Really enjoyed this novel. Story was very interesting and engaging. Looking forward to reading more by this author. Highly recommend!

Excellent read! I was quickly swept away by the characters, setting, and plot. I couldn’t put it down and was sad to say goodbye to the story upon finishing. Many thought-provoking ideas are explored, and I am still contemplating them.

This was an interesting read! What I really liked was all of the different POVs this book gives. Most of the characters get to narrate at some point, and this made the story more interesting to me while reading it. I wouldn’t necessarily say this was so much a thriller as it was more of a mystery to me. The plot was extremely interesting and I was hooked throughout the entire book.

Overall, a great read and I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read something with a different plot.

What Jonah Knew was such a great read and I really enjoyed it. I loved the characters and the story and so glad I came across this book. Definitely looking forward to more books from this author.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic version of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
“What Jonah Knew” is the debut novel by essayist Barbara Graham, an immensely suspenseful, psychological thrill ride centred on the desperate love two mothers have for their sons, and the interconnected nature of the human soul.
Helen Bird’s twenty-two year old son, Henry, disappeared one day after performing with his band, and no one, including his bandmates or Henry’s pregnant girlfriend, have heard from him since. The police have all but given up hope that Henry will be found alive, but Helen will not stop looking until she finds answers.
After years of infertility, Lucie and Matt Pressman have finally been blessed with Jonah, a precocious, curious boy, who instantly becomes the centre of Lucie and Matt’s lives. Jonah, now seven, has suffered from terrible night terrors for years, and although it is devastating to his parents, Jonah seems relatively unaffected by them. After witnessing a traumatic event in New York City, Jonah’s night terrors return, in full force, and soon he is asking Lucie and Matt to be reunited with his “other mom”, and talking about people and events that Lucie and Matt have never heard of. Although Matt initially brushes it off as childhood imagination, Lucie is convinced something else is tormenting their child and when she unexpectedly runs into Helen in a sleepy, small town, the two women become connected in ways they never expected.
Almost every character in this novel gets a chance at narration, even young Jonah and the missing Henry (although his sections are italicized and labeled as ‘before’). As the story unfolds, the reader begins to understand each character on a deeply personal scale, and a quick relationship is developed. All of Graham’s characters are likable (with one exception) and I rooted for them from the first page (especially Henry’s beloved dog, Charlie). As the pulse-pounding, gripping ending plays out, in dramatic detail, the satisfying conclusion brings together all the loose ends and unanswered questions.
This story has a deeply spiritual component, and takes examples from Buddhism and Hinduism, but it is not at all preachy or religious, necessarily. Graham uses the idea of “humanity” and “the soul” as a way to connect all human beings in a very profound way, and regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, the deep-rooted ideas in “Jonah” will stick with you.
“Jonah” started off a little slow, but once it started to roll I was hooked. Graham’s novel has a little bit of everything- suspense, mystery, spirituality, romance (and not the cheesy kind), and above all, the undying love between a mother and her child. Graham delivered an intensely emotional, and uniquely creative novel as her debut, and I’m eager to read more from her.

It was okay a fast read but it read almost exactly like the Forgetting time by Sharon Guskin. I like past life stories but it didn't stand out

𝘔𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭!

I love going into books blind and I was not expecting this story at all. A missing musician, a seven-year-old boy with memories of him, twisty, full of mystery, paranormal elements and an adorable dog. I loved the mystical vibes of it.

Thank you Harper Books for this gifted copy.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗵 𝗞𝗻𝗲𝘄 by Barbara Graham Author released July 5, 2022.

https://www.instagram.com/booksandcoffeemx/

WHAT JONAH KNEW is a story of rebirth, motherhood, spirituality, and connecting with the unknown. It’s evocative, psychological, and completely unique.

