I loved the first book. Going into this, I had my hopes up. The beginning part, up until an unfortunate twist was amazing, it was funny light and I couldn’t put it down. Then, the twist happened and then events kept unraveling where you get anxiety because you don’t know what disaster will happen next. Then I just couldn’t wait for it to get to the end or to where things settled down. From 60% to the 80% of the book was a wreck. I was disappointed with the family aspect part. (But I don’t want to give too much away) I loved writing style, the beginning, the end and I’m still excited to read book 3!

✨ The Title/Cover Draw:
After reading Dial A for Aunties, I knew I had to read more in this series! Thanks to @Netgalley and @berkleypub for allowing me the chance to read this ahead of publication.

💜 What I liked:
The story is about another wedding, and this time it’s Meddy’s. It takes place in England. But the situation from the first book just might influence her wedding’s success. The aunties are back and just as funny!

😱 What I didn’t like:
Honestly, I didn’t feel like this book was as action packed as the first one. There was a lot of repetition and I really wanted to see more of the wedding and cultural traditions. I will totally read the next one regardless. It’s still a really fun read.

🚦 My face at the end: 🤓

💭 3 Reasons to Read:
1. A wedding in England
2. Komodo Dragon fascinators
3. Slapstick situations

🕧 Mini-Summary:
Meddy is having a wedding in England, but does her past catch up to her and threaten to ruin her own big day?

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Received from Netgalley.

💯 For more details on the books we read, be sure to follow me on TikTok (@zaineylaney) or check out our Podcast - Elated Geek!

The Aunties are back again !! This book was such a delightful treat, especially after finishing book #1, Dial A For Aunties. I was literally laughing so hard and I had so much fun while reading. There is a cross over of characters from book #1, so I would definitely recommend reading the first book before this one.

Meddy & Nathan are getting married in England, where their families are meeting & merging for the first time. Knowing the aunties, you can expect lots of chaos and a good laugh, especially after they throw around British slang they learned from a cheap course they took. Oh, and lets not forget the ridiculously huge hats the aunties bring! Meddy’s family decides to hire a family to do their wedding for them, that way they can just focus on being guests. Surprisingly, the family that they hire is ridiculously similar to hers when it comes to misspelled names, and all the craziness. Unfortunately, the family they hired is hiding a secret that can jeopardize the wedding & even cost someones life. There is so much going on (in a good way) with Meddy and her crazy aunties, but I would’ve loved to see more of Nathan, especially him and Meddy. If you’re looking for a book that will make you laugh and enjoy yourself with a little sprinkle of romance, this one is for you.

You Can Expect:
* Family Dynamics
* Murder Plotting By The Mafia
* Family Drama
* Hilarious Fast Paced
* Hint of Mystery
* Embarrassing But Loving Aunties
* British Wedding
* Multicultural Families

I want to thank firstly, NetGalley for an ARC for Four Aunties and a Wedding. This is a sequel to Dial A for Aunties. Here is my honest opinion of the book.

Madness, chaos, and murder happened in the first book. The four Aunties drove Meddy crazy and now, Maddie is getting married to her college sweetheart.

Enter the carbon copy of her family: Staphanie and her family who will be the photographer, and her uncles and grandmother will be doing the hair, makeup, catering, and coordinating Meddy’s wedding so that Meddy and her aunties and mother, can just be in the wedding and not lift a finger. Staphanie is Meddy’s counterpart, the second uncle is second aunty’s counterpart, and so on, and so on.

Will her wedding go smoothly? Not if you have those aunties in your wedding party… or in your life.

I gritted through the first one in the series and tbh, found them annoying. The only saving grace is when you see at the end of the first book, Nathan is still in love with Meddy as she is with him. In this second book, we find the Aunties and her mother, haven’t grown and learned from their first shenanigans and instead, are playing the part of pretending to be part of the Chinese-Indonesian mafias. It’s just too much. It’s like Sweet-n-low, as in, it’s too sugary sweet and after a quick while, leaves a weird taste in your mouth and makes you ask, why did you pick it up, to begin with.

