Publishing one book a year is considered an ambitious pace in the makes-sloths-look-spritely publishing business. Jesse Q. Sutanto published three books in 2022. She will publish three more this year. No, that’s not a double typo.
Sutanto is prolific. Her taut prose renders delightfully entertaining characters who leap — or, in the case of her latest adult release, scold — right off the page. She writes across genres for varying age levels, with humor forming the throughline for her work. Her novels include murdery YAs that skate between mystery, satire, and indictments of patriarchal capitalism; middle grade fantasy with heavy themes of death and loss (and dragons); a mystery romcom; a mafia romcom.
That latest adult release, Vera Wong’s s, out in March, showcases Sutanto’s ability to write imperfect characters who feel remarkably real. Tea shop owner Vera holds inflexible beliefs about everything. She is not, to embrace the obvious pun, everyone’s cup of tea. Her hilarious misadventures after discovering a dead body (“nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands,” notes the
