When Cleveland native Melody Chu left behind her international legal career to pursue writing full time, she wasn’t quite sure where the journey would take her. But this spring, that journey culminated with the publication of her debut novel, “Mathey Girls”—an exploration of grief, identity, and the bonds of friendship, with roots that reach into Chu’s own life and back to her hometown.

Melody Chu's debut novel, “Mathey Girls,” released on April 30, follows Esther Hsu, a woman nearing 40 and grappling with self doubt. After the sudden death of her best friend, Claire, during childbirth, Esther agrees to care for Claire’s nine-year-old daughter, Hannah, for the summer.

What follows is a compelling story of emotional reckoning and unexpected strength, centered on the enduring friendships Esther formed with her college roommates—the “Mathey Girls” (pronounced “matt-ee”), named after their Princeton University dorm.

Chu, the daughter of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan, grew up in the West Park neighborhood. She crossed the river to the East side for high school at Hathaway Brown, and now lives with her husband and three children in Shaker Heights.

“My original life plan was to live and work in China, and I was in Asia for 10 years,” Chu says. “But once my daughter was born in Beijing, I felt called back home.”

Chu says she is re-discovering all the assets of Greater Cleveland since returning to the North Coast.

“Cleveland is such a great place to raise a family—there are great schools, great community, great libraries, and a great literary scene. And now there’s even great Chinese food, like at YYTime. I think it’s a lovely place for a writer to be.”

On Saturday, May 31, Chu hosted a book launch party at YYTime—the 10,000-square-foot food hall that opened in March in AsiaTown and features Asian street food.

As she read a passage from her novel and signed books, guests sampled some of the foods described in “Mathey Girls”—including crispy scallion pancakes and sweet bubble tea—while mingling with some of the real-life Mathey Girls who, along with Chu’s personal adversity and loss, helped inspire the novel.

Chu nearly died giving birth to her third child after suffering an amniotic embolism—a rare and life-threatening condition.

“My heart stopped, and I had to be shocked back to life and [received] over 40 units of blood,” she says. “The doctors kept telling me how lucky I was to be alive, that it was a miracle.”

Chu says recovery—physically and emotionally—was incredibly hard.

In writing “Mathey Girls,” Chu transformed her childbirth experiences into something positive. As she created Esther’s story, Chu imagined what happens when someone survives the unthinkable and discovers their strengths.

Chu also drew on her own personal loss—her older brother died just days after Chu’s 11th birthday. That experience helped inform the voice of Hannah, the young girl at the center of the novel’s emotional journey.

“I was intimately familiar with the grief that Hannah might have felt,” says Chu, “and the grief that Esther might have felt from her own childhood loss.”

The novel takes place in Princeton, suburban Philadelphia, and Cleveland, but the bonds between the Mathey Girls are what anchor the book. The characters are inspired by Chu’s own college friends and their real-life WhatsApp thread, in which Chu explores how friendships built in young adulthood can weather time, distance, and profound change.

Author Melody Chu“For all the havoc that the Internet has wreaked on civilization,” Chu says, “the fact that a group of friends can stay close to each other even when they might live on opposite ends of the Earth is amazing.”

Chu, a Harvard Law School graduate, didn’t always plan to become a writer.

“I didn’t think it was realistic—it felt too good to be true,” she said. But after years of burnout and conversations with her husband about what she really wanted to do, the answer became clear: “Write books.”

“Mathey Girls” is for sale at local indie bookstores, including Mac’s Backs on Coventry and Loganberry Books on Larchmere, as well as national online bookstore chains. It is currently in circulation at Shaker Heights Public Library and will soon be available soon at Cuyahoga County Public Library.

For Chu, the book is more than a personal milestone—it’s a tribute to the power of friendship, survival, and finding your voice.

“This story came from a place of pain, but also joy,” she says. “I’m just so grateful it’s connecting with readers.”