I give it a solid three stars because it was just okay. I know it’s not a great book when I figured out who Staphanie and her family were after ⅓ of the book. To finish it and say, “yep, called it,” is a huge disappointment to me. It’s supposed to make me say, “whoa, I did not see that coming, at all.” It was a bit painful to read but I was committed to finishing it so that I could give it a fair review. I was not impressed.

Jesse Q Sutanto’s newest book, Four Aunties and a Wedding, is the sequel to dark comedy Dial A For Aunties.

When Four Aunties and A Wedding opens, Meddy and Nathan are planning their destination wedding in the UK, but although the aunties do weddings themselves, they want to be guests and not wedding vendors. So they meet with a weirdly symmetrical Indo family who also do weddings, also have misspelled names and punny ads, and, as it turns out, also have a dark secret, and one implausible lie leads to another until chaos ensues at the gorgeous British wedding.

Look, it’s not as good as Dial A For Aunties. Some of it’s just the lightning-in-a-bottle perfection of the first one. An accidental murder, with overbearing, well-meaning aunties doing their nosy best to help? Just genius. Some of it, though, is that the overall zaniness of the sequel veers from a dark comedy into no-stakes insanity. There’s no point where a reader worries that Meddy — or any of the Chans, really — could possibly face repercussions for any of the wild things that happen in this book. There’s no worry that maybe someone won’t swallow the increasingly ridiculous lies, no worry that Nathan’s British parents will hold a grudge against the increasingly ridiculous antics of the aunties, no worry that the planned mob hit at the wedding will actually come off. It’s 0% tension, 100% capers.

So, you’ve got to be in the right mood for Four Aunties and A Wedding. Be ready for over-the-top zaniness on every single page, with our favorite aunties characters in their wedding best, down to dragons on their hats. Because upscale British ladies love hats, right? It’s only polite! The aunties have studied British English from oddly cheap online lessons, and insist upon using ridiculous British slang whenever possible. And that’s just the very beginning of this story of mafia threats, attempted murder, successful kidnapping, blackmail, and other wedding-day zaniness.

Rating: 3.5-4 stars

Four Aunties and a Wedding is just as campy and chaotic as Dial A for Aunties and reuniting with the Aunties was definitely the highlight. I love the way Sutanto is able to seamlessly combine over-the-top antics, heartwarming family moments, and Chinese-Indo rep all in one story because at the end of the day, Four Aunties and a Wedding is about the lengths one family would go to for one of their own. I love the complexities the aunties bring to the story--they're bold and loud, maternal and ridiculous--and Sutanto manages to capture the many feelings--exasperation, embarrassment, affection, and guilt--that only family can bring out all at once.

I was excited when I read the author's note in the beginning about how her goal in writing Four Aunties and a Wedding was to "show how varied the Asian diaspora experience can be" and was disappointed we didn't get to see more of Nathan's interactions with his family. (We actually don't get see much of Nathan at all, but more on that later.) The story primarily focuses on Meddy's relationship and interactions with her family, and while there isn't anything inherently wrong with that--after all, aren't we all here for the aunties?--the introduction seems to build up expectations that don't quite match what's actually delivered. I also think the contrast between Nathan's parents and Meddy's family could've made for a really interesting.

Going back to Nathan, I wish he'd played a bigger role in the story. The "I can't tell Nathan" subplot seemed like unnecessary drama for drama's sake and a rehash of the last book.

As in the last book, the resolution is kind of thrown together in the end and it's all very absurd, but I'm willing to overlook that since the series isn't so much about the murders or the mafia, but the mother-figures in Meddy's life.

Four Aunties and a Wedding is a farce masquerading as a mystery. There are some really funny lines but the improbability of it all kept banging me on the head.

It’s not quite as great (by a slim margin) as book one, but this zany sequel is still ridiculously fun. The aunties and Meddy make for great reading. The author’s take on the family dynamic and conversations just kill me. I can’t help but laugh out loud, startling anyone near me, as each situation escalates into hilarity.

My only small criticism is that we don’t get enough Nathan in this book. His presence was missing. I wanted to get a stronger sense of his character as he’s now dragged into schemes and capers too. But he was shoved aside too often.

Still, it’s funny and sweet and improbable and endlessly unique. I love this series so much and I’m equal parts scared and eager to see what could possibly come next. There better be a next!

