Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block Review: Jesse Q. Sutanto Serves Up a Complicated Dish

Read time: 4 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio
📢 Narrated by Eunice Wong
⏱ Duration: 9 hours
🏷️ Publisher name: Books on Tape & Berkley

Book Blurb:

Mebel, a 63-year-old Chinese Indonesian woman, is blindsided when her husband of over forty years leaves her for their private chef. Determined to win him back, she enrolls in a prestigious culinary school, believing mastering cooking will fix everything. Instead of Paris, she finds herself in a small English village, surrounded by younger, unwelcoming classmates. When one of them, Gemma, mysteriously disappears, Mebel’s sharp instincts kick in. As she investigates, she begins to question not just her classmates, but also her own life choices and what she truly wants moving forward.

Let’s talk about the book:

I am a card-carrying Jesse Q. Sutanto fan. I follow her in Instagram for her WIP stories. I have a Pavlovian response to her book covers. So when this book hit the stores, I put it on hold at my library and grabbed it the moment it became available.

And for a good chunk of those nine hours, I was completely here for it. Mebel is an absolute delight. She’s tiny, unapologetically extra, and armed with a Chinese mother energy that radiates off the page. Eunice Wong is my favorite narrator. She is fantastic in the way of capturing every layer of Mebel’s personality, the pride, the stubbornness, the surprising tenderness, and she handles the accents with real skill. The first half of this later-in-life reinvention story had me grinning through my commute. A sixty-three-year-old woman hauling designer luggage into a village culinary school to win back a man who clearly doesn’t deserve her. What’s there to not love in that?

But then.. the tone shifts, and not in a gentle way. This story goes darker than I anticipated, especially for a Jesse Q. Sutanto book. Usually, even with crime at the centre, her stories carry a certain levity. Here, when the narrative introduces a heavy and triggering element, it lands hard, and for me, it disrupted the reading experience. I wasn’t prepared for it, and it made continuing the story feel more like pushing through than enjoying the ride.

That’s not a criticism of Sutanto’s craft at all. The writing is as sharp and funny and warm as ever. The character growth is real, the feminist undercurrent is satisfying, and Mebel’s arc from trophy wife to woman who has finally met herself is genuinely moving. But for me, the unexpectedness of that particular turn pulled me out of the experience I came for, and I couldn’t fully find my way back.

Would I recommend it?

If you’re a JQS fan who reads broadly across women’s fiction and can handle darker content woven into an otherwise warm story, you’ll likely find a lot to love here. Mebel is one of her most vivid characters yet, and the message that reinvention has no expiration date lands with real weight. The heart of this book is wonderful. I just needed the whole dish to sit differently. For me, the surprise factor impacted the experience more than I’d like.

READ NEXT

1. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. The obvious starting point if Mebel charmed you. Another older Chinese woman who refuses to be underestimated, with a lighter mystery throughline that keeps things delightfully chaotic.
   Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
2. The Wok to Redemption / Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. If the cultural identity and food-as-love thread hit you hard, Zauner’s memoir excavates a similar emotional space with stunning precision.
   Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
3. The Husbands by Chandler Baker. For readers who came for the “women done with their husbands” energy and want it dialled up to a feminist thriller. Witty, sharp, and deeply satisfying.
   Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
4. The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer. A warm, fish-out-of-water story with strong character voice and that same “this is not what I planned but maybe it’s better” arc that Mebel lives through.
   Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
5. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. If what drew you most was the unexpected emotional depth underneath a seemingly lighter premise, this one will rewire your brain in the best possible way.
   Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy

MISE EN PLACE FOR A NEW LIFE

Have you ever picked up a book expecting one flavour and gotten something entirely different? Did it change how you felt about the story, or did you lean into the surprise? Drop it in the comments. I want to know.

Book Links:

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider:
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
Follow Jesse Q. Sutanto for latest on her novels
Check out more books from Books on Tape and Berkley