Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

I'm not always the biggest fan of "cosy" mysteries, but I felt I needed change of pace after reading a few darker murder books. I knew this had been very popular & it was on deal, so time to give it a go.

I think this is very much a love or hate book due to the main character Vera. She's bossy & a little difficult to say the least, but underneath lies a really good heart so I loved her.
The book is almost more about a found family than a mystery & is told from a number of view points, Vera & her suspects. Also, it was laugh out loud funny in a lot of places.
It's nice for a change to have a murder victim that quite frankly is despicable & you grow to love the suspects instead, but they all do have their reasons to see the victim dead.
I show more really enjoyed this & I'm looking forward to reading the next one. show less

This story was a lot of fun—though there were several moments where I had to shake my head at the actions Vera took, because while it was obvious that what she was doing was wrong it was also so very believable that someone like her would do exactly that. All of the side characters were a bunch of fun too, and I enjoyed getting to know them over the course of the investigation.

I did figure out "whodunnit" before the big reveal, though I couldn't give any evidence or motive for it. Still, I enjoyed seeing all the theories that the characters had (okay, it was mostly Vera) get built up and then unravel. I also greatly enjoyed seeing the characters develop various relationships with each other, and was pleased that it wasn't all couples show more hooking up, but that the group truly turned into a lovely found family. That was a very refreshing subplot.

For the most part I listened to the audiobook. However, I didn't care for the way the narrator voiced Emma. I didn't mind the way the little girl was written, but I didn't like the way she sounded in the audiobook. So I did read some of the scenes in print (yay library!) because of the way Emma sounded. On the other hand, the other characters' voices—especially Vera's—were great, and the audio enhanced the read for those characters.

Just one warning: if you're familiar with (and a fan of) Chinese cooking, this book will make you hungry. Vera cooks so much delicious sounding food, and I wanted to try all of it. show less

Vera Wong's life isn't as full as it used to be. Her husband has passed away, her adult son doesn't visit as much as she'd like, and she only has one regular customer who visits her teahouse in San Francisco's Chinatown. So when Vera comes down into the shop one day to find a body, it's the most excitement she's had in years. Vera has read many mystery novels and watched all the CSIs, so she's positive there's been a murder but the police are less certain. Vera knows that the murderer is likely to revisit the crime scene so as four different people wander into her shop in the wake of the death, Vera is certain that one of them must have committed the crime. However, as Vera investigates she'll unearth more than just a mystery.

This was a show more lovely book with a solid mystery at its core. Vera is a blunt and no-nonsense older woman and her investigation efforts make for excellent reading. The four suspects also have chapters from their perspectives, which makes for an excellent narrative as the reader attempts to deduce who may have committed the crime. While I put together the whodunnit in advance of the characters, the true delight here is getting to know Vera and the found family she assembles in the strangest of circumstances. Reviews that described this as Knives Out meets Kim's Convenience aren't wrong and it may also appeal to fans of the Thursday Murder Club. Recommended. show less

Vera Wong is an elderly widow who runs a teashop in San Francisco. She gets up early every morning and opens the shop, even though she only ever has one customer, and she texts her grown son several times a day, even though she knows he probably won’t respond. But her quiet life takes an abrupt 180 when she wakes up one morning to a dead body in her shop, the police don’t seem interested in calling it a murder, and Vera decides to solve the case on her own.

Adorable. Think Debbie Macomber, but with most of the saccharine replaced with delicious Szechuan. Very much enjoyable.

This was adorable and funny. It centers on a women with a small tea shop. She wakes one morning to a dead body in her shop. And off it goes. I found Vera adorable and relatable. Her want to help and yet yet her blunt responses were a great mix and I loved her for her honesty and heart. Her ragtag group of suspects were so fun and I loved getting to know them. I chuckled along to most of this book, absolutely tickled and moved so many times on just the very ways that makes us all human. I loved this one!

First sentence: Vera Wong Zhuzhu, age sixty, is a pig, but she really should have been born a rooster. We are, of course, referring to Chinese horoscopes. Vera Wong is a human woman, thank you very much, but roosters have nothing on her. Every morning, at exactly four thirty, Vera's eyelids snap open like roller shades shooting up.

Premise/plot: Vera Wong is the owner of VERA WANG'S WORLD-FAMOUS TEAHOUSE. World-famous it is not. She can count on only one consistent customer per day. But she keeps on keeping on. You never know--something might happen that boosts her business. It is quite a shock when she discovers one morning a DEAD BODY in her shop--someone having broken into her shop just to die?!?!?! How peculiar. The police don't show more appreciate Vera taking the time to make them tea--in fact, they find her overly pushy. It is a mutual UNappreciation society. Vera just KNOWS that the police are not handling this murder the right way. Left to their own devices, they are sure to bumble it. Vera may just have to solve this murder herself...

She has a strong feeling that the murderer will return to the scene of the crime....and when business indeed picks up quite a bit in the next week...she begins making a list of all the suspects in the case. She has her own unique way of getting to know [aka interrogating] these suspects....

My thoughts: I really LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this one so much. It was a delight to read cover to cover. The characters were great. The mystery was interesting. The alternating narrators surprisingly worked well. I wasn't even annoyed by all the transitions. It was just a great mystery. It felt, at times, more like a comedy. It worked for me. show less

Many of us who read or watch murder mysteries probably wonder from time to time how we might do if we had a murder to solve. Most likely, of course, we would be terrible at it. But when Vera Wong finds a body in her Chinatown tea shop, she has no doubt at all that she can do a better job at finding the killer than the incompetent police. They even think it's an accidental death. What fun would that be?

Jesse Q. Sutanto gives us a truly wonderful thing in “Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers” (2023) — a good mystery novel that is hilarious at the same time.

Vera Wong is a 60-something widow whose tea shop has just one customer, even though the sign out front boasts that it is "world famous." She needs a little excitement in show more her life, and the body of Marshall Chen provides that. His death is determined to be from exposure to bird dander, to which he was allergic.

Vera quickly settles on four suspects, each with a reason to kill Marshall. They include his neglected wife Julia, his resentful twin brother Oliver, and Sana and Riki, two people Marshall had betrayed in his nonstop efforts to get rich by using others.

The trouble is, Vera comes to love her suspects. She moves in with Julia and encourages her to realize her dream of becoming a photographer while babysitting her daughter. Oliver is a nice young man who was once Julia's best friend before Marshall came between them. Sana is a talented artist whose paintings were stolen by Marshall; Riki has computer skills that Marshall took advantage of.

While trying to determine which of them might be a murderer, Vera sets about improving each of their lives, while each of them helps improve her own.

Sutanto's novel is as warm and cuddly as as murder mystery can be. And it contains a nifty mystery that Vera Wong, not the police, manages to solve. show less