4 AUNTIES AND A WEDDING by Jesse Q. Sutanto is a sequel to 2021’s Dial A for Aunties. This time instead of the family planning someone else’s wedding, it’s Meddy and Nathan’s day in the spotlight. And the aunties think they’ve found the perfect planning family to oversee the wedding. But nothing can be that easy for the Chan clan, can it?

This fun, fast-paced, humorous novel keeps the whimsy of the first book and absolutely amps up the caper vibes. Great to see that Meddy and the aunties' actions of the first book have (hilarious) consequences in the second.

Based on the author’s own experiences, 4 Aunties and a Wedding looks at the different experiences people of the Asian diaspora have and how that affects their children. Meddy realizes that while her mom and aunts might seem eccentric or even embarrassing, they love her and will do anything, even commit a crime while wearing Komodo dragon fascinators, to keep her safe and her wedding on.

Family-focused with light romance.

Perfect for fans of Lillie Vale, Julie Tieu, and Jackie Lau.

And hysterical follow up to dial a for auntie's

Meddy is getting married to her dream man Nathan. Her caterers are a family that is a mirror projection of her own family. Everything is perfect until she finds out that her caterers are part of the mafia and are using her wedding as a chance to kill someone. Meddy and her own family will do whatever it takes to ensure that no one dies at her wedding.

I love Meddy's aunts and her mother in a way in which I'm glad that they're not related to me. They are very embarrassing but also very hysterical. I'm impressed with how quickly they help Meddy take on the mafia.

My only problem is that sometimes the embarrassment is a little too much for me. So I have to close my kindle and walk away. And Nathan feels like a cardboard cut out of a person.

This review is based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

I loved Jesse Q Sutanto's first book in the series Dial A for Aunties. However, I was a little worried about how she was going to write a second book and where the characters were going to go from here. I shouldn't have been worried since she absolutely knocked it out of the park with Four Aunties and A Wedding. All the humor that was present in the first book is back. I had to stop ready a few times because I was laughing so hard.
Meddy is finally getting married to Nathan in England. She can't wait for the wedding, but she has to manage her four aunts who keep coming up with wild ideas for the wedding. While trying to keep her family in check, she also has to deal with a past issue that is now threatening her future.

There’s a particular quote in this book that pretty much sums up exactly how I felt while reading:

-- Half of me is crooning awww, and the other half is tearing its hair out and going, “THIS IS A DISASTER!”

Four Aunties and a Wedding was such a fun-filled sequel to Dial A for Aunties. Similar to the first novel, it wasn’t heavy in the slightest – despite dealing with things like murder and the mafia. These stories may be loaded with disaster from beginning to end, but this chaos won’t have you on the edge of your seat so much as falling out of your seat with laughter.

With each page that I turned, there was something new to crack up about. The “misspelled” and “celebrity” names in the first book were too funny, but there were even more in this one to cause hilarious confusion. Of course, there were also the aunties and their outrageous antics. If you thought that covering up a murder was a big production to pull off, you should see them try and hold their own against the mafia! It felt like a perfect mix of crazy schemes and hysterical dialogue. There were moments as I was reading that I would highlight a phrase and just annotate it with “HAHAHA” because I literally couldn’t hold in my laughter!

The only thing that didn’t seem quite right to me was how Meddy reacted. In the first book, she hid everything from Nathan, but later on, realized it was actually more helpful to involve him. The fact that she was so determined to keep everything to herself in this book bugged me! It felt like she hadn’t learned anything from the “first time around,” and I believe that despite all of the hullabaloo, she had enough wits about her to share with her soon-to-be/new husband if something chaotic was going on – especially on their wedding day.

Since these books aren’t filled with weighty topics so much as goofy schemes, it’s nice when there are moments of tenderness and depth. Meddy really struggles to appreciate her family when they’re acting absolutely bonkers – especially in front of Nathan’s posh parents – but she also realizes that they’re willing to do absolutely anything for her. So, the way that she talks herself down when she wants to criticize them is really heartfelt and sweet. I loved seeing her love for her nutty aunties seep through as she navigates the challenges in this book.

While I found most of the plot points pretty predictable, there was at least one moment that made my jaw drop, and that was intensely satisfying. I can’t say this book held my attention quite like the first (there are very few books that do – Dial A for Aunties was something uniquely special), but for a sequel, it certainly didn’t disappoint!

