{"id":6339,"date":"2025-03-31T04:53:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T11:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6339"},"modified":"2025-04-01T06:11:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T13:11:41","slug":"jesse-q-sutanto-vera-wongs-guide-to-snooping-on-a-dead-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jesse-q-sutanto-vera-wongs-guide-to-snooping-on-a-dead-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Q. Sutanto: Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vera Wong #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>These books are like comfy, beautiful pillows for your brain, and, let me tell you, these days that\u2019s not a bad thing.\u00a0 Vera, the heroine of the series, is the 60 something widow who, in the first book, finds a dead body in the middle of her formerly obscure tea shop, ultimately finding friends and a purpose in the act of solving a murder.\u00a0 Vera is opinionated, bossy, maternal, and an excellent cook, who as the book opens, gets a scam phone call which cons her into sharing her social security number and even a photo of her driver\u2019s licence.<\/p>\n

Realizing she\u2019s been had, she loads up some food and heads to the police station to look up her son\u2019s cop girlfriend Selena (whom she refers to already as her daughter in law) and ask for help.\u00a0 As the putative future daughter in law helps her out, the food she\u2019s brought vanishes while the cops clean up what could have ended up as a very nasty situation.<\/p>\n

As Vera leaves the police station, she encounters a lost looking young girl, Millie, who she takes back to the tea shop, making her some tea and trying to find out what\u2019s bothering her. Millie tells her that her friend Thomas has vanished and she\u2019s worried about him, but she flees before Vera can find out more. When the young man is found dead, allegedly a suicide, Vera pursues the case instantly, despite Selena\u2019s repeated insistence that she stay out of it.<\/p>\n

Ignoring Selena, Vera not only befriends Millie, but also an influencer named Aimes who knew Thomas as Xander, as well as Thomas\/Xander\u2019s talent manager, TJ. She also discovers that the departed\u2019s \u201cgrandfather\u201d is a neighboring store owner who met him in his restaurant. As in the first book, Vera draws a disparate, reluctant group of people around her as she snoops, all of them eventually completely won over by her cooking and the power of her (admittedly judgy) form of fierce love.\u00a0 One of the best scenes in the book involves TJ\u2019s teenage daughter, Robin, which I won\u2019t spoil for you but, believe me, it\u2019s an instant classic.<\/p>\n

An accidental influencer, Vera shoots cooking and tea making videos, in which she also talks about Xander\u2019s death and asks for help, which she gets, along with a side order of trouble.\u00a0 Her friends, of course, rally around her and they all help provide the ingredients that crack the mystery of Thomas\/Xander\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

I love a book that makes you laugh aloud as you read it, and the passionate and observant Vera is flat out, obliviously funny, probably even more so because she\u2019s far from perfect. While this book didn\u2019t have the special thrill of discovery that comes with a fantastic first novel and the birth of a great character, it remains a really fun and engaging read.\u00a0 I love Vera and it would be great if she served me a cup of her soothing tea, but I found reading this book every bit as warm and comforting.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vera Wong #2 These books are like comfy, beautiful pillows for your brain, and, let me tell you, these days that\u2019s not a bad thing.\u00a0 Vera, the heroine of the series, is the 60 something widow who, in the first book, finds a dead body in the middle of her formerly obscure tea shop, ultimately … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[189,2052,1874,484,1094,1276,2051,2050,2049],"class_list":["post-6339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-berkley","tag-food-and-cooking","tag-friendship","tag-humor","tag-jesse-q-sutanto","tag-robin-agnew","tag-tea","tag-vera-wong","tag-vera-wongs-guide-to-snooping-on-a-dead-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6339"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6344,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339\/revisions\/6344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}