In this laugh-out-loud murder mystery, three women dating the same man band together to get revenge, but when they discover his body, they’ll need to solve his murder before they go down for it.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Gloria Chao’s The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club, which is out June 24th 2025.
The body in the closet was going to be a problem. Kathryn Hu knew it. Yes, Tucker Jones was a cheating scumbag, and yes, she’d agreed to meet Olivia and Elle—Tucker’s other girlfriends—to exact revenge for all he’d put them through… But then they found him. Dead.
Do they look guilty? Yes.
Do they feel guilty for having wished him dead just hours before? Maybe a little.
But—solid motive and a crime scene covered in their DNA aside—they’re innocent. They swear.
To clear their names, Kat, Olivia, and Elle team up to find the real killer. But as they go undercover and lie to everyone, including the hot detective working the case, they realize that every person in their ex’s life had a reason to want him dead. Will they uncover the truth before they go down for a murder they didn’t commit?
Filled with humor and shenanigans, The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club is a romp of an adventure by award-winning author Gloria Chao, perfect for fans of Dial A for Aunties, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It and John Tucker Must Die.
Hypothesis: Bad luck in motion stays in motion, even if another force acts upon it. Otherwise known as Kathryn’s First Law of Luck. Unlike Newton, I was using my first name because Hu’s First Law of Luck was the start of an Abbott and Costello bit.
I can already imagine it:
“Hu’s First Law.”
“Whose?”
“Exactly, Hu’s.”
I didn’t laugh at the jokes playing out in my head because of said Law and the fact that at only ten thirty in the morning, I was in the work bathroom for an unusual reason for the second time today. Trip number one had been two hours ago, when I’d spilled coffee on my favorite button-down shirt, which was pink, professional, and made my small boobs look bigger than they were. I didn’t even drink coffee normally—I was a tea gal through and through—but after lying awake last night worrying about today’s experiment, I needed an extra-large jolt of caffeine. Unfortunately, most of it ended up on my shirt, not in my stomach.
As for bathroom trip number two, well, I wish it had been a number two—that would have been cleaner, less smelly, and more pleasant. Instead, I’d just had another run-in with the lab tech who’s had it out for me since the first day of my Harvard chemistry postdoc, when he introduced himself and I misheard Johannes as Your Highness. Of course, when I called him that, he told everyone I made fun of his name, then stopped aiding me in the lab. It didn’t help that my attempt to apologize was a joke about name confusion that did not land. “Hu is sorry,” I’d tried to say, to which Johannes had said, “You! You should be sorry!” It also didn’t help that I have poor social skills and am maximally awkward when I’m uncomfortable. Needless to say, I’ve been the lab pariah since.
Johannes and I have had many incidents in the three months I’ve been here, and this particular time, he deposited a pile of dirty beakers in front of me, claiming I wasn’t following proper autoclave protocol and was thus banned—from using the autoclave or beakers, I wasn’t sure. In the process of shaming me, he spilled some of the beta-mercaptoethanol I’d just retrieved, which of course he then reprimanded me for, since I hadn’t brought it to the fume hood as I was supposed to. The stench of rotten eggs quickly permeated the air, and I frantically cleaned it up, then ran here to the bathroom to dry heave into the sink and also to escape the flaming daggers my lab mates were throwing at me. I was not doing my already abysmal popularity any favors; in a small shared space, bad smells travel even faster than the latest gossip, especially smells as revolting as beta-mercaptoethanol.
Today was so not my day. To be fair, most days did not feel like the universe was on my side, but this was worse than usual. After I opened a bathroom window for some fresh air, I retrieved my phone to text my boyfriend.
Terrible day with alkynes of bad luck.
Then I sent a close-up
photo of my shirt’s coffee stain.
As three dots popped up on my screen, I smiled, already feeling better. And a second later, I burst into laughter at his response.
Oh no! How can I help get rid of the unsaturated hydrocarbons containing a triple bond?
Tucker Jones wasn’t a science nerd like me, but he always looked up what he needed to—in this case, alkyne—so he could understand my jokes and make some of his own.
