"People always say that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, but honestly, people should try solving murders more often."
"Oh, you young people take everything so personal nowadays. So what if I think you might be a killer? That doesn't mean I think you are a bad person." -Vera Wong
When you first meet Vera Wong, she doesn't seem like someone you're going to like very much. She wakes up at the crack of dawn, texts her kid at the crack of dawn to guilt him to wake up at the crack of dawn, comes off as well, stereotypical naggy mom that drives her kid nuts. She runs a tea house ("Vera Wang's World Famous Teahouse" because everyone's heard of Vera Wang) that has one loyal customer and otherwise gets ignored. She wakes up, opens the shop, serves her lone customer, sits there, goes home.
I will note that if you find Vera annoying, or off-putting, or reminds you of a relative, or anything like that and you want to put the book down early on--KEEP READING. Seriously, keep on reading.
Anyway, the next day Vera goes downstairs to her shop and finds that some random guy she's never seen before apparently broke in and died in there. Vera wants to help investigate--she literally draws the line around the body in Sharpie to help the police, which they just do not appreciate at all--and when some new people suddenly develop interest in her business after the guy's death, she....befriends and adopts them all while trying to figure out which one murdered Marshall Chen. Or was he murdered at all? (I'll discuss that in the spoiler cut.)
The cast of potential murderers/new friends and family that Vera adopts are:
- Riki, a guy who definitely had a beef with Marshall and is feeling weird after their last encounter
- Sana, an artist who got ripped off by Marshall and has similar issues (and mutual attraction between her and Riki)
- Oliver, Marshall's twin, who was overshadowed and treated like crap by him their entire life. Marshall also poached Oliver's best friend and drove them apart.
- Julia, Marshall's psychologically abused wife, who found out last night he was leaving her, and she bagged all of his crap and threw it out in the living room...in time for the cops to see.
- Emma, Julia's shy toddler daughter, who's reasonably scared of baba (and pretty much everyone).
Seriously, Vera goes from "oh man, this lady would drive you nuts" to A FREAKING GODSEND to these people. She brings Emma out of her shell and teaches her to be her sous chef. She makes amazing large meals for everyone. She ends up moving into Julia's house and taking care of both of them and bringing Julia out of her own shell with her photography business. She supports everyone (or tries to fix them up, or both) while investigating. Heck, Vera even forgets to nag her own kid while suddenly getting a new family, who end up adoring her even if she's a wee bit pushy. Of course, there's that pesky murder or not issue to worry about there.
This book was extremely touching and endearing and I love everybody, and it even made the whole dead body thing work! (See below spoiler cut for discussion of that.) I kvelled. It was one giant AWWWWWWWWWWW to read this. Four and a half stars. Everyone read it!
Spoiler space
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So the murder wasn't a murder...or is it? The guy died of bird allergy...how did that happen? Reminded me of Glass Onion. Note to people with allergies: don't be evil or jerky, for you are easy to kill? I loved how Vera finally had it dawn on her who it was and how it was done and why she was involved. That worked great. I mean, there's not a long list of suspects and you probably reasonably assume that the Friendly Five probably didn't do it, but it works both in plausibility and "why hasn't that person been onscreen a whole lot?" I liked the execution.
Off topic, I want to note that by the end of the book Vera, who used to nag her son at 4 a.m. to be up, is all "No judgment, of course, but usually you let the whole morning pass by before you wake up." She's mellowed!!!
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