I went into this one with very few expectations, armed with the book description and a lot of questions. It starts out slow, and it definitely took about halfway until I felt truly invested in the story, but at a certain point (the tail end of Chapter 26, to be precise) I became thoroughly hooked. I was drawn into the characters’ stories and the mystery of Henry Bird through Graham’s expressive and clear writing.

There are a number of powerful themes that run throughout the story: motherhood/maternal instincts, spirituality/reincarnation toon, and processing grief. There’s a lot to chew on in this one—I could see it working very well in a book club setting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial/Harper Paperbacks for this eARC in exchange for an honest review. I've shared my review to Goodreads, and will post it on Instagram on the book's release date.

What Jonah Knew is a fascinating exploration of the possibility of reincarnation, wrapped in the style of a psychological thriller. This plot was truly original and such an enjoyable read!

Here’s a bit of the blurb: “A seven-year-old boy inexplicably recalls the memories of a missing 22-year-old musician in this psychological thriller about the fierce love between mothers and sons across lifetimes, a work of gripping suspense with a supernatural twist.”

Now, I don’t mind supernatural books at all when it’s mentioned upfront (unlike, ahem, other books that market themselves as thrillers but the “twist” is supernatural and unguessable). I greatly appreciate that this blurb was honest and set my expectations from the start! When I know a book is supernatural before I begin, I am able to suspend all belief and just enjoy the story.

And there was so much here to enjoy! Graham writes real, deep characters struggling with grief and motherhood. Helen is still mourning the loss of her son seven years on. Lucie is struggling with how to best help her boy who is suffering from inexplicable trauma that she is unable to understand. Mira married the wrong man and is trying to extract herself from an unhappy marriage. Despite the supernatural aspect of this story, there is a lot for readers to relate to among these characters.

Throughout the book, the reader is treated to scenes from Henry’s perspective, both before and after his death. These flashes were so well-imagined and unique, and really added to my enjoyment of the book.

I appreciated how Graham referenced scientific studies and religious beliefs along the way to “prove” the supernatural aspect. It provided some credibility that Matt the doctor was skeptical at first, but came around once his wife showed him the proof.

I also loved the scenes that show a bond between a child and his dog–I’m such a sucker for a good doggie sidekick!

Past life memories in children. Reincarnation. The connectivity of the human spirit. Barbara Graham has taken these profound concepts and created a story about love, grief, trauma, and the bonds we have with our children. She tackles the universal desire to know what happens when we die, and the power of spirituality.

Helen Bird’s son, Henry, a soon to be father, has inexplicably gone missing. While the police believe it was voluntary, Helen knows that her son would never leave his fiancé and unborn child. Not long after Henry’s disappearance, Helen crosses paths with Lucie, who gives birth to Jonah. Jonah grows to be a very sensitive and anxious young boy plagued by night terrors. He insists he has a second Mom, and has memories of a dog and yellow house. When they move to Aurora Falls for the summer, where Helen lives, it causes more memories to surface for Jonah that appear to belong to the missing Henry Bird.

This is Graham’s first novel, and it reads as a literary fiction with elements of suspense and mystery rather than an ordinary thriller. In fact, this novel is far from ordinary. As a reader, I was immediately intrigued with the synopsis and found myself drawn to the story from the beginning. It is a provocative read; Graham masterfully handles themes of spirituality, life, death, and love. While the mystery element is not overly complex and isn’t difficult to piece together, it is more importantly an insightful and thought provoking journey.

Thank you so very much to Barbara Graham herself for reaching out and offering access to an arc on NetGalley. This review reflects my honest opinion. .

4.5/5

Do you believe in reincarnation? What would you do if your young son told you that he knows you’re his mom but he has another mom from before? A whole other life in fact? The whole idea fascinates me and that’s the basic premise here.

From the synopsis: A seven-year-old boy inexplicably recalls the memories of a missing 22-year-old musician in this psychological thriller about the fierce love between mothers and sons across lifetimes, a work of gripping suspense with a supernatural twist that will mesmerize fans of Chloe Benjamin and Lisa Jewell.