Then he added:
The stain looks like a fried egg, with the blobby shape and darker center. How perfect is that?
I looked down at the stain again. It did look like a fried egg. Which was perfect, as Tucker said. Because frying an egg was how I fell in love with chemistry when I was younger. I started learning to cook as a way to bond with my parents—whose main way of showing love was making Taiwanese dishes for me—and none of it made sense until I learned the science behind it. Frying an egg was simply changing the egg’s molecular structure irreversibly with heat energy.
How was Tucker so good at turning bad situations around? Hoping he could find a way to turn bathroom trip number two around, I responded:
That’s especially fitting because eggs seem to be a theme today; I spilled beta-mercaptoethanol and now the lab smells like rotten eggs and everyone’s mad at me.
His reply comes immediately:
Sorry, babe If it makes you feel better, it wouldn’t bother me in the least if I were there
I chuckled. Tucker was born without a sense of smell. Congenital anosmia.
I wish I could see you today, I texted back. With my postdoc and him working in private equity, we both had long, inflexible work hours that made it difficult for us to find time to spend together. Because of that, we decided early on in our relationship to carve out Wednesday nights and Sundays for each other. That way, I knew how to arrange my schedule without having to check in with him, making it easier for me to plan longer experiments where I had to stay late at the lab, like tonight.
He replies quickly with:
I wish I could see you too, but I get it, work comes first
I hope your day gets better and you manage to reduce disulfide bonds without it being too smelly
Also, your brain is really hot 😉
Okay, Tucker may not know much about chemistry beyond
Google definitions of alkyne and beta-mercaptoethanol, but he was an expert at our chemistry. In about three minutes, Tucker had lifted my spirits and made it so that I now smiled when I looked at my fried-egg stain. Even if my hypothesis was true and bad luck stayed in motion, it didn’t matter because I had Tucker’s shoulder to lean on.
When I returned to the lab, everyone was still glaring at me.
“Sorry,” I tried to call out, but it was barely audible. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I’m really sorry about the smell. I’ll keep a better ion the beta-mercaptoethanol from now on, I promise.”
Not a single person laughed. Johannes rolled his eyes at me from where he was unboxing a new shipment of pipette tips.
Against my better judgment, I tried again. “No reaction?”
“Please stop,” begged my coworker Don. And he was even a dad.
Never, I thought but didn’t say. I couldn’t help wondering if they would have laughed if the joke had come from someone other than me.
Out of ideas, I sat back down and tried to work up the nerve to retrieve the beta-mercaptoethanol again so I could run my experiment.
An hour and a half later, I’d done every non-beta- mercaptoethanol item on my list and even not on my list, like reorganizing the glassware and testing the pens in my bag.
“I heard you all could use a pick-me- up!” called out a deep, familiar, and may I add, very sexy voice from the doorway.
I popped up from my seat so quickly I almost bumped my head on the cabinet above. When I turned, there he was, my knight in shining suit. My heart fluttered, and only in small part because of how hot he looked. The bigger part was what was underneath that suit, and no, my mind wasn’t in the gutter—I meant his heart. Because that giant heart of his had made him not only show up at lunchtime to cheer me up, but he was also carrying a giant Dunkin’ Donuts box.
He winked at me, and I wanted to run across the room and throw myself into his arms.
“Kat wanted to apologize to everyone for the accident with some donuts!”
The entire lab cheered. Well, the entire lab except for Johannes, who yelled, “No food in the lab!”
Everyone stood and rushed out, with Johannes grabbing the box to bring to the break room. A flurry of thank-yous was thrown in Tucker’s and my direction. And finally, we were alone.
I ran at him, and he was ready for me, scooping me up and twirling me in a circle.
“Hi,” I said, my grin so wide the edges of my face hurt. He booped my nose with his. “Hi.”
When he set me down, I squeezed him as hard as I could.
“Whoa, okay, killer!” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t need the Heimlich right now.”
