CBR Bingo, Edibles Arsenic and Adobo was a Cannonball book review choice, but I couldn’t get it from the library until after the discussion passed. Still, I do look a cozy mystery and I especially like a cozy mystery with recipes, I usually cook something from the recipes in the back of the book. (Full disclosure, I do not cook it, I show my husband the recipe and he makes it for me.) So I read this and enjoyed it, it was cute, and the side characters that were friends (not the potential love interests) I enjoyed. Plus many Aunties!
I liked many things about this book: the Aunties are fun and both helpful and very not helpful. The restaurant descriptions are vivid and made me very hungry. Everything at Lila’s Tita Rosie’s restaurant sounds delicious. We had a rib and mac and cheese contest where I work (in two separate categories) and the winning ribs were adobo. I feel like adobo could make a tire taste delicious. I’m a little sad that it looks like the restaurant won’t be central to the stories going forward.
What I did not like about this book were both love interests: neither man was very fleshed out and seemed like they were just tacked on to add some hint of spice to come at the book. And also, she’s pinned for her attorney Amir for the longest time, and then the cute dentist was there and she suddenly pivots? Give me a better reason why then he’s good looking and we needed to make it funny that she can’t recognize the Detective investigating her is the dentist’s older brother.
Then there was the entire drugs in a small town subplot, which I did not care for at all. It felt like the ending was rushed and not very well thought out. Along with this was the totally out of left field attempt to redeem the murder victim. I feel like just keeping him as a complete jerk was fine. People change both for the better and for the worse over time. Maybe Lila was just dating him again to see if he was the same guy and he changed and she booted him. He doesn’t need to have turned into a better person.
I did like this book, and would probably read another in the series if I came across it. It seems like most of the cozy mysteries I’ve read are full of white characters, so it is nice to read one that’s not.
