Dial A for Aunties

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

After a first date gone terribly wrong, Meddy needs to rely on her mother and her aunts to help her hide a dead body. The problem (aside from the dead body of course) is that the 5 of them are working the wedding of a huge client. What could possibly go wrong?

This hilarious book was exactly what I needed. Part Murder mystery and part rom com, this one had me laughing out loud with crazy family drama, swooning over the second chance romance, and on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was going to happen with the mystery. I also loved learning more aspects of the Chinese-Indonesian cultures. This is a book that truly has it all. Add this to your summer reading list because you won’t want to miss this one.

Thank you to Berkley for the advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Dial A for Aunties comes out Tuesday!

Meddling aunts and an accidental murder. This book just missed the mark for me. I love the aunties, they are hilarious. The overall plot was just way too over the top and totally unbelievable for me and I found myself not interested at all in how they get out of it.

One of the goals for my 2021 reading is to read more diverse authors. And when I read the blurb for Dial A for Aunties, I knew I had to add it to my TBR pile – and actually READ it.

Dial A for Aunties is a fun read for me. There are so many references that I identified with – being a Malaysian-born Chinese – like the aunties’ nosiness, the different generations’ language barriers, the cultural expectations placed on gender, and so on. And we haven’t even gotten to the total coopting of English, Chinese, and Bahasa that forms the lexicon of a Chinese/Indo person (I couldn’t think of the Indonesian version of Manglish/Singlish, lol!).

The plot is your basic girl-goes-nuts-dealing-with-her-aunties (which you’d totally understand if you had Chinese aunties) (no disrespect intended!), with the added comedy of trying to hide a body (of a total douche), while working a wedding (featuring another total douche as groom), and so on. Add in a theft, unrequited love, a once-in-a-lifetime love, and a bumbling cop, and you have the preposterously fun read that is Dial A for Aunties.

I loved its quirkiness, but you may have some trouble deciphering some of the words. Like “ayo” (come on, or let’s, depending on what follows), “wah” (an expression of surprise – like you’re impressed, not scared out of your pants), and so on. None of this (imo) detracts from the story itself, so don’t worry about it.

If you like a meet-cute with interfering family (and a dead douche), add Dial A for Aunties to your spring/summer reading. And prepare to snort in disbelief at some of the shenanigans these aunties get up to.

drey’s rating: Pick it up!

Check out Dial A for Aunties if you want a read that will absolutely crack you up! I LOVED this story - literally everything that could go wrong does, but who else can you count on besides family...especially when you need o hide a body!

This book is genuinely and absurdly funny and I had some great laughs while reading it. 

Dial A for Aunties is Jesse Sutanto's debut novel and follows 26 year old Meddelin Chan who out of guilt and familial loyalty is stuck at home living and working with her mom and aunties in their wedding planning business.  Meddelin accidentally kills her blind date, who is supposed to be the owner of the posh hotel where she they are planning the wedding of two billionaire families. As loyal aunties, of course they will help of her hide the body without judgment. And the crazy just gets more uber crazy from that point on...

This is a mix of genres, you will get some murder mystery, a little romcom and a whole lot of ridiculous! If you have a logical brain and looking for a book that makes sense, then you may struggle with this this story. If you are looking for an over the top and funny read that defies logic then go grab it. This remains me of the ridiculousness of Finlay Donovan is Killing It.

The book narrative shifts between present day and Meddelin's college experience with Nathan, the love of life...the one that got away. Loved Nathan's character!  

Meddelin's mom and aunties are hilarious and the kind of loyal that we all need in our lives. The rivalry between the aunties and the resulting banter from that was great.

I will admit that I struggled near the end because...well...logical brain over here 🙋‍♀️. Once I accepted that this was supposed to be ridiculous then I was able to accept it for what it is...a fun read. 

This is more 3.5 than 4 for me. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for an ARC. This book is available on April 27, 2021.

This was a fun and fast read from debut author Jesse Q. Sutanto. Meddy accidentally kills an online date in self-defense and she calls on her mother and 3 aunts for help to hide the body. It takes place over one wild and outrageous weekend during which a lavish wedding takes place (Meddy and her family work together as wedding vendors) and the Chinese-Indonesian family tries to hide a body while keeping the wedding running smoothly. At the same time, Meddy's old love whom she never got over shows up as well. I really enjoyed it!

This was one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time y’all! It’s completely ridiculous and over the top and you have to go into it knowing that it’s not believable whatsoever, but who freaking cares because it’s a mash up of Finlay Donovan and Crazy Rich Asians and when I tell you I cackled...

