Review: Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

 

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Publication Date: March 14th 2023 by Berkley Books

Pages: 352

Source: Publisher 

Rating: ★★★★

Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Goodreads

My Thoughts:

Vera Wong has been living a quiet, and lonely life since her son has grown, and her husband passed away.  She opens her tea shop every day but customers are thin and besides texting her son “helpful” advice, which he mostly ignores, nothing much happens out of her normal routine until she wakes and discovers a body in her tea shop. The police’s response is lackluster in Vera’s opinion and so she sets out to solve the murder on her own, because everyone knows the killer always returns to the scene of the crime! All Vera needs to do is sit back and wait for her suspect to arrive.

Vera was very sure of how life should go and was puzzled why people didn’t automatically agree with her, like the police. She was hilarious!

Of course, there were people connected to the dead man that did show up and Vera adds them to her suspect list as she makes them tea, cooks for them, asks them questions and then tells them what they should be doing with their lives. These “suspects” end up benefiting from her help and they brighten Vera’s life, too, but is one of them a murderer?

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers was such fun! I had to laugh at her “helpful” texts sent to her son at 4:30 am, “reminding him that he’s sleeping his life away”! I remember being annoyed by early phone calls from my dad or grandma, and they weren’t at 4:30 am! It was heartwarming to see Vera’s love and attention help others, helping her in turn. The story was humorous, moving and uplifting and I’d definitely recommend it to others!

4 Stars

Book Description:

A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady--ah, lady of a certain age--who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco's Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.

Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing--a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn't know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would 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 knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.

What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?