Content Warnings: (major) bullying, murder, torture, and drug use, (moderate) bullying, cultural appropriation, and racism

Jesse Sutanto has written an excellent sequel to Dial A for Aunties, with more mayhem for Meddy and her family as Meddy and Nathan get married.

Meddy's family can't be the wedding vendors for her event, so they find who (they think) are the next best thing. At first, Meddy isn't sure, but she instantly feels a connection with Staphanie Tanuwijaya (and no, that isn't a spelling mistake), her uncles and her grandmother. Staphanie is the photographer, her grandmother is the wedding planner, Big Uncle does the flower and decor, Second Uncle does hair and makeup, and Third Uncle is the MC (Master of Ceremonies). Despite her initial concerns, Meddy and Nathan agree that they are the perfect wedding vendors.

But before the wedding begins, Meddy and her family find out that their "perfect" wedding vendors are planning on killing someone at their wedding, and are part of the mafia. If only Meddy's biggest worries could be her family's fake British accents and horrible slang, their bright purple dresses, and kamado dragon hats! But instead she spends her wedding day trying to protect who they think would is the target, lying to her new husband, and trying to look like she's having fun.

This book had me laughing out loud. Sutanto does an excellent job of writing complex characters who you'd love to invite over for tea (even special Chinese tea that might make you high or fall asleep). I thoroughly enjoyed reading Four Aunties and a Wedding, and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys funny mysteries!

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy of this great book!

Another fun and entertaining addition to this series. I love Meddy and her crew, this had me laughing out loud. It’s chaotic, ridiculous and charming.. I love the. Han family and this time they are trying to outsmart the mafia that are infiltrating Medfy and Nathan’s wedding. A delight to read.

I loved it! It was such a good read. I thought the characters were well written, and their growth and arcs were well paced. I enjoyed the way the conflits were presented to us the reader! Highly recommend

This is one of my favorite series! I fell in love with the authors work last year when I read her young adult thriller and then Dial A for Aunties and I don't think I can get enough. She's a diverse writer and has a little something for everyone. I can't wait to read her upcoming releases and purchase a copy of this one for my self. It's a favorite of 2022!

Another great entry in one of my favorite series! So excited to see this on netgalley and getting to read it has been awesome.

After all the hype I gave Dial A For Aunties, my expectations were sky high for this one. Maybe that was my big mistake starting the book. I was expecting there to be hijinks and humorous moments where Meddy and her aunties would crack me up. And sure, these moments were present but there was just something that was missing.

First you have to leave your disbelief at the door because some of the kooky stuff that happens here is really out there. But this story just once again solidified my love for the aunties and how they are willing to put everything on the line for Meddy. Meddy on the other hand...she was not my fave. I feel like she changed from the first book. I'm not sure what it was but I wasn't a fan of her criticizing her aunties and just being kind of mean to them.

Despite this, I did enjoy the "background" wedding and how it all went down. The ending is really sweet and I'm excited and hopeful at the idea of a third book. I'm sure there's plenty of things the aunties and Meddy could get swept up in.

Thank you so much to Berkley Romance for giving me the opportunity to read this e-ARC in exchange for my own opinions.

"Four Aunties and a Wedding" by Jesse Q. Sutanto is a madcap romp through Medellin and Nathan's wedding day in Oxford, U.K.. Meddy's Indonesian/Chinese family and Nate's proper British family don't mix well at all despite her mother and aunties' attempt to fit in with coaching on British slang and fascinators (that are more than fascinating). Add this together with another Indonesian/Chinese wedding planning family who don't know what they are doing and you get a bit of a mess,

"Four Aunties and a Wedding" continues the story from "Dial A for Aunties" exactly how you would expect it to (with a few ridiculous twists thrown in along the way). Anyone who enjoyed the first book will enjoy the second and be hoping for more.

This was so much fun!!!! I don’t even know where to start. First of all - getting the characters from the first book back was great. But of course, the cover is funnily misleading because I did shed multiple tears as I read. Sutanto really knows how to bring out so much joy and happiness from you and I absolutely adored this read. 5/5 stars!