“Wrong direction—Heimlich is from behind so you can activate the diaphragm muscle to expel any foreign objects in the trachea.”
A crooked smile appeared on his face, and with two fingers, he tapped my forehead twice—the gesture he always made to tell me how much he loved my brain.
“Is your day better?” he asked.
“It is now,” I said genuinely. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Well, you said you wanted to see me. And I thought maybe I could help with some damage control at the same time.”
I gazed at him fondly. “Thanks for buttering them up for me.”
“Ooh, um, Thanksgiving origin? Cooking a turkey?” he asked, and I laughed.
He knows I love to look up the origins of sayings. Before him, I never shared these tidbits with anyone—I’d learned the hard way in high school that most people weren’t interested in the weird stuff I liked—but on our third date, I’d accidentally blurted out to Tucker that “no dice” came from when gambling was illegal, and if authorities couldn’t find any dice, they couldn’t charge you with a crime. When I told him that some people went as far as to eat dice to vanish the evidence, he’d laughed and asked me what other expressions had unexpected origins.
“Buttering someone up comes from a religious act in India where they throw butter balls at statues of gods to seek favor,” I told him.
“I knew you’d have that one in the bag.”
I grinned—that one we’ve discussed before. In the 1910s, when the San Francisco Giants were in New York, they used to carry a ball bag off the field when the team was in the lead, hoping that the game was “in the bag” and couldn’t be lost.
Tucker took my hand in his. “I know you’re busy and have to work late tonight, but I figured you’d have to eat lunch?”
I nodded eagerly.
“Let’s go out. You need some fresh air. How about a fried egg? I’m suddenly in the mood for one, with a side of Kat.”
I laughed as he lifted our conjoined hands to twirl me in a circle.
How did he always know what I needed?
Maybe I was wrong about bad luck staying in motion. Because after Tucker left, I was floating on cloud nine (the highest type of cloud on the international cloud atlas). Thanks to a lunch full of laughter, kisses, and runny egg yolks, I returned to the lab with enough confidence to retrieve the beta-mercaptoethanol again.
No spills this time, thank god. Partly because Johannes was uncharacteristically leaving me alone, maybe because of the donuts.
Once my experiment was underway and I had a minute to relax, I retreated to the break room.
The Dunkin’ box was still there, but only jelly was left now.
No matter, it was still a donut, fried and covered in powdered sugar. And it had been brought here with love. I bit into it.
Pssht! A giant glob of bright red jelly squirted out and landed exactly on top of the coffee fried egg.
Kathryn’s Second Law of Luck: Lightning does strike in the same place twice.
And maybe my first Law of Luck wasn’t so off either. Because five hours later, the bad luck had not only continued in motion but had snowballed. My experiment did not yield the results I was expecting, just like all the other experiments I’d run in my three months here. I was back to square one, a failure. (Origin: when BBC Radio used to cover soccer games in the ’30s, the pitch was divided into imaginary squares, with square one being the goalmouth and “back to square one” being said by the commentators when the ball went out of play.)
Feeling wounded inside and out—the latter because my
coffee-and-jelly stain had set and darkened—all I wanted to do was lay my head down on the bench. But then I remembered that I’d spilled beta-mercaptoethanol there earlier today.
Right now, I needed a pick-me-up more than anything. As a personal rule, I kept my phone on silent and tucked away while in the lab, but this was an exception.
I ungloved and took my phone out to text Tucker, but there were already texts from him waiting for me.
Hope your day got better
Sending a hug
Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you
How did he not only know what I needed but also before I even knew?
That was when I realized: Why was I still staying late? No progress was being made, and I didn’t have it in me to keep going.
I needed to see Tucker. Maybe we could order in hot wings and have some messy but fiery kisses. Maybe he could rip my stained shirt off and throw it on the bedroom floor to be forgotten. It was Friday, not our usual date-night Wednesday or Sunday, but he hadn’t mentioned any plans earlier.
Thumbs flying, I texted back:
There IS something you can do. A real hug. And a hug without “u” is deadly, so I’ll be there soon!