I flew through this zany adventure, it’s fast paced and crazy shit just continues to happen from beginning to end. Just when you think things can’t get worse for Meddy after she accidentally kills her blind date she turns to her mom and aunties for help, and when you meet her aunties, you’ll get it. They take meddling, bat shit crazy to a new extreme and they’re some of the most entertaining characters I’ve ever come across. Read this when you need a mood lifter, I promise you can’t read this without laughing, it’s hysterical

This book was a pleasant surprise for me. I like my mysteries dark and my romance on the peripheral. But this book was hilarious. I loved the characters and the writing was wonderful. Suspend your disbelief and it is a fun ride with a loving, kooky family. The main character is very relatable. Overall a pleasure to read.

Dial A for Aunties summarized in four words: what. a. wild. ride.

I honestly cannot say that any book has ever made me laugh as much as Dial A for Aunties has. First of all, the book is even more ridiculous than the synopsis makes it sound, but it's absolutely wonderful.

Jesse Q. Sutanto is a very skilled writer who knows how to write an engaging story that has you simultaneously laughing, hanging on the edge of your seat, and feeling all the feels. This book could be categorized as a family drama, a romance, and a thriller. It offers readers so much and also features an Indo-Chinese family living in LA. The book also reads like a TV show. No wonder it's already been optioned by Netflix! Dial A for Aunties is a fabulous own voices novel that touches on a lot of themes that are present in many other Asian-American and immigrant families. Sutanto has another book, The Obsession, due out before Dial A for Aunties as well as book deals for a few others! I absolutely cannot wait to read anything and everything Sutanto publishes.

Dial A for Aunties is truly unlike any other book I've ever read and I will be recommending this one to my friends for a while. Pick this one up if you're looking for a laugh out loud page turner!

4.5 ⭐️

Because Meddy couldn’t be another child that leaves the nest, she stays behind to help the family business as a wedding photographer, breaking up with her long term boyfriend Nathan who decided to pursue the career of his dreams in NYC. When Meddy’s ma sets her up on an online blind date, the guy turns out to be a total creeper, and Meddy accidentally kills him! What does she do now? She enlists her ma and aunties to help her dispose of the body.

I laughed so many times that I lost count! The dialogue alone made me crack up and a bunch of cultural references overlapped with my own, so I totally could relate. Meddy’s ma and aunties were a riot. The comedy of errors were hilarious. Sutanto’s writing was simple yet fun, easy to read, and I enjoyed some unexpected twists in the mix. Also, Nathan was described as a Daniel Henney meets Lewis Tan. How could you resist that?

Oh my god this book was the WILDEST RIDE! I had not read the synopsis for this book, or even a blurb, before starting it and honestly, I think it was better that way! It was hilarious, surprising, and had so many fun (and anxiety-inducing) twists and turns. I won’t say anything about the plot because I think it was much more fun to know nothing going in. I will say that this book was a much-needed hilarious romp that would make an amazing movie.

I’ve seen a lot of other reviews that say you need to suspend disbelief while reading and that’s definitely true – but I think that made the book all the more fun as it took me away from my own reality for a few hours. I’ll also say that for such a satire-filled book, I found the romance element to be really sweet and endearing. I also loved the familial elements (the titular aunties were amazing). Overall, I would 100% recommend if you want to laugh out loud and have some fun!

Completely enjoyed this book from start to finish! It is a rom-com, but there is a touch of murder mystery as well. Meddy Chan is a photographer for her family's wedding business. The family consists of Meddy's mother and her three sisters (the aunties), who are Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneurs. They set Meddy up with a blind date, and Meddy accidentally ends up sort of murdering him. The whole family gets involved in dealing with hiding the dead body, but in the meantime, they have a huge wedding scheduled for the same weekend. It turns out that the owner of the resort where the wedding is to be held is Nathan, the "one that she let get away" love of Meddy's life. Lots of action and lots of humor. I lost count of how many times I laughed out loud. Recommend this upbeat, lighthearted story to readers who want a "clean" and gentle romance, lots of family love, a fast-paced plot, and terrific characters.

Meddelin Chan lives deeply immersed in her big, noisy, and at times, overwhelming Chinese-Indonesian family mainly filled with matriarchs who have their fingers in all her business. When Meddy’s mother catfishes a blind date for her, things go horribly wrong, and the man ends up dead or maybe, mostly dead. Meddy panics stuffing the body into her car trunk and driving home rather than doing the smart and sensible thing, like say, calling the police. Her mother and three aunts with whom Meddy’s works in their wedding business, come to the rescue and then major hi-jinks ensue each one more crazy town than the next.

