Next Time Will Be Our Turn by Jesse Q. Sutanto [Book Review]

Next Time Will Be Our Turn by Jesse Q. Sutanto delivers a sweeping, emotionally heavy love story about identity, sacrifice, and the secrets families carry across generations. Find out why I gave the book 3.75/5 stars.

I’ll be honest — I didn’t expect to like Next Time Will Be Our Turn as much as I did.

That’s not a criticism of Jesse Q. Sutanto. I like her writing. Still, a sweeping, multigenerational forbidden love story seemed like the kind of book I’d slowly make my way through over a few months. But Next Time Will Be Our Turn surprised me. I finished it much faster than I expected.

The setup

Izzy Chen is already dreading the annual family gathering. Everyone assembles at a Michelin-starred restaurant to politely compete over who has built the most impressive life.

Then, Magnolia, Izzy’s glamorous and formidable seventy-three-year-old grandmother, arrives with a beautiful woman on her arm and kisses her in front of everyone.

For Izzy, who has been quietly carrying her own feelings about identity and attraction, the moment cracks something wide open. She’s always been the black sheep. Suddenly, she sees something familiar in the last person she expected.

Magnolia sees it too.

She starts telling Izzy the story of her youth — sent from Jakarta, Indonesia to Los Angeles, California for school, far from home, landing on campus and immediately meeting Ellery: an American girl who would become her closest friend and the love of her life. A relationship forbidden by culture, family expectation, and the gender norms she’d grown up inside.

The kind of love that doesn’t fully disappear, even when life insists on moving forward.

What works

Here’s the thing: this could have been just a simple forbidden romance. But Sutanto goes further. Beneath the love story, there are themes of migration, sacrifice, and unspoken feelings passed down through generations. She asks what it costs when the life you build isn’t the one you truly wanted. Magnolia’s story connects to Izzy’s in a powerful way.

The structure of the book is ambitious, and at times, you can feel how much it tries to cover. Still, if you want a forbidden love story with real-world consequences, or if you’re already a fan of Jesse Q. Sutanto, you should give this book a try.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for an advanced reader’s copy; all opinions expressed in this review are my own.

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