Thank you Penguin Random House International for providing me an e-ARC in exchange for the honest review.

Vera Wang’s is a lonely old lady and a shopkeeper of her teahouse. She was dressed with her usual morning gear and marches down the stairs to her teahouse, she was shocked because there, in the middle of her teahouse is a dead man. Vera is now on full murder mystery. She wants to catch who killed the man. Vera doesn’t trust the police now because she can see that they’re not doing anything, they just said that Marshall was dead because of allergy, but Vera was still pushing that it was a murder.

Julia’s husband walk out on her and now she doesn’t know how to do like paying bills, driving a car and maintaining the house. She hates Marshall for walking out on her, on them. But right now she hates herself more. The next day, 2 officers knocks on her door and told her that Marshall is dead.

I feel bad for Oliver. Since he and Marshall’s a kid, it was always Oliver’s fault when something happened to them. Now when he saw his brother’s outline on the floor where Marshall died he feels it was his fault, it always will be. Since he was a kid no ones believing him.

The plot twists that I didn’t expect. Wow! This book is amazing, as always 🍵 I love how Vera was lonely and now have a lot of friends and people who cared about her and loved her.

I enjoyed this book. The plot was well paced and the characters felt fully developed. I would recommend this book to others and am looking forward to other works by this author.

Sutanto's books are a delight! I always start them thinking that it is just over the top but she write such vivid, fun and warm characters that I'm completely won over by the end. Such was the case with Vera - at first I found her a little grating but came to really love her and her sleuthing skills. She almost reminded me a tiny bit of Ove with how I perceived her at first and then grew to love her. I loved having SF be the setting to this story and makes me wish her tea shop was a real place! Don't read this book hungry - there are so many delicious food and tea references in here that it will make you salivate! This was also wonderful on audio - thank you PRH audio for the ALC! Sutanto is definitely an auto-read author for me!

Jesse Q. Sutanto’s fascinating new cozy mystery, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers , features Vera Wong as an amateur sleuth. She’s a widow with one son who she doesn’t get to see very often. Vera lives above her dilapidated teashop in San Francisco. One morning she goes downstairs and finds a dead man in the middle of her shop with a flash drive in his outstretched hand. After calling the police, she takes the flash drive and hides it in her apron pocket. Vera is positive she can do a better job than the police can in discovering who killed the man on the floor. She feels she only needs to investigate the people who come to her shop after the murder and she will discover the killer.

Vera is lonely, inquisitive, intelligent, fiery, bold, and funny. She has very set ideas on how an older generation should be treated and lets others know if they don’t meet her expectations. The main supporting characters are Riki Herwanto, Sana Singh, Oliver Chen, Julia Chen, and Emma Chen. Their character angles lent focus, originality, and depth. The characters’ natures and backstories are shown using action, not just descriptive prose.

Told from five points of view, the novel gives readers extra insights into Vera, Julia, Riki, Sana, and Oliver. Amazingly, this did not cause pacing issues. Vera remains the focal point; ordering her suspects around as she gets to know them and their secrets. This relieves her boredom and gets her to enjoy life again. However, will she find the killer?

The story brilliantly captured the characters and the cultural lifestyles and traditions of the group. The plot has some twists and turns, but this story is about more than solving a mystery. Threads include found family, family relationships, loneliness, boredom, jealousy, personal boundaries, and regret, as well as generational differences and expectations.

Diverse characterization and great world-building details made this a fast and enjoyable read. I kept wondering what Vera would uncover next and how that would affect the story line. There are multiple believable suspects with motives to kill the man found in Vera’s shop. The joy of food, tea, and friendship are interwoven with the investigation into alibis and motives.

If you’re looking for an entertaining, heartwarming, lighthearted, and funny cozy mystery with a mature protagonist, I highly recommend this novel. I am looking forward to reading more books by this author. I would love to see a series featuring Vera.

Berkley Publishing Group and Jesse Q. Sutanto provided a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. Publication date is currently set for March 14, 2023. This review was originally posted at Mystery and Suspense Magazine.

I adore this book. Vera Wong is a women of routine. She's owned Vera Wang's World Famous Tea Shop for years, though she has very few customers. She does the same thing every day and she takes pride in it, but she is lonely since her husband's passing and her son rarely returns her calls or text messages.

Her daily routine is disrupted one day when she enters her tea shop and finds a dead body. In an effort to help the police, she draws the outline of the body, and (while wearing gloves) she does a bit of investigating on her own. It doesn't take her long to determine the man was murdered, but when the police don't take her seriously, she takes matters into her own hands.