The family has a major “Crazy Rich Asians” mega wedding to pull off that could make or break their reputation at a deluxe exclusive resort on a private island off the California coast. Through a series of missteps, the body gets sent to the fancy hotel in one of their food coolers to the island where the family spends the rest of the time madly shuttling him around to avoid their crime being exposed. To spice things up and add more zany complications, Meddy’s old boyfriend, Nathan, whom she foolishly gave up right after college due to family pressures and was forever pining for, turns out to be the hotel owner.

Meddy’s Ma and crazy aunts are a force of nature: loud, pushy, argumentative in three languages, they provide most of the comic relief in this sometimes dark tale of mishaps since, after all, hauling around a dead body is pretty out there and not a little grotesque. The most entertaining and informative part is the author’s depictions of family life for Indo-Asian immigrants who have traditional ways and beliefs as well as major expectations for their offspring. With the popularity of the aforementioned Crazy Rich Asians and an older film “Weekend at Bernie’s”, it is not surprising this story is slated to be released on Netflix.

This book initially starts off fun. I came into this story thinking it was some kind of mystery but really there's no mystery to solve. We already know the killer and her name is Meddlin Chan who works as a photographer for her family's wedding business. Meddy's mother is desperate to find her the perfect man so she signs her up for a dating site with a fake profile pretending to be her. Meddy agrees to go on the date but after her date tries to atrack her she ends up killing him in self defense. Rather than drive to the hospital or police station she panics and drives home. Her mother and auntiea immediately go into protection mode to help her hide the body and wacky hijinks ensure from there.

I see the rom-com label was slapped on this book but while there is a romantic side plot this isn't a rom-com. In fact I'm not even sure exactly what I'd call this. I think we could call it satire. It's a very dated satire though as most of the happenings in this story make it feel more early 2000s than 2021. Advanced in technology alone make this story completely unplausible. And while this story acknowledges it's ridiculousness somewhere around the 50% mark it completely goes off the rails and just starts throwing in zany plot points hoping something will stick.

Where the book truly shines is the portrayal of Indo-Chinese culture. However the aunties all feel like one note caricatures.

I recieved an arc from Netgalley in exchange for honest review.

This story was absolutely HILARIOUS. I don’t think I’ve laughed this much while reading a book in such a long time.

I loved every second I spent reading it! It was perfect, there was just so much humor and these women found themselves in the wildest situations! At some points you just had to sit back and enjoy the ride because of the decisions the aunts made were just so wacky!

I absolutely loved all the aunties and Meddy. They were seriously such a riot! Everyone needs to read this wonder of this book! It had so much and it seriously needs to become a movie!!! I would have a damn good time watching this on the big screen because it just screams “Make me into a movie!”

This book was absolutely bananas in the most fun way. Being expected to meet cultural expectations like being a good daughter or a good host to your family while also dealing with a dead body is absolutely mind-boggling and completely hilarious. It's a very broad comparison, but it feels like Weekend at Bernie's meets Crazy Rich Asians. But more than just that there are great subplots too that pay off in great ways, including more than one romance storyline. I will be recommending this book to anyone in my shop who's looking for a funny quick read this summer.

Nosy aunties and a murder mystery, what's not to love?

The story is a bit ridiculous at times but it funny and completely charming. Read it.

4.5 rounded up to 5 stars because I think this might be one of my all time favorite romances. It was quirky, cute, and had such a sweet romance. I loved Meddy, the narrator — I can totally relate to her being so family oriented that she’ll go to great lengths to please them. She was so smart and relatable, but also I loved how invested she was in her family and passion for photography. And while she definitely grew as an individual throughout this story, she never lost sight of who she was!

Also, what’s not to love about an accidental murder?! Like, it’s seriously a plot line I couldn’t have imagined myself playing out so well. It was hilarious, but also had elements of mystery as Meddy, her mom, and aunties figure out how to not only cover their tracks but also piece together what actually happened.

This romance was wild, funny, absolutely charming, and so, so sweet — for romance lovers, know it is not steamy, but the romance plot line is still to die for, in my opinion!

I was really excited for this one when I read the synopsis, however I could not get into the plot when I tried to read it. It felt like there was a lot going on, and I went in thinking there would be more romance than there was. This was really more like a cozy mystery. DNF

Thank you Netgalley and Berkeley for a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Omg! How do I even begin to write this review!

Dial A for Aunties is a unique novel, to say the least.

Fun, witty, edge-of-your-seat. This novel mixes a little bit of romance and mystery (and murder) all in one. The characters are incredible and the story quickly goes by as you fall into an adventure you never know you wanted to go on.

Think Crazy Rich Asians meets Weekend with Bernie.

Solid!