I'm Not Done with You Yet by Jesse Q. Sutanto was a chaotic read the entire way through in the best way. I went into this blind not knowing what it was about or what to expect and this book had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. WOW! Incredible characters even though unlikeable, thrilling plot, and a stunning twist. This author really delivered!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback. Another great thriller from Jesse Sutanto

Jane and Thalia were friends during a creative writing course at Oxford. Until Thalia disappears. But years later, she returned as a best-selling author. And the real games begin.

A fun, suspenseful read. Read this if you enjoy books with:
complicated female relationships,
unlikeable characters,
dark humor,
multiple points of view, and dual timelines.

So the thriller trope of the fall must be sociopath/psychopaths parading as normal people. This one is quite a game of cat and mouse or maybe chess. There were moments I loved it and there were moments that made me pause, but overall it was a good read. The author did a good job of drawing me into deep characters that grew and changed some between the dual time periods of graduate school and the present. As with a lot of thrillers I read, I really didn’t like any of the characters and couldn’t give you a reason why, but they just didn’t give me warm fuzzies.

As I read and listened to this one, I knew there was a lot more to the story that the author does a good job of eluding to and keeping me in the dark and wanting to know more. So back to the sociopath trope that’s emerging this fall. In this one it’s the main character. That’s a gamble that pays off in this one as Jane, the MC, is stalkerish, jealous and needy and really is unlikable and unrelatable to the core. But the author offset it with me wanting to know what secrets happened to Jane and the girls in her grad school day. I knew there was a secret and I wanted in on it.

This is a switch from the cozier mysteries the author previously wrote. it definitely crosses into a darker story without being so dark as to put off the casual thriller reader. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

there have been a slew of author/publishing industry related thrillers coming out lately, and I really enjoy this trope! this gave me similar feelings to <i>Yellowface</i> - both smartly constructed stories dealing with race in the book world. Sutanto takes things a bit darker here (I've only read her Aunties book), and she does a great job of bringing the unhinged woman cat-and-mouse game to the pages. it was an addictive ride with some well executed twists I didn't see coming! she's previously written YA and cozy/silly mysteries but I'd love to see more thrillers from her.

This is a story about toxic friendship. Two girls meet at college. One becomes obssessed with the other one. One night, something terrible happens. The friends become estranged after that awful night. Many years later, they are reunited. Before long, the reader realizes nothing is as it seemed 👀

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of I'm not done with you yet by Jesse Q. Sutanto!

Thank you to @berkleypub @Netgalley for the #gifted copy of I’m Not Done with You Yet by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Whew. I am not sure what to think about this one.

Jane is quite the character. She seems to dislike herself, have a very low self esteem and is a self diagnosed sociopath. She travels to Oxford to take part in a. creative writing program where she meets Thalia where it’s like love at first sight, but it isn’t. Thalia is appears to be everything that Jane isn’t. She immediately draws Jane in. Of course there is all kinds of trouble and things fall apart.

Years later Jane is reconnected with Thalia. Jane married, but isn’t happy. Her writing career never took off. She is hoping to find out why Thalia just left her.

This story was definitely twisty. It was a bit confusing at times and left me scratching my head. I’ll admit that I appreciated the epilogue and I definitely look forward to the next book.

This book is out now!

Jesse Q. Sutanto is putting out banger after banger, and while this is a very different, darker tone than the Aunties books, it's a juicy, bookish story that proves her adroitness. Cleverly written characters were the best part of this book, and I ate this one up.

Jesse Q Sutanto contains multitudes! Her cozy Bay Area mystery, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice For Murderers, is one of my favorite books of this year for its large-hearted generosity. Her latest release, I’m Not Done With You Yet, is almost the exact tonal opposite: a psychological thriller involving damaged women doing terrible, murderous things. Both books, however, share an uncanny insight into human motivation, and brim over with an extraordinarily gripping empathy that has you rooting for characters you know, at least in the case of the latter book, that you probably shouldn’t want to succeed.

Jane Morgan is the hapless protagonist of I’m Not Done With You Yet, a midlist author of literary fiction living unhappily in her Bay Area home with her casually overbearing husband Ted. When she receives a newsletter informing her that her old friend Thalia Ashcroft has just landed a seven-figure deal for her next book, she’s blown away. Not just at the envy-inducing price tag, or even at Thalia’s success – if ever anyone deserves the world, it’s Thalia, or so Jane believes. Jane is just overjoyed to get word of Thalia again, who seemed to have fallen off the face of the planet after their time together working on Masters of Fine Arts degrees at Oxford University.

Nine years on, Jane knows she has to do whatever she can in order to be reunited with Thalia. After all, they weren’t just friends at Oxford. No, Thalia was much more important to Jane than that:

QUOTE
I steal glances at her as I type on my keyboard, and just the nearness of her is enough to transport me to that place that writers aim for. Her presence propels me through the doorway, letting the rest of the world melt away. Never before have I come up with such passionate prose, such dark, enchanting words. In class, our teachers and fellow students swoon over my compositions, marveling at the way I’ve managed to cut through the flowery words that writers often fall prey to and go straight to the harsh bones of human emotion. It’s all thanks to Thalia, I want to say, but I keep it to myself. I don’t want to share my muse with anyone.
END QUOTE

Since they were parted, Jane has struggled. Their last night together in Oxford was supposed to bind them closer together, but Thalia disappeared and Jane decided to throw herself back into “normalcy,” moving home and eventually marrying a man she now despises. On reading that Thalia will be making a live appearance at SusPens Con in New York City, Jane decides that she’ll show up in order to remind Thalia that they’re meant to be together, forever.

