagonist. Fortunately, she meets it by avoiding cleverness and going for the human complexity and unpredictability that's always there if you know where to look for it. It's great to find a new writer who can do that.

"The Return of Jonah Gray" was one of the best books I have read in recent times. I love the way it was written and the characters were so wonderful. The story just flowed so well together. And the lead Sasha Gardner is a well written well formed personality. It is easy to relate to her. Heather Cochran did a wonderful job with Jonah Gray. She developed his character well through the thoughts and feelings of others and his sporadic appearance through the internet but mostly through the eyes of Sasha. It was so well scripted that you dont realize that you havent really seen the character till almost late in the book.
I could go on and on about the book and the story and the whole nine deal... but it is even better to actually read it. It is well worth the effort!

This was a great book. Not your ordinary chick lit. It was funny, and romantic, but it also dealt with serious issues of loss and family dynamics. The book was a fast read, and very well written. I would definitely recommend it.

A real story about real human people. At times funny, at times frustrating, at times sad, but always authentic and full of genuine insight into the human condition. And isn't that what great writing is about?

Well done story, excellent heroine, fascinating characters and relationships. Much more than I ever expected at first glance.

I loved Cochran's first book - Mean Season - but Jonah Gray is perhaps even better. The complexity and subtlety of the charachter development is every bit as rich and fascinating, yet she explores emotion and the human condition in an entirely believeable and enthralling way. Like Mean Season, it delves into emotional issues without feeling bleak or gratuitiously depressing. I finished it in two days and was hugely sad to see it come to an end, because it's the kind of book you're constantly drawn into. A fantastic story. A fantastic read.

Thirty-one years old IRS senior auditor Sasha Gardner knows trivia facts like no one does especially if a number is associated with the information. She is highly regarded at work, but recently feels ennui partly because she has no social life.

She begins getting calls from irate citizens complaining about her upcoming audit of Jonah Gray, a former Wall St. Journal finance reporter turned Stockton Star journalist and popular on his online gardening site. As the new archivist Jeff Hill provides her information on Gray, Sasha finds herself wanting to understand why he gave up a thriving career to become a minor reporter especially since his social security number reflects his birth in the same area of Virginia hers was. She calls him under the name Jeffrine Hill saying her boss Sasha needed information. As Jeffrine and Jonah become acquainted, Sasha finds herself breaking the primary taboo of an auditor not to cross the professional line of the audited.

This is an amusing yet sad tale as readers will feel empathy towards the lonely Sasha whose knowledge of tidbits enables the audience to understand her better than most lead characters in a contemporary tale. Interestingly like Sasha fans will want to know why Jonah gave up journalistic stardom. This book is more a refreshing character study with a telephone/web attraction than a straight romance as Heather Cochran provides a terrific tale that grips readers once Jeffrine begins discussing manatees with Jonah.

Harriet Klausner