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Jonathan Unleashed
- Author
- Meg Rosoff
- Narrator
- Luke Kempner
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 23 July 2026
- Run Time
- 6 hours 38 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Jonathan Trefoil’s boss is unhinged, his relationship baffling and his apartment just the wrong side of legal. His girlfriend wants to marry someone just like him – only richer and more organised with a different sense of humour. At least his two flatmates understand him – but they only speak dog.
Poor Jonathan. The world wasn’t this confusing back in the good old days before everyone expected him to act like a person. But one thing’s for sure: if he can make it in New York City, he can make it anywhere. Will he get out of advertising, meet the girl of his dreams and figure out the meaning of life?
Critics Review
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A screwball treat about two dogs and their owner, set in New York
Sunday Times, Must Read
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Hilarious, thoughtful, touching
Daily Mail
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Surreal, charming and very, very funny
Daily Express
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Like Ephron, Rosoff has a lightness of touch, and is also a clever comic writer: her dialogue is sharp, her characters keenly observed and ruthlessly well realised
Sunday Times
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A loveable novel that has the power to make readers of all ages laugh
The Times
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Fizzes with memorable one-liners .. . I can’t think of many recent novels that show the same almost Joseph Heller-like ability to express abiding pessimism with such irresistible comic zest
Daily Telegraph
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Wonderfully romantic as well as brilliantly satirical ... An absolute delight from start to finish
Daily Mail
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Very smart and extremely funny
Observer
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An absolute delight ... Set in a New York that has all the charm of a Nora Ephron screenplay
Red
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A brilliant take on finding love in New York
Stylist
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Both involving and moving ... Witty, sardonic, thoroughly enjoyable
Spectator
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Brave and bolshy, impossible to predict or to pigeonhole
Guardian
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Brilliantly witty, refreshingly original and laugh-out-loud hilarious, this book really is a must-read
Heat
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Every sentence is crafted and weighted with beauty but it’s the intelligence and shaping sensibility with which the story is told that make it something special
Sunday Times
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Jonathan Unleashed marks a swerve into novels for grown-ups, but her idiosyncratic story-telling chutzpah remains constant ... This shaggy dog story is told with such vibrant and subversive wit ... Also a brilliantly detailed snapshot of – to tweak the title of one of her finest novels – how we live now
Independent on Sunday
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Meg Rosoff has the gift of being able to talk to the reader with a directness that goes like an arrow to the heart.
The Times
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I completely fell in love with it, its confused but endearing hero, its wit, its portrait of New York and its dogs. It's the kind of romantic comedy, both wise and hilarious, I always hope to find in a movie and never do. I'm sure it's going to be a huge hit, and if it doesn't become a Nora Ephron-style film I'll be amazed. Even as a big fan of Meg's work, it took me by surprise
Amanda Craig
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A wonderful, captivating writer
Daily Telegraph
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One must simply revel in the joyful singularity of Rosoff’s latest masterpiece
Guardian
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No one writes the way Rosoff does — as if she’s thrown away the rules. I love her fizzy honesty, her pluck, her way of untangling emotion through words
Daily Telegraph
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The only predictable thing about Meg Rosoff is that each book will be entirely different from the last
Daily Mail
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Rosoff’s writing is luminously beautiful
Financial Times
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It is only occasionally that a writer comes along with a voice so stridently pure and direct and funny that you simply can't question it - you tumble willingly into its thrall
Guardian
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A wonderfully original voice
New Statesman
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Intelligent, ironic and darkly funny
Time Out
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Genius!
Anthony Horowitz
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Mordantly funny and searingly well written, her books read like Samuel Beckett on ecstasy
The Times
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I completely fell in love with Jonathan Unleashed, its confused but endearing hero, its wit, its portrait of New York and its dogs. It's the kind of romantic comedy, both wise and hilarious, I always hope to find in a movie and never do. I'm sure it's going to be a huge hit, and if it doesn't become a Nora Ephron-style film I'll be amazed. Even as a big fan of Meg's work, it took me by surprise
Amanda Craig
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The wonderful Meg Rosoff (How to Live Now) has written her first novel for adults, Jonathan Unleashed, A story of a man whose private life is going to the dogs
Harper’s Bazaar
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A quirky romantic comedy that’ll make you smile
Grazia
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This is a sweetly told page-turner. Basically the answer to all of life’s conundrums: be more
Grazia
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‘Rosoff, much admired YA novelist, turns her elegant comic touch to adult preoccupations with this effervescent satire on modern urban living … His workplace is a comic delight full of self-styled hipsters spouting meaningless jargon … Jonathan’s tale may be eccentric but its teeth are sharp’
Metro
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A quirky, contemporary romance
Big Issue North
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An exhilarating read that makes abiding pessimism very funny indeed
Spectator Books of the Year
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She wreaks revenge on the industry in her newest novel Jonathan Unleashed, which includes hilarious parodies of management jargon…a delightful romcom for adults, Jonathan Unleashed, about a millennial New Yorker whose life becomes the concern of the two dogs he is looking after, Dante and Sissy
Mslexia
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A comic must-read for any teen curious about the adult world they are about to enter
Mail on Sunday, 'Book of the Year'
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Hugely entertaining. I love this book for its freshness, wit and charm
Mail on Sunday
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Meg Rosoff
- Narrator
- Luke Kempner
- Duration
- 6 hours 38 minutes
- Release Date
- 23 July 2026
- ISBN
- 9781037211560
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Jonathan Unleashed by Meg Rosoff, read by Luke KempnerJonathan Trefoil’s boss is unhinged, his relationship baffling and his apartment just the wrong side of legal. His girlfriend wants to marry someone just like him – only richer and more organised with a different sense of humour. At least his two flatmates understand him – but they only speak dog.Poor Jonathan. The world wasn’t this confusing back in the good old days before everyone expected him to act like a person. But one thing’s for sure: if he can make it in New York City, he can make it anywhere. Will he get out of advertising, meet the girl of his dreams and figure out the meaning of life?
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