Strong Eminem’s Stan vibes, but Ms Sutanto has far more devious tricks up her writer’s sleeve. As the plot unfolds, moving back and forth in time from Jane’s halcyon Oxford days to her life of grinding frustration in the present, multiple surprises rise to the fore, some as obvious as a bludgeon but others as insidious as a knife in the dark. The end is wholly satisfying for readers such as myself, who deeply appreciate it when characters get exactly what they deserve.

And that’s another thing that this dark tale of rage and obsession has in common with the much more kindly and comical Vera Wong’s. Ms Sutanto cuts deep into the heart of everyone’s motivations, showing why they’re hurting and how, sometimes, outrageous acts are the only ways to keep from suffocating within systems meant to keep the downtrodden trodden down:

QUOTE
That’s something I’d learned from Jayden, Mom’s current “special friend.” Whenever they argue, Jayden looks at Mom a certain way and says, “Don’t be mad at me, babe,” and she sighs and her shoulders slump in defeat, and even at the age of seven, I know what a conniving asshole Jayden is, because telling someone not to be mad is putting all of the responsibility on them. <i>Sure, I may have done something wrong, but YOU do the labor of getting over it.</i> Jayden may be a Grade A asshole, but he’s taught me some really great tactics. And women fall for that shit all the time.
END QUOTE

In addition to the keen observations on gendered social structures and cultural clashes – many the more biting for being mentioned only in passing – Ms Sutanto also offers readers a wickedly funny look into the state of modern publishing. Reading this book is like hanging out over drinks with a multicultural author friend who respects you too much to give you anything less than the unvarnished truth, studded with hilarious bon mots and sophisticated critiques of life as it is and not, alas, as it should be. I loved it.

Delusions? Sociopathic behavior? You have my attention. This one had me glued to the pages from the beginning. The timeline switched from Jane and Thalia’s college days to the present day, connecting the dots together to see why these two supposed best friends had a falling out. Jane and Thalia were both very unlikeable characters. Jane was obsessed with Thalia, and felt like she didn’t belong. Jane’s inner dialogue did make me laugh at times, because of how deranged her thought process was. Thalia.. I didn’t like her immediately. Something about her was very calculated. I also didn’t see what the appeal to her was, and why everyone gravitated towards her.

With Jane being such an unreliable character, I did question if things were really playing out as they did in her mind. This book was heavy on toxic relationships. Between the friends, as well as Jane’s marriage. There were several plot twists, but I think as the book went on, it was one too many twists I felt didn’t need to move the plot along. I did enjoy this one and couldn’t put it down, however I think a little too much was going on which made me change my rating.

Jane Morgan, like most of us, took an online assessment. Instead of finding out what type of cheese she was, she discovered that she was a sociopath. That explained her unease around others, her lack of friends, and her odd reactions to many situations. She has gone through her life knowing that she is an outsider. As a child of a single Chinese mother, Jane has been told that she has no chance to advance in society and should prepare herself for a life of low-paying service industry jobs. Jane refuses to accept this future and sets her sights on becoming a writer. Through hard work, she begins a graduate program at Oxford University. On her first day, she meets a fellow student named Thalia. This chance meeting will have a huge impact on Jane's life. She becomes obsessed with the beautiful and magnetic Thalia. They also become acquainted with another student, the fantastically wealthy Indonesian student Ani. When Ani's brother Ivan comes to visit, he also seems to become entranced by Thalia. Something terrible happens during their first year at Oxford, after which Thalia leaves and Jane loses contact with her. Six years later, Jane is unhappily married to Ted and has published two books that haven't attracted much attention. She happens to see that an author named Thalia Ashcroft is going to be appearing at a convention for suspense writers in NYC. Jane determines to do whatever she can to see Thalia again. Even when Ted invites himself along on the trip, she can't wait to see Thalia again. Thalia seems happy to see Jane as well and invites her to a writer's retreat taking place after the convention. When Jane goes to the retreat (because she can't miss any opportunity to be with Thalia again), she soon finds that Thalia may have ulterior motives for inviting her to come along.

I liked the way the book flashed back and forth between both time periods (present day and Oxford days) and viewpoints of Jane and Thalia. Jane is beyond annoying, and the obsession with Thalia was a bit much to take. I did wonder how she managed to get through any classes or assignments at Oxford when she seemed to spend all of her time there staring at Thalia with her mouth hanging open. Still, it was interesting to see what was behind the strange relationship of the two women and there were plenty of twists and turns along the way.