This story is hilarious, but heartwarming. Vera brings suspects together and forges a family out of incredibly unfortunate circumstances.

The only qualm I had with the book is that ages seemed a little bit off Vera is meant to be 60 years old and she seemed so much older! There is a two-year old character who also seems so much more mature than any toddler I've known, but each child is different!

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a murder mystery with a laugh.

I loved Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto! LOVED it!

Vera Wong is a lonely older woman who lives above her struggling teahouse in San Francisco's Chinatown. One morning, she finds a dead man clutching a flash drive in her teahouse. Vera takes the flash drive, thinking she can investigate better than the police " because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands." So when multiple suspects show up, Vera forms relationships with them while trying to figure out who the killer is.

This book surprised me in the best way! I had read Sutanto's Dial A for Aunties books and knew to expect a fun read with lots of humor, but this one also struck an emotional chord with me. Found family, emotional healing, loneliness, aging, and starting over are all touched on within the murder mystery.

The character development of this diverse group is excellent. I came to care about everyone, yes, even knowing they were all murder suspects. Vera, though, was a scene-stealing standout. Meddling, stubborn, wise, wonderful, maternal, and loving, Vera has a talent for reading people and knowing exactly what they need. Her sleuthing techniques involve tampering with the crime scene, withholding evidence, plying her suspects with tea and home-cooked feasts to pump them for information, then intervening to fix their lives. She was vividly written and completely endearing.

Suntanto has an engaging writing style, and in my opinion, this is her best book yet! I highly recommend this, even if cozy mysteries aren't usually your jam. It is a charming, bingeable, feel-good book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Books for the opportunity to review this ARC!

#VeraWongsUnsolicitedAdviceforMurderers:⁣
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Thank you @prhaudio for the gifted copy!⁣
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Jesse Q. Sutanto is always an author I will rave about. She grips me from the start, makes me the have the ugliest belly laughs, and somehow gets me to have a tear or two fall down my cheek. Vera Wong is my favorite character she’s ever created. An elderly person befriends younger generation and I’m in love? Of course. ⁣
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This does give you a fun cozy vibe because Vera is a tea shop owner, not the police. But, she definitely tells them how to do their job because clearly they don’t know how! She knows most will return to the scene of the crime, so she befriends her four suspects, and really finds a new family.⁣
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The audio was so good! Eunice Wong knocked it out of the park. Honestly, this could have been a full cast with the multiple POVs, but Eunice did it all. I was amazed and truly loved the audio.⁣
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There’s so much goodness about this book that I just want to tell you to read it. This is one I’ll be purchasing for my shelf and is easily a 5 star read.⁣
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Thank you again @berkleypub and @prhaudio for my copies. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice⁣
for Murderers is out 3/14!⁣
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QOTD: What did you do this weekend? ⁣
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#MilesOfPages #PRHAudioPartner #BerkleyPartner #JesseQSutanto #CozyMystery

I couldn't stop laughing while reading this book. Vera is such a character and you're going to love her! I highly recommend listening to the audiobook as Eunice Wong as the narrator was phenomenal! I listened to the first 3/4 of the book and read the final bit this morning while watching skiing.

Vera owns a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown and when a dead body is found she takes it upon herself to want to solve the murder. I mean she's watched enough Law & Order and CSI, how hard can it be? As she narrows down her list of suspects she starts to form friendships with them and in Vera fashion meddles just enough...

I loved this found family and how much Vera really realized she was lonely and can't help but love her. Just like Jesse's other books this has such great charm in her characters and maybe a little outlandish but they are just so fun to read!

Check this out when it publishes on March 14th - I highly recommend the audiobook!

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
By Jesse Q. Sutanto
Berkley
March 2023

Review by Cynthia Chow

Never one to not take advantage of a marketing tool – or the ignorance of White People – Vera Wong Zhuzu operates her beloved but struggling Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse in San Francisco’s Chinatown. That her teahouse is neither world renown nor she herself the iconic designer Vera Wang doesn’t bother Vera in the least, especially now that she is in a one-sided rivalry with the coffeehouse across the street. Vera has her daily routines, which involve texting her adult son at 4:31 am to remind him to wake up and eat breakfast, texting him at 5:01 pm encouraging him to eat a healthy early dinner, and constantly updating on the status of available single women liking his TikToks. What is not in her usual schedule is finding a body in the middle of her teahouse, although that doesn’t stop her from helping herself to some of the evidence in order to conduct her own investigation.

