Blog Tour Review: Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (On a Deadman) by Jesse Q. Sutanto

 

Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (On a Deadman) (Vera Wong #2) by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Publication Date: April 1st 2025 by Berkley Books

Pages: 336

Source: Publisher 

Rating: ★★★★

Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Libro.fm | Audible | Goodreads

My Thoughts:

Vera’s life is full with family and friends since the last story, but she’s maybe just a bit bored. However, things change when she spies a distressed young woman, Millie, outside the police station. Millie’s friend, Thomas, a social media influencer, is missing, and the case intersects with one that Detective Selena Gray, her soon to be daughter-in-law (according to Vera), is working on.

 

In her investigation Vera comes across several new people who need her wise advice and mothering. I love Vera’s no-nonsense approach to other people’s problems! She’s hilarious and usually right. She also had an abundance of understanding and sympathy for her new friends, and they needed it!

 

Vera Wong’s Guide for Snooping on a Dead Man had a lot of laugh-out-loud moments but also dealt with a serious and troubling issue that is so prevalent today! I enjoyed reading the author’s note describing the real event that inspired the plot for Vera’s latest caper. The ending hinted at another story to come for Vera. I look forward to it!

4 Stars

Book Description:

Vera Wong is back and as meddling as ever in this follow-up to the hit Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.…

Ever since a man was found dead in Vera's teahouse, life has been good. For Vera that is. She’s surrounded by loved ones, her shop is bustling, and best of all, her son, Tilly, has a girlfriend! All thanks to Vera, because Tilly's girlfriend is none other than Officer Selena Gray. The very same Officer Gray that she had harassed while investigating the teahouse murder. Still, Vera wishes more dead bodies would pop up in her shop, but one mustn't be ungrateful, even if one is slightly...bored.

Then Vera comes across a distressed young woman who is obviously in need of her kindly guidance. The young woman is looking for a missing friend. Fortunately, while cat-sitting at Tilly and Selena's, Vera finds a treasure Selena's briefcase. Inside is a file about the death of an enigmatic influencer—who also happens to be the friend that the young woman was looking for.

Online, Xander had it a parade of private jets, fabulous parties with socialites, and a burgeoning career as a social media influencer. The only problem is, after his body is fished out of Mission Bay, the police can't seem to actually identify him. Who is Xander Lin? Nobody knows. Every contact is a dead end. Everybody claims not to know him, not even his parents.

Vera is determined to solve Xander's murder. After all, doing so would surely be a big favor to Selena, and there is nothing she wouldn't do for her future daughter-in-law.

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?