Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery #1
Mia P. Manansala
Synopsis: When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case.
With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block…
My Review!
Characters:
Lila (main character)
What can i say about Lila? well she comes across like any normal mid 20's first generation immigrant girl. grew up in a small town, Shady Palms (which is that a Golden Girl's reference?!), orphaned and was raised by her aunts, she feels a strong sense of duty to her family which she actually throws to the side to pursue her dream of going to culinary school. Lila moves to Chicago, goes to college, and of course falls in love, what could go wrong.... boy cheats, she drops out, moves back home to help with the restaurant. overall i didn't mind Lila, she had some real annoying moments of selfishness, held some major resentment against having to be in this small town, was still in love with her high school sweetheart Derek, ignored her best friend's dream of opening a café together. She was a bit on the slow side when it came to figuring out this damn crime. she literally forgets the name of the Mexican restaurant in this small ass town, yet referred to it a good 4 times before and then just be like "what's the name of it again?". Also the damn girl talked way too much about food, i get it you, you love food, you want to be a baker, cool girl but damn, talk about something else.
Adeena (MC's best friend)
we don't get much on the best friend other than she is vegetarian and is a Muslim so can't have pork, thou she has a brother and it seemed like he was eating whatever was handed to him by Lila without caring if it had pork or not. i liked Adeena, she was smarter than Lila, always reminding her to not go investigate by her self, which of course Lila did. i also very much supported Adeena when she got super shitty that Lila was deflecting EVERY SINGLE TIME Adeena brought up opening a café with her, dude she's your best friend, you have been complaining non stop about wanting to bake your shit and all that, but when Adeena askes her to do it, Lila is like "nah dude i don't want to stay in this small town", so you rather try to open a small café in a BIG town and get fucked by the Starbucks down the street, idiot.
Derek (love interest #1/formal lover of the MC/"bad guy")
From what we learn of Derek, he had some major issues in college, which no one seemed to notice or were too busy living up their lives to give a shit about Derek's issues *cough cough* Armin *cough*. He got caught up in drugs, which is typical in a small town, tried to make ends meet, tried to do the good thing, was killed anyway. Poor Derek. Lila was very much still in love with him, they had the whole 1st grade bullshit going on, pulling pigtails and calling each other names. At least Lila was invested enough to solve his murder, thou it was 100% only because she didn't want her family to lose their restaurant.
Armir and Dr Jae (other love interest/lawyer/dentist/not too important to the plot)
Not much to say about either of them, they're just here to be the love triangle we needed? wanted? how lucky of Lila thou to have a lawyer and a dentist vying for her heart.
Aunt Rosie and the Calendar Crew
I liked them, they were cute, they poked fun at Lila, but it was in a loving way, they had their connections and helped Lila throughout the investigation even if Lila didn't see it nor thanked them for it.
Plot:
i was crazy bored in the middle of this book, you get the murder pretty close to the opening of the book, and the vast majority of the middle is literally just Lila going to random restaurants and eating their food, then going into SO MUCH FREAKING DETAIL about the food she ate. sure the plot kinda moved after she visited these places, not in Lila's mind thou, just in the readers mind because i quickly caught on to the shit going in, whereas Lila was just like "oh good food......... oh right the murder". you do have a few suspects lined up and some of them make perfect sense, yet the actual killer *sigh* i just didn't like it, you only really get a few "clues" along the way to who it is, which i will admit i didn't notice til after it was revealed but i would think there would be more early on considering how much Lila and this person interacted. if Lila said "ube crinkles" one more time thou, i was going to lose my damn mind.
Ending:
Because this is only book 1, and in my experience with cozy mysteries, they will never end on a cliff hanger, the crime will always be solved in that book, which here it was, so the ending was just meh. just a feel good ending since Lila is finally going to have her café/bakery with Adeena (will you never know, they just got the deed to the place so they might never do it). the next book in the series is already listed on Goodreads, and has a title: Homicide and Halo-Halo; and had a release date of February 8th 2022. will i read it? eh, we'll see.
Misc:
Tropes:
Love Triangle between Lila, Amir, and Dr. Jae (thou you can say Derek is in there too, if he hadn't died).
Second Chance Romance with Amir, Lila had feelings for him in high school but felt weird since it was her BFF's brother.
Format I Read: Kindle; 336pgs; published May 4th 2021; English
Tagged/Shelved As: Mystery; Fiction; Mystery Thriller; Cozy Mystery; Contemporary
Trigger Warnings: Verbal Abuse; Death; Drugs; Violence; Kidnapping/Hostage Situation
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