I wasn’t sure if he knew Hg was the chemical symbol for mercury, but whatever. Screw today’s failed experiment, screw Johannes, and screw the fact that I’d been so embarrassed by the second stain I hadn’t even finished my donut. I had someone in my life who turned an ugly stain into an inside joke and showed up at the lab with bribe donuts for my coworkers. And I was on my way to see him.
A slight bounce appeared in my step as I exited the building.
On the familiar drive to his place, I tried to channel Tucker’s superpower that allowed him to find the fried egg in my stain. I needed to find the fried egg in my failed experiments. And then it hit me. I did prove a hypothesis today—my bad luck hypothesis. It wasn’t going to help my career, but it did make me giggle as I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel to the Taylor Swift song playing in the background. I couldn’t wait to tell that to Tuck. I could almost hear his deep, resounding guffaw filling the space and my heart. And we’d have a new inside joke after this: finding the fried egg.
I parked across the street from Tucker’s luxurious condo building, not having access to the garage. The anticipation bubbled up inside me like carbon dioxide tickling my throat. I punched in the code for the building, then took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor, not wanting to wait for the elevator.
My fist froze an inch away from knocking. There was a sign on the door.
Come in, my love!
My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my ears. We’d just told each other I love you a few weeks ago, and it had felt so early—only three months into our relationship—but nothing about Tucker has felt normal. Everything with him has been out of this world, extraordinary, epic.
I turned the unlocked doorknob and had to stifle a gasp, actually covering my mouth with my hand when I saw the rose petals and lit candles lining the floor.
My day was about to turn around. Completely. Screw Kathryn’s First Law. This wasn’t just any force trying to disrupt the bad luck, this was a dinosaur-ending asteroid. This was Tucker freaking Jones, the best boyfriend in the world and the best person at turning bad situations around.
And this wasn’t an everyday pick-me- up.
This was an extraordinary, epic one my mind hadn’t wrapped itself around yet. Was this really happening? If movies, social media, and books have taught me anything, the answer was a hearty, romantic, resounding Yes!
This was wild. Ridiculous. Yet it also made so much sense.
Just last week, Tuck had asked me about my taste in rings. But it had been while we were watching a rom-com and discussing the lead’s princess-cut engagement ring, so I hadn’t thought much of it at the time. But now that I was thinking about it, he had chosen the movie. Had it been an incredibly clever way to ask my preferences without arousing suspicion? And a week before that, he’d asked me where to get his watch battery changed—had he been asking me for a jeweler recommendation?
Was this too fast, after only three months? But that was my brain talking. Repeating what society had deemed normal by arbitrary standards. And weren’t societal timelines based on an average? This relationship was not average. And my bottom line was: it didn’t feel fast. I wanted to see more of him, live together, not keep our worlds so separate.
My life was about to change. I was about to experience one of the biggest romantic moments of my life. And I was wearing a coffee-and-jelly shirt.
I silently snuck up the stairs to the master bathroom, hoping Tucker wouldn’t hear me from the kitchen or wherever he was, likely finalizing the setup. Thank goodness he hadn’t heard me come in. One of the many benefits of his having a massive condo with two floors.
Unfortunately, I didn’t keep any clothes here. Tuck was a bit of a neat freak, and everything in his condo had a place. Even everything on his person had a place; he wore these special expensive high-end underwear that had a separate pouch for each part. Seriously. The first time I took them off, he stopped kissing me to tell me about them. If it had been anyone else, it would have been weird, but with him, it was adorable how passionate he was.
Normally I appreciated his need for order—his condo was always spotless, a rare trait for a bachelor—but it meant I didn’t have anything to change into. My best plan was to clean my current shirt or find a scarf or pin or even a pretty handkerchief, though Tucker wasn’t a handkerchief kind of guy.
The rose petals led my way. Had he done this in the fifteen minutes I’d been driving? The petals did look haphazard and not all the candles were lit—a rushed job. I should have just waited to see him on Sunday as planned, not make him hurry to get everything ready now. Then I would have been wearing something cuter, too. But this was real life, not a social media post.