It’s quite obvious that Vera is supremely confident in her ability to give advice (that many seem to ignore) and also conduct her own “amateur” investigation. Vera begins making her Murder List of suspects and motives, and topping the lists include the array of visitors who arrived not long after the discovery of Marshall Chen’s body. The young businessman’s browbeaten wife Julia feels like a failure as a mother and a wife, while his twin brother Oliver has always been designated as the lesser sibling who always takes the blame. The appearance by a young woman claiming to be a podcaster and another young man rather hesitating stating that he is a reporter has Vera adding them to her suspect list, but she also drags them into her growing circle of accomplices as she continues to investigate. Vera is determined to pursue her own detecting despite police declaring Marshall’s death the result of a fatal bird allergy, and nothing can stop Vera when she believes that she is in the right. If that means tampering with evidence and perhaps staging her own crime scene, so be it.

In her author’s note Jesse Q. Sutanto writes that plans for the third Aunties mystery book were derailed by Vera Wong, who refused to be set aside as a character demanding her own series. It’s easy to see why, as while Vera seems to be an unlikely and perhaps unlikable heroine, she quickly enchants both readers and her growing found family. Softening her bulldozer tendencies are chapters alternately narrated by Julia Chen, aspiring artist Sana Singh, insecure Riki Herwanto, and Oliver Chen, all of whom are slowly drawn into the overwhelming presence of the bossy but well-meaning woman. Their initial reluctance to follow Vera mirrors that of the reader, yet quickly all will be charmed by Vera’s genuine protectiveness of her friends and her own need for love. The moment when Vera is brought low and questions all of her decisions completely cements her place in readers’ hearts, as her hard exterior is seen as the fragile façade it truly is. As with the two previous Aunties books, Asian cuisine and traditions are presented with tantalizing details that also highlight just how important they are to those raised with them. Fans of M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin will find this new series especially appealing, but all cozy and foodie book readers are advised to dive into this unexpected and extremely entertaining mystery.

This book was so much fun! The mystery kept me reading, I loved how it shifted points of view and how this helped further the intrigue and changing my guesses about what happened. And the book had all the humor and heart that I've come to expect from a Jesse Q. Sutanto book. I definitely recommend it if you like cozy mysteries!

Thanks to Berkley Pub, Netgalley, and Macmillan Audio for the gifted eARC and ALC for review!

It’s no secret that I love Sutanto’s quirky characters, but she’s really outdone herself with Vera Wong! This novel is simultaneously hilarious and heartfelt. It’s the story of several lost people who are involved in a murder investigation. The mystery was solid and I loved the found family theme. If A Man Called Ove and Dial A for Aunties had a baby, it would be this book. Go read it when it comes out on Tuesday!

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Rating: 5 stars
Pub Date: 3/14

Vera Wong, an elderly woman who owns a tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown, wakes up one morning to find a dead man on the floor of her tea shop. She’s watched enough crime shows to know what’s supposed to happen next, but when the police don’t behave like they do on TV, she realizes she must solve this crime herself. When people she’s never seen before start showing up at the tea shop, she knows one must be the killer. Through her investigation, she forms friendships with each of them and wonders what will happen when she proves one is a killer.

Can Vera be my best friend? I just adore her, with her strict routine and meddlesome ways. She’s stubborn, hysterical, and deeply traditional, and she stole my heart from the very first page.

This cozy mystery is full of heart and charm and is completely binge-able! Sutanto tends to fill her books with loveable, quirky characters, and this one is no different. It’s no small feat to make someone fall in love with characters who might turn out to be killers, but Sutanto makes it look easy.

Each person that Vera is investigating is well developed and comes with their own set of problems that she is happy to help them solve. Whether this involves pushing them to pursue their passions, taking care of their children, or even playing matchmaker at one point, Vera proves that there’s nothing she can’t do. I laughed my way through this book while feeling a little heartbroken for Vera when she realized how lonely she was before meeting her new friends.

The sense of found family, charming characters, and vivid descriptions of Vera’s food and tea are all wrapped up in a carefully crafted whodunnit mystery that will keep you guessing until the end. I adored this book and never wanted it to end! Thank you so much to NetGalley and Berkley for my copy to read and review. Check out this charming mystery on 3/14.

A murder at Vera Wang's World Famous Tea Shop.
A geriatric super sleuth, Vera Wong.
A cast of easy-to-love characters.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murders is equal parts crazy and wonderful. From the moment the reader is introduced to Vera, you're pulled into her orbit, her meddlesome ways and her amateur detective work. It's over tea that she gathers together the suspects, befriends them and puts to work her match-making skills.

Vera is spry and full spirit, and I can only hope at her age I am having this much fun. This novel of full of laughs, found family and an absolute joy to read.

Thank you Berkley Publishing for the advance reader copy.

