I am constantly endeavoring to get myself into mystery novels, after a lifetime of reading almost no mystery novels, and my results have been… mixed. Not because I’ve read mysteries that were my enemies, but more because I have a hard time, when I’ve picked up one mystery novel, remembering to go back and pick up another. But I am undeterred! If I keep trying, eventually I will alter my reading habits and then I will love mysteries. It worked with spinach and it’s going to work with mystery novels.
Arsenic and Adobo was a perfect mystery to help me dip my toe back in the mystery novel waters. It’s got a very classic Agatha Christie-ish set-up, with a large community of people who had a motive to kill the dead guy, plenty of red herrings, and every indication that its protagonist will become an amateur sleuth going forward. Lila has moved back home to be with her family and help her Tita Rosie run her restaurant. In a total rom-com move, she reunites with her college boyfriend, Derek. Except it turns out he’s a jerk now, and he’s been writing terrible reviews of every restaurant in the area, including Lila’s. So when he dies in the middle of a meal at Tita Rosie’s Kitchen, Lila is immediately cast under suspicion, and she’ll go down for murder if she can’t find the person who did the deed.
As I’ve mentioned, I always feel such a sense of hope and possibility when I see an author setting up a new genre series. (See also: every romance novel ever.) Lila has a large community of Filipino relatives, friends, and frenemies, and over the course of the book, she also forges connections with the other restaurant owners in her area. Maybe it’s just quarantine getting to me — I haven’t dined in a restaurant in over a year — but the idea of a whole bunch of restaurant owners being good bros and supporting each other and giving Lila an assist in solving crimes just feels immensely heartwarming and correct. Plus it’s already been established that Lila has this huge network of family connections in all sorts of jobs around the city, so I know that she will have lots of leads for any mystery she needs to solve in the future.
Reading Arsenic and Adobo made me truly yearn for restaurants. Because Lila’s family owns a restaurant and she makes a bunch of restaurant-owning friends over the course of the book, we necessarily are given SO MANY and SUCH LUSH and GLORIOUS descriptions of food. I want to eat those foods. I appreciated Manansala’s explanatory commas for foods I wasn’t familiar with — she manages very smoothly to include information about ingredients and preparation without sounding didactic or interrupting the flow of the story.
Finally, I loved that a central conflict of the book is Lila’s relationship with her best friend, Adeena. When they were younger, they dreamed of opening a coffee shop in Chicago together, and now Adeena is dropping hints that she wants to open the shop in their hometown of Shady Palms — where Lila has no interest in living longterm. Neither of them is quite ready to discuss it openly, so Lila’s nervousness about changing plans and Adeena’s frustration with Lila’s avoidance undergirds most of their interactions. Though Lila meets some romantic prospects (and I’m sure that will get explored in future books), the main emotional problem that this book’s interested in resolving is the tension between her and her best girlfriend. I really loved it! I see it so rarely!
I almost said “just friends,” as if romantic partnership was superior to platonic friendship, but stopped myself. Adeena hated that term and idea. And I’d learned, time and again, she was right about that. There was no hierarchy to love.
!!! YAY FRIENDSHIP.
Okay! So! Now can you please recommend me some other small-town cozyish mysteries by authors who aren’t white? I desire more. Please and thank you.
Note: I received this book for review consideration; this has not impacted the contents of my review.