Reviews with content warning for Murder - Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

This book was very fun and charming. Not exactly my usual style but a fun read nonetheless. Most of all I loved the character of Vera. She made me laugh out loud and I wanted to eat the feasts she prepared!

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bookishmillennial's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews because I don’t like leaving them. I enjoy most books for what they are, & I extract lessons from them all. Everyone’s reading experiences are subjective, so I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not, regardless of the lack of stars. Find me on Instagram: @bookish.millennial or tiktok: @bookishmillennial

Omg I need to be best friends with Jesse Q. Sutanto 😭 She is so goddamn funny and I was cracking up reading this, but what’s new?! Vera is such a clever, endearing, and fun character! Reading this was such a treat because she reminded me so much of my paternal Chinese grandma. I couldn’t help but wear the goofiest & cheesiest smile on my face as I read Vera’s curious inner thoughts & heard it in my grandma’s voice. Vera, like my grandma, is a pistol, and catches on more than others think! On the other hand, I was tearing up and in my feels towards the end of the book. JQS is so incredibly talented, and I will read whatever she writes!

We meet Vera’s four potential murder suspects: Sana, Riki, Julia & Oliver, as they stop by Vera’s Tea Shop where the murder victim was found. I absolutely adored every single one of these characters (except for the murder victim, Marshall Chen, who everyone agrees was an abusive, narcissistic, overall garbage human being), and each of their POVs (third-person limited) kept my interest piqued & more importantly, kept me guessing until the very end!

Ageism is something I don’t see talked about a lot on here, and that’s on me — my feed is *mostly* full of gen x-ers and millennials. This is a great call in for me to read more books with older main characters, and this book was a perfect example of how fascinating and hilarious they could be (rather than the master narrative telling us that being old is boring)! I recognize Jesse herself is not in her 60s but if you read Dial A For Aunties, you just *know* that she wrote those aunties and Vera with real-life aunties and moms in mind. She’s pulling this from her lived experience of being loved and cared for by these Chinese-Indonesian aunties and moms, and that dynamic seeps into the page so beautifully!

I loved this book from start to finish, and I was not expecting the ending reveal of who the killer was! I also was not expecting to read a book about finding found family later in life, and how quickly these special connections can form. This book both hurt my abs because I laughed so hard, and hurt my heart because it had me in my feelings by the end as I grew to care for all of these character!

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bailey_the_bookworm's review against another edition

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emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Probably my favorite of her books thus far—the premise is fun (even if the mystery itself is pretty obvious) and the characters are a hoot. That said, there’s a lot of, like, people’s brains screaming at them and characters somehow reading each other’s minds via eye contact in lieu of actual dialogue.

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rachelizx's review against another edition

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4.0

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michelles_book_nook's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

⚠️ CW: murder and domestic abuse ⚠️ If you're looking for a funny, witty and cosy murder mystery then this one is for you! This book follows 60 year old self proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong who enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy 'dective' work on the Internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he's dating anybody yet). But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it's going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she'll do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands, Vera decides it's down to her to catch the killer. This book was so, so good and had me hooked to the point where I stayed up all night just to finish reading it and it was so worth it with such great twist at the end. Vera is an absolute ICON! She is the cutest, funniest and wittiest mother and grandmother figure that you could possibly want in your life. And the story isn't just about a cosy murder mystery investigation, it also has some great messages behind the storyline too. Oh and just a warning, this book is filled with amazing descriptions of delicious food so probably not the best idea to read this on an empty stomach 😅 Overall, I highly recommend this read and cannot wait to read more by Jesse Sutanto in the future.

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charlatte_lee's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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