What's it about (in a nutshell):
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murders by Jesse Q. Sutanto is a cozy-ish murder mystery with Vera Wong, a tea shop owner, as the amateur sleuth. But that's just the story on the surface. Underneath the mystery lies relevant cultural issues that impact immigrants to the US and their first-generation children raised here, which gives the story an unexpected poignancy and relevance that stayed with me long after I finished the book.

My Reading Experience:
I loved how this story took me through my full range of emotions, from laughing out loud over the things Vera says and does to shedding tears when events led Vera to an unexpected point in the story. Underneath the murder mystery is a story about family born and family found, love in all its forms, and just being relevant in a world where it's easy to feel irrelevant.

The murder mystery was fun and creative and kept me guessing. When a man turns up dead in Vera Wong's tea shop, she decides she can be much more effective at solving the murderer than the police, primarily when they don't act as she expected based on the television shows she watches. I love how she went about trying to solve the murder and how many twists and turns it took. The final reveal wasn't a shocker because I caught some actual clues along the way, but I was completely fine with that. The fun is witnessing Vera figure it out rather than yourself.

I loved the cultural diversity in this story too. Vera Wong is Chinese, has raised a son in the US, and runs a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. She often laments how GenZers of Chinese background neglect to honor the cultural aspects of their heritage. I already knew most of the cultural nuances, but seeing it in action and the plight of parents to get their children to uphold the traditions is eye-opening. This struggle goes on in households across America with the many different cultures that now call this country home. The story gave me a few things to think about.

Characters:
Vera Wong Zhu Zhu is not the only character in the story, but she is the central character and the one that makes her presence most known. She loves tea and mixing different blends that will relax you, make you more alert, or address your other needs. She is very knowledgeable about tea and what makes the perfect brew for anyone in her shop. She is also sly in a funny head-shaking way as she "innocently" impedes the police's investigation because she can do it better than them. Her character development is superb, and how her inner pain, which she often masks with her unsolicited advice and humor, is revealed broke my heart for her. You can't help but love Vera Wong and all of her complexities.

Narration & Pacing:
The narration is 3rd person limited, is tightly focused on Vera, and keeps a fast pace from start to finish. The investigation took a bit too long, which lost my attention for a small portion. Still, otherwise, the pages flipped quickly as I devoured the story.

Setting:
The setting is San Francisco's Chinatown, mainly in Vera Wang's Famous Tea Shop. She chose to call it Vera Wang's instead of Vera Wong's because of the instant recognition Vera Wang's fame would bring.
The setting is perfect for all the story sets out to accomplish – the mystery and the cultural components.

Read if you like:
Complex mysteries solved by amateur sleuths.
Humor and Poignancy
Cultural diversity in books

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars

Vera Wong, a lonely widow, finds a dead body in her tea shop. She takes it upon herself to find the killer and gets involved in the lives of her suspects. I liked the second half of the book better as it focused less on Vera and more on the other characters.

I did get some Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting from the book.

3.5/5 stars - this was a delightful book about friendships and chosen family, with a side of mystery. The mystery didn't really feel like the main character, but elderly Vera does her Chinese mother thing and brings everyone together. Loved her sass.

𝗠𝘆 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
𝗣𝘂𝗯 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: March 14, 2023

Thank you so much to @PRHaudio and @netgalley for my gifted copies

This book was so much fun! I really enjoy this style from Jesse Q Sutanto.

I was expecting the laughs, but what I was not expecting was the tears by the end of the book. I was so sad to end this book, but I will definitely recommend this for others to enjoy as well.

Be sure to pick up your copy when these one releases next month!

I LOVED this book! It was hilarious. I love Jesse's characters. They are always so unique. And it made me laugh so hard, even in a murder mystery. I loved the found family aspects of this book as well.

I absolutely love everything I've ever read by Jesse Q. Sutanto, and Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
is no exception!! I was captivated from the start, and found myself laughing at loud as the story progressed. The way the suspects become central characters is absolutely brilliant.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers begins with Vera finding a dead man in her tea shop. She doesn't know who he is, but is certain it was murder and is determined to solve the mystery since the police aren't interested. In her attempts to lure out the killer, she meets Julia, the dead man's wife, Oliver, the dead man's twin brother, and Sana and Riki, two people who claim to be a podcaster and reporter but are clearly hiding something. All four quickly become entangled in Vera's investigation and despite all hiding something in regards to the dead man, find that they all get along quite well and develop a close bond. Told with Sutanto's usual blunt humor and slight irreverence, this makes for a fun and light murder mystery. Readers of Richard Osman and Parini Shroff will like this one.