This was such a unique and engrossing read and I was hooked as soon as I started it. While yes it’s a thriller and yes, there’s a mystery it’s so much more than that too. You have two mothers, Helen and Lucie and there is so much to explore here with motherhood, grief, loss, past generational trauma and unlikely connections. Definitely a thought provoking read and one that I think will stick with me. The characterization was as strong as the plot for me, I truly related or really liked every single one and thought the author did a really good job at crafting them and making them seem genuine and authentic. As a debut novel this impressed me and I can see this being a fantastic choice for a book club.

What Jonah Knew by Barbara Graham is one of the most unique books I've ever read. I was completely invested in the story, both heartbreaking and life-affirming, from the very first sentence. This will definitely be one of my favorite reads of the year. A brilliant debut novel - 5+

Thank you to Harper Perenniel/Harper Paperbacks and NetGalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I found the whole premise of this to be quite unique. The story explores reincarnation and how a past life can impact a present one. Our main character Lucas swears that he has another mother and uncannily remembers details that are completely explainable. What's even stranger is that the memories he's having belong to those of a man who went missing and never was found. I felt that the reincarnation aspect was definitely different, but at times the story was bogged down a little too much with information about the phenomenon. I actually skimmed through most of those sections because it didn't hold my interest. With that said, the mystery and it's resolution were gripping and suspenseful. I did figure out the ending early on but I liked how everything was wrapped up in the end.

Main Characters:
-- Helen Bird (Alice) – owner of a bakery in Aurora Falls, New York, escaped Oregon and her abusive husband 17(?) years prior and changed her identity from Alice to Helen
-- Henry Bird (Danny) – Helen’s 22(?)-year-old son, musician, manager of a bluegrass band who goes missing after a performance Labor Day weekend
-- Mira – Henry’s girlfriend, eight months pregnant with their first child
-- Lucie Pressman – magazine editor, lives in Manhattan with her husband Matt, but loves the town of Aurora Falls as a vacation spot and would be interested in living there to escape the city
-- Matt Pressman – ophthalmologist in Manhattan, likes to vacation in Aurora Falls but doesn’t like the idea of living there full-time
-- Lola – Henry and Mira’s daughter
-- Jonah – Matt and Lucie’s son

What Jonah Knew sounded like an interesting read — part thriller, part mystery, part spiritual, part what do we really know about the human psyche. This last part is what I feel takes the book in too many directions. It’s not a thriller at all, in my opinion. In fact, it felt super slow to me. And before I got even halfway into the book, I knew who did it and why. I just didn’t know how.

The Prologue begins with Henry walking back to his hotel after a bad set with his band. We know this is when Henry disappears. We assume that he dies at some point since we are meant to believe that Jonah could be the reincarnation of Henry.

From here, the book is divided into five parts: 2002-2003, 2007-2008, Spring 2010, Summer 2010, and Summer 2010 (not sure why there are two parts in the same timeframe). I really dislike when books that come into “present day” take place years ago. The only reason I can see for this one to begin in 2002 is Lucie trying to convince Matt that they should buy a home in Aurora Falls, NY, in case there’s another terrorist attack after 9/11. There could be so many other reasons — she’s tired of Manhattan, her mother becomes ill and she wants to be closer, she wants to have a baby but doesn’t want to raise it in the city. Setting the book so far in the past just for the reason to move feels inauthentic.

Parts 1-3 are taken up with Helen trying to find clues to Henry’s disappearance, Mira eventually getting married, Matt and Lucie having Jonah, and Jonah beginning to show signs of knowing things from an alternate past. There seem to be a number of elements thrown in to try to lead the reader astray with what happened to Henry — a note found that he started to write to his father, one of his band mates being involved with drugs. None of these elements were convincing to me.

