Series Name: Aunties, #3

Review By Gabrielle

Everyone’s favourite Aunties are back in another hilarious adventure.

Favourite Quote:

“Okay, so I have been terrified a lot of times in my life. A lot more than normal, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t get any better. It’s not like riding a bicycle, where you learn a skill and that skill stays with you for life. It’s more like riding a unicycle, except the unicycle is made of broken glass and razor blades.”

Goodreads Synopsis: 

After an ultra-romantic honeymoon across Europe, Meddy Chan and her husband Nathan have landed in Jakarta to spend Chinese New Year with her entire extended family. Chinese New Year, already the biggest celebration of the Lunar calendar, gets even more festive when a former beau of Second Aunt’s shows up at the Chan residence bearing extravagant gifts—he’s determined to rekindle his romance with Second Aunt and the gifts are his way of announcing his courtship. 

His grand gesture goes awry however, when it’s discovered that not all the gifts were meant for Second Aunt and the Chans—one particular gift was intended for a business rival to cement their alliance and included by accident. Of course the Aunties agree that it’s only right to return the gift—after all, anyone would forgive an honest mistake, right? But what should have been a simple retrieval turns disastrous and suddenly Meddy and the Aunties are helpless pawns in a decades-long war between Jakarta’s most powerful business factions. The fighting turns personal, however, when Nathan and the Aunties are endangered and it’s up to Meddy to come up with a plan to save them all.  Determined to rescue her loved ones, Meddy embarks on an impossible mission—but with the Aunties by her side, nothing is truly impossible…

It would be impossible for me to describe just how much I love this series. Everything about it is flawless perfection. If I could rewind time to 2021 and reread the first book, Dial A for Aunties again for the first time, I would 100% do it. Jesse has captured something really unique and special in these books and I simply can’t get enough of it.

This is a series you want to read in the right order. You could pick this one up and it would be enjoyable, but you’ll get so much more out of the experience if you read them in order.

For this story, we travel with Meddy, her husband Nathan, and the Aunties to Jakarta for Chinese New Year with their extended family. And of course they find themselves in over their heads in the middle of a conflict between three of the largest “companies” in Jakarta. Hijinks ensue. Once again, there were too many laugh-out-loud moments to count. The Aunties are comic gold but with so much heart, you can’t help but simultaneously groan and cheer for them.

One of my favourite parts of this book is that we get to know more about each of the Aunties and what they were like before they moved to the States. We see Big Aunt with her former kitchen colleagues at the hotel she worked at. Second Aunt rekindling her romance with a former boyfriend. Fourth Aunt performing for her adoring fans. This helps Meddy (and us as readers) see these important people in her life in a new light and appreciate them in new ways. We come to understand that each of them sacrificed a lot to make the move to the States. This really influences some big growth for Meddy in the book. We see her step up in much more of a leadership role within the family in order to rescue them.

Sadly, this is the last book in the Aunties series and I almost cried when I learned that. The only thing preventing me from reaching for the kleenex box is that Jesse’s other adult book Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers was equally delightful, so I am confident we will see more great work from Jesse in the future.

The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties is the perfect finale to the Aunties trilogy.

Thank you, Berkeley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.