I had to stifle another gasp as I entered the bedroom and spotted the rose petals in the shape of a heart on the bed. Ducking into the bathroom and closing the door behind me, I tried to work fast. First, I used water to smooth the baby hairs sticking up near my part. Then I brushed my teeth quickly with some toothpaste on my finger. And finally, the stain. Why hadn’t I cared more when I was at the lab? I could have whipped up a solvent to get rid of it (which actually would have been fun if I hadn’t been in such a sour mood), but it hadn’t seemed important at the time.
I had just taken off my shirt and started scrubbing when…
Footsteps. Coming upstairs.
I held my breath. I hadn’t thought all this through, which was unusual for me, but everything about today was unusual. I’d messed up, though. I was supposed to come in the front door, gasp, and let Tucker see my reaction to all the effort he’d put in, not already be upstairs having seen the setup without him. I’d have to find a way to distract him, then sneak out.
Maybe I could text him? Say I needed him to come down because the building code wasn’t working? Or, wait, he didn’t know I had the code. I knew it simply from watching the pattern of his fingers punching it in all the times we came home together from dinner, the movies, the grocery store. Maybe I could just tell him I was waiting for him out front, then when he came downstairs, I’d text that someone had let me in and I’d taken the stairs up.
I threw my shirt back on. But before I could fasten a single button let alone take out my phone, from the other side of the door, Tucker began speaking. I jumped, startled, wondering if he knew I was in here. But as I pressed my ear to the door, I realized that wasn’t it.
“I fell in love with you the day I met you.”
He was practicing his proposal. So cute. I couldn’t interrupt. And besides, how many people were lucky enough to hear their proposal twice? A huge smile spread over my face as I leaned my upper body against the door, my ear flattened against it.
“I can’t imagine my life without you. I’ve waited long enough, and I think it’s time.”
I was going to be Mrs. Kathryn Hu soon. Not Mrs. Kathryn Jones; as an academic with a completed dissertation and a published paper, I didn’t want to change my name. But the Mrs. would be new. And, surprisingly, welcome.
“You are the love of my life.”
I was aching to repeat those words back to him. But I’d have the chance soon. And now I could prepare what else I was going to say. I could tell him how he’d changed me. How I didn’t even know what love was until I met him. How I couldn’t imagine my world without him. That he was the only goodthing in my life.
I spread my hand on the door, fingers splayed, as if the gesture could reach through the wood and touch his heart, let him know I was here, my own heart already bursting.
There was a pause. He must be gathering himself, taking a moment to appreciate the weight of the words he was about to say. An inhale, a smile, a beat before the final most important question.
I removed my hand and tried to press my ear even harder into the door. Then, dizzy with giddiness, I held my breath.
“So with that…”
Here it was. Now I was dizzy from a lack of O2.
“Will you—”
Maybe it was the lack of oxygen, but I suddenly couldn’t wait any longer. This was out of character for me, but I was a changed woman thanks to Tucker. On impulse, I burst through the door, blurting, “Yes! I’ll marry you!”
At the same time, Tucker finished his sentence: “—marry me, Olivia Valentina McCarthy?”
My mind blanked. My heart stopped beating. The world stopped spinning.
And then when everything started up again, I realized I was standing there, shirt still open, pink bra fully on display, and my arms spread open like freaking Maria from the beginning of Sound of Music.
Despite being nearly topless, I couldn’t move.
I wasn’t just witnessing him practicing. I was witnessing the actual goddamn proposal. Because as my eyes swept past him toward the rose-heart bed, there she was.
Olivia Valentina McCarthy.
The other woman.
No, I was the other woman.
Kathryn’s Third Law of Luck: When it rains, it fucking pours shit and beta-mercaptoethanol straight into the fan.
Excerpted from THE EX-GIRLFRIEND MURDER CLUB by Gloria Chao. Copyright © 2025 by Gloria Chao. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.
