Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Aunties, Book 1

Synopsis: What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?

You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue!

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It’s the biggest job yet for the family wedding business—”Don’t leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!“—and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream flowers.

But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy’s great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?

Review: I had seen this novel around when it was nominated on Goodreads and since I love this genre, I had noted it on my wishlist. Now I got it and I finally got into it! And I was surprised to see that it has been translated into French (although I haven’t heard of it at all).

Meddy has a date. With whom? With the man her mother picked up for her on an app. You’d think she didn’t go, but our Meddy does everything her family tells her to do and she still hopes to find love, so why not? But when she inadvertently kills her less-than-charming suitor, she finds herself in a tricky situation. And when that dead body turns up at the wedding Meddy and her family are planning, it’s the beginning of the end! Oh yes, because our heroine’s aunts are completely crazy! But that’s not all: Meddy runs into her college sweetheart again, a man she once loved more than anything, but gave up to stay with her family.

This book is completely crazy. It’s full of completely unrealistic scenes, but at the same time, it was great to see what’s going to happen and how our Meddy would fare. Well… not very well to say the least.

I had a great time with this fun novel and I have to say I’m pretty curious to see what the author has in store for us in the second volume.