The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Sutanto, Jesse Q. Dial A For Aunties. Penguin Random House, 2021. Kindle.

Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A For Aunties is narrated in first-person present by the protagonist, Meddelin Chan. The novel starts with a prologue subtitled “Eight Years Ago.” Meddelin says that her family is cursed so that the men always leave. As the only girl of her generation, Meddelin feels obligated to stay at home with her Ma and three aunts, who have lost all their husbands and sons. Meddelin secretly applies to Columbia and gets in, but she burns the letter and goes to UCLA instead to stay near her family. The novel is divided up into three sections. The first section is titled “Girl Meets Boy (There might be insta-love and also someone might die. We’ll see.)." This section is the only section that switches back and forth between the present day when Meddelin is 26 and Meddelin’s past life at UCLA.

Meddelin goes to eat dim sum with Ma and her three aunts on Thursday. Ma reveals that she made an online dating profile for Meddelin and has set her up with a man named Jake, who owns the Ayana Lucia, an exclusive resort on the private island of Santa Lucia. Meddelin and her family own a wedding business and are schedule to do a wedding on the island that Saturday. Since Meddelin has not been on a date in years, she agrees to go. Seven years ago, she kisses her best friend, Nathan, for the first time. In the present, Meddelin goes on a date with Jake and has a miserable time. She gets drunk and he offers to drive her home in her car. She agrees, but then he tries to attack her. She tases him and he crashes her car into a tree. Six years ago, Meddelin goes to England to meet Nathan’s family. She decides she will finally tell her family about her boyfriend when she got home. In the present, Meddelin wakes up and discovered that Jake was dead. Her phone is also dead, and she is on an abandoned road. She panics and puts Jake’s body in the trunk and drives off. Then, she realizes she looks exceptionally guilty. She decides to drive home. Six years ago, she went to dim sum with her family, planning to tell them about Nathan, but they ambushed her with their plan to start a wedding business. She decides to tell them about Nathan another day. In the present, Meddelin tells Ma what happened. Ma calls the aunts and they decide not to go to the police. Four years ago, Nathan told Meddelin that he had received a job offer in New York, then he asked her to move with him. She does not want to leave her family, nor does she want him to reject his job offer, so she breaks up with him. In the present, Meddelin and her aunts take the body to their bakery and hide it inside a cooler in the fridge. The next morning, one of their assistant’s arrives early and ships the cooler to the island for the wedding with the rest of their supplies. Meddelin and her family quickly board a boat to the island and arrive. When they get there, though, Meddelin runs into Nathan, who is the owner of the hotel.

Part Two is titled “Girl Finds Boy (under very awkward circumstances).” Nathan walks Meddelin and her family to the kitchen, then leaves. They open the cooler and discover that Jake was alive and had suffocated overnight. Ma looks at Jake’s face for the first time and realizes he is Ah Guan, her flower salesman, who always had a crush on Meddelin and had convinced Ma to make a dating profile for her. Meddelin and her family try to walk the cooler back to the ship, but they are thwarted, so they check into their room and hide the cooler inside. They decide the best thing to do would be to steal a suit and dress Ah Guan’s body up like a drunk wedding guest, then dump him in the ocean. Meddelin goes to take photographs of the bride, Jacqueline, and the maid of honor, Maureen, while her aunts steal a tuxedo. When Meddelin goes back to her room, she discovers that Maureen has been trying to call Ah Guan because the two of them have a plan to steal all the wedding gifts. In order to prevent Maureen from realizing that Ah Guan is not there like planned, Meddelin steals the wedding gifts herself and hides them in her room. Maureen texts Ah Guan and tells him the stolen wedding gifts have been noticed, so she is going to pin the crime on Meddelin. Meddelin breaks into Maureen’s room and leaves the gifts in her closet. The hotel security finds the gifts in Maureen’s room and they escort her off the island. Meddelin’s aunts and Ma get the groomsmen drunk and high and hide Ah Guan’s body in their suite. The groomsmen get so inebriated that they bring Ah Guan out to the wedding ceremony without realizing he is dead.

Part Three is titled “Girl Gets Boy (Or tries to, anyway. It’s tricky because there’s a corpse and everything.)”. Chaos breaks out at the wedding ceremony because all the groomsmen are drunk. They drop Ah Guan’s body and fall into the pool, then Jacqueline falls into the pool, too. The body is discovered and the island’s incompetent sheriff arrives and arrests Nathan for the crime. Meddelin goes to see Nathan and tells him the truth about what she has done, but he says he already figured it out and wants to take the blame for her. Meddelin goes back to talk to her family about turning herself in, but she finds Maureen in the room with a gun. Maureen tells Meddelin to go get the wedding gifts. Meddelin goes to find Jacqueline and then brings her back to her room with the wedding gifts. Maureen admits that she only stole the gifts because she is in love with Jacqueline. Jacqueline says she loves her too and they kiss. Meddelin goes back to the sheriff with Jacqueline and Maureen and explains that Ah Guan tried to steal the wedding gifts, then hid in a cooler and accidentally suffocated inside. The sheriff believes this and lets Nathan go. In the epilogue, Meddelin takes Nathan to dim sum with her family. He proposes to her and she says yes.