At one point Helen goes back to Oregon to see her former mother-in-law in case Henry has been in touch. If Henry knew why they left Oregon to begin with, though, I’m not sure why we are expected to think he would go looking for his father…except to make his father a potential suspect. Additionally, and I’m really hoping this is fixed in editing, the beginning of the book mentions that Henry is 22 and that Helen escaped Oregon when he was five. When she goes to see her former mother-in-law in Part 3, which is 2007-2008, Henry should be about 27, but she mentions that she left Oregon 27 years ago.)

For Jonah’s storyline, he begins talking about his first/real mother and his dog. He was born with a red birthmark, which I noted must relate somehow to Henry. He begins having night terrors that Lucie is convinced relate to inherited family trauma. And because of a PTSD-like response in Manhattan on his seventh birthday, they decide to take Jonah away for the summer, and of course they go to Aurora Falls, which is how we see the characters start to put the pieces together.

I won’t give away anymore of the storyline. As a story alone, I probably would have rated it higher, but there are a number of things that made me rate this only two stars. First and foremost, this book reads like a looooong magazine feature about mysticism and world religions, with some anecdotes thrown in.

There are two characters embracing two different factions of Buddhism. Someone was raised Presbyterian, someone Lutheran, Lucie and Matt are Jewish. I know there are lots of religions in this world, but I have never seen so many of them referenced in one novel. Buddhist teachings are referenced a lot because of the reincarnation idea, and Lucie is obsessed with the idea of inherited family trauma.

What I didn’t know when I started the book, but I looked up about halfway through, is that this is the author’s first novel. Her previous work revolves around magazine articles, a memoir, and a number of non-fiction pieces. Magazine writing and creative writing are very different, and this feels too much like magazine writing for me. I was not looking for a dissertation on the teachings of Buddha and the human psyche.

There are a number of descriptions and plot elements that seem thrown in to make it feel more novel-ish, to make the characters three-dimensional, but they don’t work for me.

-- When Matt and Lucie visit Aurora Falls, they always go to Helen’s bakery even though they avoid carb loading at home “…especially Matt, who, because of his family history, was fanatical about his LDL/HDL ratio….” We never meet Matt’s family, so this isn’t really even relevant.
-- Helen vows not to cut her hair until Henry returns home. I’m not sure how this can possibly help or why it would even be a superstition in this case. All it does later is make Lola think Henry is back when she sees Helen has finally cut her hair.
-- The author has a tendency to write entire paragraphs designed to show the thought pattern of the character but are just question after question after question. It became distracting after a while and pulled me out of the story every single time.
-- When Lucie is pregnant with Jonah, Matt dubs her belly the Matterhorn. Over a handful of pages, the story refers to the Matterhorn four times, including saying “Lucie cupped the Matterhorn from below,” and then it’s never mentioned again. Not once, even in passing. I thought it sounded cute the first time, but then the way it was used after that, with no references later on, sounded odd. Just say “her belly.”
-- Helen hires two private detectives, and the second one’s name is Richard Tracy. He literally says, “…just call me Dick.” 🙄
-- Lucie’s boss has a personality trait of dropping vowels when she sends emails and text messages. “Grt! B sr to include yr story, will b mr intrstng 2 rdrs…XOD.” This only appears in the book three times, but it was ridiculously annoying, distracting, and unbelievable. No one writes like this, and I can’t imagine any senior magazine editor who would use this style on a regular basis.

Another thing I found confusing is the number of people who use different names. Helen changed her and Henry’s names because they ran away, but she just swapped their first and middle names and changed their last name. Alice Helen became Helen Alice, and Daniel Henry became Henry Daniel. But in private, Helen says that she still called Henry by Danny. So throughout the book, she is alternately referring to him as Henry and Danny. I’m assuming it’s a plot element to convince us that Jonah knows something because he says, “Why do you keep saying Henry? You always called me Danny.” But it was really just confusing.

