Arsenic and Adobo

Okay so let me get this out of the way. I don't /fully/ blame this book for missing as hard as it did. This was the first cozy mystery I've ever read and it became quite apparent that this is NOT my genre, and it will likely be the last cozy I ever read. I can't speak for "classical" cozy mystery, but for this contemporary cozy, I found it absolutely insufferable.

This extends beyond this genre, but I really don't like when books are self aware and lean hard into tropes. It feels lazy and corny, and was completely unrewarding. As a mystery, it completely failed. The miscommunication, the absent mindedness, the pointless elusiveness and the complete incompetence as an amateur sleuth made this such a frustrating read. Not only was I just annoyed by how the main character did literally everything, but the mystery itself was uninteresting and sloppily executed. Many parts were abundantly obvious while others were underdeveloped.

If you put aside the half-baked mystery and /try/ to read this as a contemporary fiction, it still wasn't good. Every character was completely one-dimensional and largely interchangeable. The Calendar Crew was just a hivemind, often the aunt and grandmother were indistinguishable aside from the former being "sweet" and the latter "mean", the friends were flat, the two love interests boring, and every other side character was present just enough to give the exact amount of exposition that was needed before dipping out of the scene. Every good character was pure, and every bad character died. Every conversation with a good person was very much "hey girlboss queen slay" and every conversation with a bad character was "listen here you meanie jerkface!" It felt so juvenile and repetitive. And outside of the mystery plot, there were a lot of holes in the story that were hard to look past.

So the mystery wasn't good, the characters weren't good. Was there anything that was good? I mean.. kinda. The food descriptions were good. The food sounded delicious, and the author certainly had a way with providing detail that was so evocative and appealing.. however... often the descriptions were inserted in the most disruptive times that I became frustrated whenever they came up! If you're headed into a restaurant to question a suspect, and then you meet that suspect, now is not the time to go on a two page description of the food. I don't know, the structure felt unedited.

Maybe this is just how cozy mysteries are supposed to be, but I really really did not like this, but I will say that if you like contemporary cozy mysteries you may very well like this. If this is prototypical for the genre, I hope y'all have fun with it.

This book is more of a slice of life from various cultures than a full on mystery book. The characters and various cultures they come from are really entertaining and relatable, which made me enjoy the read. This book is the first of a (future?) series, and I am curious to see how these characters will grow and change in the future.

There aren't really enough clues to really have any possibility of solving the mystery yourself, which I feel is the backbone of any true mystery novel. You can still piece together the gist of what happened, even if you don't know with any real certainty who did what. The twist is satisfying enough and I still found myself wanting to know what the answer was.

If you are looking for a gritty or suspenseful mystery then this book is not for you. If you want to kick back, relax, and get a peek into different cultures along with their food, then this is the perfect book for that.

After breaking up with her boyfriend, Lila Macapagal moves back in with her family in the small town of Shady Palms, her dreams of becoming a pastry chef drifting away. Her Tita Rosie’s restaurant is in financial trouble and she’s been tasked with saving it, when a food critic, who happens to also be her ex, drops dead right in the middle of his dessert. Soon Lila is tasked with proving her innocence and finding out the real culprit.

I will admit to picking up Arsenic and Adobo due to that cover, it’s bright, intriguing and has a cute doggo. I really don’t read that many cozy mysteries after dipping my toe in the genre with Agatha Raisin over a decade ago and not enjoying that at all. But I’m glad I gave the genre a second chance. This was really cute and fun, and yes Lila does have a Dachshund, named Longanisa after a type of Filipino sausage.

There is so much yummy sounding food in this book. As well as her family’s Filipino restaurant, Lila’s investigation takes her all around town, having to eat at all the places Derek trashed in his reviews. It turns out they all serve amazing food, so he was definitely up to something.

The mystery rattled along at a good pace, with just enough clues to take a guess without being too obvious. Of course, we don’t believe Lila did it!

I loved the emphasis on friendship too. Lila’s family might be keen to help her find a new man, but she spends time making friends, including inviting the dentist out to dinner because he doesn’t really know anyone outside his family. And OK, there might have been some romantic hints, but it’s definitely more mystery than romance.

I listened to it on audio and Danice Cabanela does a great job making Lila come across as friendly and kind, even if sometimes she’s a little indignant.

I sort of have a love/hate relationship with cozy mysteries. I usually don't care about who died or who's trying to solve the mystery but I do tend to like the small-town setting with often quirky side characters. This had all of that but it also had an OVERWHELMING amount of food talk. I like foodie cozy mysteries too but this one took every opportunity to educate the reader about filipino food and at some point I didn't care about the color and consistency of coconut jam, I just wanted to know who did it.

The author also added a content warning at the beginning of the book for being set up by the police and fat shaming. I understand why she added the content warning for the framing plot device - the book as she wrote it doesn't work without it - but my position with a fat shaming content warning is: you wrote the book. You could have just as easily NOT included the fat shaming instead of including it and then warning readers. But also, admittedly I'm not a close reader, but no one is described as being fat. Lila talks about having pudge. The victim dies and everyone says it must have been his diabetes but he's not described as fat either. Obviously you can have diabetes without being fat and vice versa but in addition to being grossed out at the way everyone assumed the diabetic must have died because he ate dessert, I was still trying to figure out who the fat shaming warning was for when no one in the book was fat? Was it really diabetes shaming that the author was flagging? I spent more time thinking about this than who killed Derek.