dressed in comfy casual with her long black hair up in a messy bun. This makes sense for the self-deprecating chemist who is currently dealing with life handing her the bad end of the stick—which, Kathryn tells me, is an idiom originating from the 1400s in reference to walking sticks.
Which is a fun transition into my first question for her: What are some of your talents?
Kathryn: Well, I’m great at turning others off by telling them the origins of idioms they don’t care about. And if that doesn’t get you, then my terrible chemistry puns will—though I don’t know why, I’m totally in my element with those. Oh, and I’m also great at having Abbott and Costello moments when I introduce myself to others thanks to my last name, Hu, pronounced who.
Seriously, though? I’m supposed to be good at chemistry, the thing I’ve dedicated my life to, but most days I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. And now it’s gotten me into some serious trouble, though maybe it can also help get me out of it? We’ll see.
Finally, my greatest grandest talent is picking the absolute worst boyfriend on the planet.
That intrigues me, so I have to follow up: Who’s your significant other, and what’s your biggest challenge in relationships? What red flags do you look out for?
Kathryn: My significant other is—was—Tucker Jones, who I thought was quite the catch, and turns out, I was right! Because two other wonderful, beautiful, kind ladies also thought the same thing. So my biggest challenge in relationships is, oh, I don’t know, when he has multiple other significant others that I don’t know about? And the biggest red flag was thinking he was proposing to me, only for me to stumble in, half-naked, on him proposing to his other girlfriend. Then, after that girlfriend and I become friends and go on the vacation I had planned with him, we stumble in on him and his regular hookup! Yeah, that was a pretty big red flag, I would say.
At this point, I have to deviate from my preplanned questions to get the tea on this situation. So I ask: What happened next?
Kathryn: Believe it or not, I really connected with the other two women. Olivia and Elle. We’re completely different, but we were bonded by this shared experience, and who better to understand exactly what I was going through than them?
Next, I ask: Did you all dump him at the same time, I hope?
Kathryn: Actually…we banded together to get revenge on him. We broke into his condo, poured glitter in his washing machine, did, um, some stuff to his toiletries, and I brought four frogs labeled #1, 2, and 4 in the hopes that he’d spend days searching for a nonexistent frog #3. But then…we found his body. I found his body. In the closet. Someone murdered him. And we not only have motive, but we had just covered his home in our DNA, so…we now have to solve his murder before we go down for it.
After she drops that bomb, I’m so shook I just return to my list of prepared questions. And given what she’s currently going through, the circumstances really color her answers.
Do you have any enemies?
Kathryn: Too many. The more I dig into my ex’s life, the more I realize everyone in it has a reason to want him dead. And I’m scared they’re going to set their eyes on me next.
Greatest disappointment?
Kathryn: My ex, what else? And myself, for not having seen who he really was.
Greatest source of joy?
Kathryn: Currently? My two new friends. We call ourselves the Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club, the ex-girlfriends trying to solve their shared ex’s murder. We’re quite the trio—the chemist, the lawyer, and the writer. The guts, the brains, and the heart. Though we’re also the same three who were covering his condo in glitter and poop while he was already dead, so…
Greatest pet peeve?
Kathryn: Outside of all things romantic and murder, my mother. She keeps sending me the most annoying gifts because I’m single—a step stool because “I don’t have a man to reach up high for me,” a George Foreman grill since “I don’t have a man to grill for me,” and a freaking Life Alert because (you guessed it) “I don’t have a man to help me and I could fall down and not be able to get up.”
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
Kathryn: Um, well, right now, I’m the main suspect in a murder case. And there’s an annoying podcast, Dish Served Hot—have you heard of it? They cover revenge stories. Anyway, the host is convinced I did it and she’s dedicated this season to taking me down. But they’re all lies, I swear! Well, almost all. Another problem is, I don’t know how to convince the detective that I’m innocent short of solving the case, especially with all these lies floating around about my involvement.
I have to note here that Kathryn flushes bright red at the mention of the detective. And once I look him up after the interview, I completely understand why.
We certainly wish Kathryn Hu all the luck in the world as she tries to solve this murder before she goes down for it. And we hope she can turn the hot detective over to her side.
If you want to know whether Kathryn Hu solves the murder before it’s too late, THE EX-GIRLFRIEND MURDER CLUB, book #1 in the Hu Done It mystery series, is out on June 24, 2025! And the sequel will be out July 2026.
Thank you, Fresh Fiction, for featuring this interview of Kathryn Hu, the protagonist of THE EX-GIRLFRIEND MURDER CLUB!
Hu Done It Mystery #1
A Feminist Murder Mystery of Three Women Teaming Up to Solve a Crime and Get Revenge on a Cheating Ex
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.
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.
Women's Fiction Friendship | Thriller Crime [Mira Books, On Sale: June 24, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9780778387213 / eISBN: 9780369761293]
Gloria Chao is a screenwriter and the award-winning author of The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club (sequel to follow June 2026), Ex Marks the Spot, When You Wish Upon a Lantern, Rent a Boyfriend, Our Wayward Fate, and American Panda. She graduated from MIT and became a dentist before realizing she’d rather spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles.
Her books have received starred trade reviews; were Epic Reads x Target, Junior Library Guild, Indie Next List, YALSA Teens’ Top 10, Amelia Bloomer List, YALSA Amazing Audiobook, and Common Sense Media selections; and were featured on the “Best of” lists of Seventeen, Bustle, Barnes & Nobles, PopSugar, Paste Magazine, Booklist, Chicago Public Library, Bank Street, and more.
Visit her tea-and-book filled world on her website and find her on Instagram and Twitter.
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