We also find out that Lucie’s mother, who Lucie has always had a bit of a tense relationship with, has a given name of Phyllis, changed it to Phoebe, and then changed it again to Sonam Dawa, her refuge (refugee?) name given to her by a Buddhist lama. But we never know before this point that her given name was Phyllis. We only find out because Lucie asks “It wasn’t enough to change your name from Phyllis to Phoebe?”

I worked altogether too hard to finish this book for it to be enjoyable. It’s a miss and a pass for me.

A great thriller that's also a fascinating examination of the spiritual and scientific concept of reincarnation. Think Buddhism meets quantum physics. All of that encased in a story of two families brought together by the fierce love between a mother and her son.

I enjoyed the writing and the characters created in this book. I could feel Helen’s pain and empathize with her. I’ve read non fiction books about Reincarnation before, find the subject very interesting and liked how the author wove it into the story. But the book hums along at a flat pace until the end, where the suspense ramps up. Enjoyable read but not a suspense book.

This book almost left me speechless (though, that wouldn’t be good for a review!) It is breathtaking, mysterious, interesting, unputdownable, and gut wrenching. As a mother, I connected with both Helen and Lucie. I felt all their anguish, their pain, and their worry. The author did amazing job engaging the reader with all the research that she did to present the background information on reincarnation scientifically and religiously.

The plot of the book was something new and refreshing. This book is so much more than a thriller/mystery. It is about family bonds, generational trauma, and connections with people you never expected to have connections with. It really is simply a beautiful book.

I only gave this book 4 stars because I figured out the whodunit part of the plot pretty early, but even with knowing that, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book. Towards the end of the book, I was on the edge of my seat, trying to get to the next page as fast as I possibly could; I didn’t want to be kept in suspense any longer!

Brava to Barbara Graham on such a successful book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

.Loved this book!! Reincarnation stories fascinate me and this was no exception. I've never read a book quite like this one before.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of What Jonah Knew.

I'm fascinated by reincarnation and the author handled the premise well.

It sort of reminded me of the reincarnation episode from The X-Files but a whole lot less scary and more Lifetime-y.

I liked Jonah, Danny, and Charlie, but I found some of the female characters surprisingly unlikable, especially Helen.

I'm not sure why; perhaps because she was a bit of a cliche; a woman who fell for the wrong man, a trait her sort of daughter-in-law also possessed.

Those tropes were too Lifetime for me; as well as the sudden romance between Helen and Randy.

The premise was interesting, but predictable; you could see where it was going, and the climatic finale.

I liked the psychiatrists questioning Jonah, their kindness and open minds, and how Jonah's mother was receptive to the reincarnation possibility. It was nice to see medical professionals working well together.

The writing was good, and I liked the tone but the constant POV shifts was a bit distracting. I discovered I had to read the first couple lines to figure out who was speaking.

Overall, a good read, but not as suspenseful or thrilling as I had hoped for.

Loved this! I’ve never read anything quite like this. While you know entire time what’s going on with Jonah, it’s still such an interesting topic to read about mixed in with a murder mystery.
7 year old Jonah has always said some strange stuff regarding his “old self” and mom from “before”. His parents Lucie and Matt write it off as make believe. But then they decide to spend the summer in Aurora Falls, the home they didn’t know was of Jonah’s past life. Will he be able to remember what happened? Will it bring peace to his family, himself, to his “old mom” Helen who lives in Aurora Falls? Will it tear his family apart to explore the things Jonah believes as truth?
This was, in my opinion, a totally original plot. I loved that the author brought scientific studies and religions that believe in reincarnation into as well to help explore the topic in a more detailed way. Lucie’s animosity toward her mother threw me a little in that it read as a major theme but then nothing really came of it. Besides that the characters were written really well in the sense that they acted how you’d expect of people dealing with past trauma and unwillingness to relive it when they don’t have a choice. I saw this a lot in the dialogue and the way the characters loved each other but were irritated with each other as well because they needed closure and no one seemed to be on the same page until it was too late.