What is the title of your latest release?
NEXT TIME WILL BE OUR TURN
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Nerdy Chinese-Indonesian girl moves to LA and falls in love, but make it ghey and with a LOT of yearning.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
This is a book that draws on a lot of my own experience, so I basically just drew from my own life. Magnolia attends Pasadena Community College, so did I. Magnolia goes to UC Berkeley, so did I.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Yes, without a doubt!
What are three words that describe your hero?
Resilient, Rule-breaker, Pioneer
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That I can make myself cry through my own writing. That’s so weird! It’s like finding out that you can tickle yourself?
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I wait until I’m totally done.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Any type of noods.
Describe your writing space/office!
I write at my dining table because my dining room is the room that gets the most natural light in the house and I just love it so much. So my computer is taking up all this space on the dining table, but I don’t even care because I love this space!
Who is an author you admire?
So many! But if I had to choose one, it would be the late Sir Terry Pratchett. He was the first in so many ways, and he had such a beautiful mind and such a wonderful outlook on life.
Is there a book that changed your life?
YES! Gone Girl completely changed my life, I’m not even kidding! Because I looove reading suspense, but I was so sick of suspense/thrillers being dominated by stories about beautiful women and girls being graphically raped and killed. I mean, truly, there was so little imagination. It wasn’t even a question of “Who was the victim/what happened to the victim?” it was a question of “Who raped and then killed this woman/girl?” I’d largely given up on the genre until I picked up Gone Girl, and then I was like, YES. THANK YOU. Finally, someone who turned the entire genre on its head. My god. It was a revelation. It completely changed the way I saw characters as a whole, and I can safely say that so much of my writing has been influenced by that book.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It was pretty late at night my time, since I live in Indonesia. I think it was 11pm, my agent called me and I’d had a glass of wine and I remember screaming so hard that my phone registered excessive noise and cut my voice out to save my agent’s eardrums. And then I cried non-stop and called my husband, who was traveling at the time, and he panicked when he heard my sobs because he thought something bad had happened to the kids. Oops, sorry, husband!
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Psychological suspense!
What’s your favorite movie?
Interstellar. I watched it when it first came out and was entranced. I’m fortunate enough to be married to an actual physicist from Oxford University, so after that, we talked a lot about the movie, and I learned so much and then rewatched it and I think I’ve seen it four times now and each time I still learn something new.
What is your favorite season?
Autumn! No doubt about it!
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
This year, I turned 40, and I celebrated by having multiple celebratory dinners with different groups of people—family, friends etc. It was just the BEST experience because each one was small enough to be intimate.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams. About her experience working for Facebook.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Honestly, anything that has noodles that I can stuff a lot of into my face.
What do you do when you have free time?
Waste it. I really do.
What can readers expect from you next?
More chaos for sure.
NEXT TIME WILL BE OUR TURN by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller, Louisa Zhu
A grandmother tells her granddaughter about her twisty, often surprising, journey to who she is now in this sweeping love story by USA Today bestselling author Jesse Q. Sutanto.
Izzy Chen is dreading her family’s annual Chinese New Year celebration, where they all come together at a Michelin-starred restaurant to flaunt their status and successes in hopes to one up each other. So when her seventy-three-year-old glamorous and formidable grandmother walks in with a stunning woman on her arm and kisses her in front of everyone, it shakes Izzy to her core. She’d always considered herself the black sheep of the family for harboring similar feelings to the ones her Nainai just displayed.
Seeing herself in her teenage granddaughter’s struggles with identity and acceptance, Magnolia Chen tells Izzy her own story, of how as a teen she was sent by her Indo-Chinese parents from Jakarta to Los Angeles for her education and fell in love with someone completely forbidden to her by both culture and gender norms—Ellery, an American college student who became Magnolia’s best friend and the love of her life. Stretching across decades and continents, Magnolia’s star-crossed love story reveals how life can take unexpected turns but ultimately lead you to exactly who you’re meant to be.
Romance LGBTQ | Women’s Fiction Friendship [ Berkley, On Sale: November 11, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780593816875 / eISBN: 9780593816882 ]
Buy NEXT TIME WILL BE OUR TURN: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Libro.fm | Audible | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Jesse Q. Sutanto
Jesse Q. Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Indonesia, Singapore, and Oxford, and considers all three places her home. She has a Masters from Oxford University, but she has yet to figure out how to say that without sounding obnoxious. Jesse has forty-two first cousins and thirty aunties and uncles, many of whom live just down the road. When she’s not writing, she’s gaming with her husband (mostly FPS), or making a mess in the kitchen with her two daughters.
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