I’m Not Done with You Yet is the second of three unconnected books in 2023 by Jesse Q. Sutanto, and ping pongs back and forth between two times about twenty years apart, the first following Jane and Thalia as they make their way through graduate school at Oxford until a calamitous event throws their lives in disarray and the second the aftermath twenty years later, with Jane as a struggling mid list writer, and Thalia as an ascendant star, when their lives intertwine again. The first half of the book plods along, not really distinguishing itself, but pleasant enough, but the back half contains multiple reveals that are increasingly entertaining, even as they strain credulity. Intertwined is Jane’s struggle with self-acceptance and confidence, which serves the dual purpose of obfuscating certain developments of the story, and being a satisfying side-story. Jessie allows a couple of threads to drop in an otherwise satisfying story with a telenovela-esque second act that is delightfully feverish and overwrought.

An engaging and dark thriller filled with toxic friendships, sociopathy and murder. 


Y’all I love a good sociopath and Jesse Q. Sutanto puts us right in the mind of one dark and twisty puppet master in I’m Not Done With You Yet. Talk about toxic friendships and women behaving badly! I love spending time in a twisty mind.

Jane, Thalia and Annie have a disturbing friendship (can we even call it that?) filled with cat & mouse games, deadly secrets, deception, murderous deeds and the unfortunate men that get caught in their crosshairs.

Sutanto is known for her lighter cozy mysteries and this is definitely not that. This is a psychological thriller that will keep you guessing even as you relish in its deliciousness. If you are a fan of Hank Phillipi Ryan and JT Ellison this should be next on your reading list.

Jane is a self-diagnosed psychopath who is a struggling writer and unhappy in her marriage. She sees an article about an upcoming book release that happens to be written by her friend Thalia whom she hasn't seen in 9 years. When Jane attended Oxford for her Masters degree, she met Thalia and immediately became obsessed, but after one night when something terrible happened, they went their separate ways. Now that Jane has found Thalia again, she attends the writers convention in order to reconnect but another terrible event happens and it makes Jane question the events from 9 years ago. Overall, an interesting mystery that delves into a friendship where you're not sure of the motives of either person or who is manipulating who. Readers who like books with unreliable narrators will enjoy this one.

I'm really unsure how I feel about this one. There were moments I really liked and others that I just didn't. My favorite character would have to be Thalia, even though she's quite unlikable, but she at least had a personality that was intriguing to me as a reader. I listened to the audiobook while following along in the egalley, and really enjoyed the different narrators in the audiobook. They did a great job!

*Thank you @prhaudio and @berkleypub for the #gifted audiobook and egalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Have you ever lived vicariously through a character? For those who have read this book, hear me out!

This story, about a woman who risked everything to save her college friend from a horrible night, becomes obsessively unhinged years later, when they reconnect. This story is the epitome of the cat and mouse game, the hunter becomes the hunted becoming the hunter again. There are twists galore, moments of frustration and secret glee, that had me relishing both Jane and Thalia, as their lives mingle in the most unhealthy way.

I lived for the drama of their friendship. Both characters are egomaniacs, certifiably nuts, but so likeable - despite their unlikability, I wanted to be their friend! Though, only in the fiction world. I would never stand for their nonsense in the real world. They acted upon their worst instincts and said things that I could only dream of vocalizing (I would never). Their inner dialogue left me screaming (and oddly satisfied) because I think we’ve all had similar thoughts… right? Some of us are just too polite to say it out loud.

What I love most about suspense stories is that there is always a fresh way to tell it. Suspense can surprise and in a dime a dozen stories out there, this read fresh, exciting and captivated me from beginning to end, so much so that after I read it in a day, I preordered a copy and immediately sent Jesse a DM. I probably sounded unhinged because I was foaming at the mouth with excitement coming down from the high of reading this story. I won't spare you the embarrassing fangirl details, but I wanted to let her know how much I loved this story and how entertaining this female friendship was to watch evolve. Easy five stars!

Special thanks to Berkeley Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC of this book.

Well who doesn't like a crazy, obsessed, low self esteem, nutcase of a woman once in a while? I certainly do and the character Jane wears it well. She is a seething monstrosity festering underneath her fake manner. She is in a crappy marriage to Tom who is an equally irritating man (to the reader, and of course Jane, too).!

The story goes back and forth, between the present and 9 years ago at Oxford University where she meets Thalia, in a creative writing class and they become best buds. Thalia is beautiful and outgoing, total opposites.. Then after "something" happens, and Thalia just goes totally off the grid for 9 years not to be found.

Jane ( who is a writer, but a middling one who makes hardly any money for her books which makes her more miserable and ) THEN of all things finds Thalia,doing the rounds and touring with a best-selling book, named A Most Pleasant Death, making plenty of cash off a story about something that happened nine years ago, between them which a pact was made never to be told..

And than Jane goes off the rails ker-azy! Good book. 3.7 stars

This book dragged somewhat in the beginning, but stick with it. You won't be sorry as a cat and mouse game ensues with some pretty wild things.

This was a fun and entertaining read! Jane was a hot mess and I LOVE unreliable narrators as well.. The twists in the book took me by surprised and the ending had my jaw dropping as well.