Dial A for Aunties

Dial A for Aunties is a novel by Jesse Q. Sutanto, published in 2021, and it mixes romantic comedy with farce and a family of Chinese-Indonesian aunties in California.

Meddelin Chan's blind date ends with an accidental death, which is bad enough before her mother takes charge and summons the aunties. Their solution is to remove the body, a task that proves far more complicated than any of them anticipated and that is made worse when the corpse is shipped, inside a cake cooler, to the venue of the biggest job their family wedding business has ever taken on: a billionaire's wedding at an island resort. Meddy, her mother and the aunties have to run the event while managing the situation underneath it, and Meddy's other problem is that the man she has never quite got over is also on the island. The novel is a comedy of escalating mishaps in which the family's loyalty is both the cause of the trouble and the only thing that can get them out of it.

Sutanto writes the book as a caper, and its warmth comes from the aunties, who are appalled by everything their niece does and are never once tempted to leave her to it.