WELL, THAT WAS UNEXPECTED

The author's first rom-com for young adults: About a girl whisked away from LA to her mother's native Indonesia in order to "get back to her roots," who --through a comedy of errors and overzealous parents-- finds herself fake dating the son of one of the wealthiest families in Indonesia, and is surprised when she actually starts to fall in love -- with the boy, with the country, and with the big family she never knew before now.

When her mother finds her about to have sex with her boyfriend, Sharlot Cintra finds herself whisked away from Los Angeles to Indonesia. A place Sharlot knows nothing about, but her mother thinks she has become too loose, and a summer getting back to their roots will be exactly what they both need.

George Clooney Tanuwijaya is a normal, healthy teenage boy who enjoys doing normal, healthy teenage boy things. It's therefore very unfortunate when his father happens to walk in at the wrong moment, and believe this normal, healthy activity was inspired by the video game that just so happens to be up on his computer screen and features a friendly cartoon gnome and badger. His family - one of the wealthiest, most famed in Indonesia - has a reputation to uphold. George is expected to have a normal relationship. With a human being.

Sharlot's mother and George's father are determined to ensure their respective offspring find the right kind of romantic partner. So they do what any good parent would do: they (unbeknownst, of course, to said offspring) strike up a conversation with one another on ShareIt, a popular Indonesian social media app. Essentially... a double catfish.

When Sharlot and George find out about their parents' transgressions, they're horrified. Not just because it's a serious invasion of privacy, but because their supposed love match is clearly terrible - stuffy, boring, and totally stuck in the last century. They agree to one meet up, mostly to shut their parents up. One. But when the media gets wind of their date thanks to George's family's prominence, things quickly spiral. When Sharlot and her family get swept up in a highly publicized trip to Bali to support the Tanuwijaya family business, everyone has a role to play. And a secret to keep.

But not even a trip to one of the most romantic places on earth could possibly make Sharlot and George fall for one another. It's just a game. But as the layers peel back and the person they thought they knew is blurred, the truth becomes more complicated. Who is Sharlot, really? Who is George? As unlikely as it may seem, did their parents manage to find their true match after all?

WELL, THAT WAS UNEXPECTED is raucous and colorful and always surprising, a heartfelt ride through two teenagers' deeply authentic struggle to find themselves and their place within their complex families and their equally complex cultures.

Jesse Q. Sutanto is an author of books for children and adults. Her debut romance, Dial A for Aunties, sold at auction to Berkley and published in April 2021; a sequel, Four Aunties and a Wedding, will publish in Spring 2022. She is also the author of Theo Tan and the Fox Spirit, the first in a middle grade series set to publish in May 2022 from Feiwel & Friends, and The Obsession, a YA novel from Sourcebooks Fire. Her first YA rom-com, Well, That Was Unexpected, was pre-empted by Delacorte and is set to publish in Fall 2022. She received her Masters from the University of Oxford. She grew up in Indonesia and Singapore and currently lives in Jakarta with her husband and two daughters.