Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Pandesal? Mmm, Tell Me More

Arsenic and Adobe by Mia P. Manansala

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One of the cozy cooking type mysteries, I must knock it down a star because although our girl is charged with murder right out of the gate, there honestly is no danger of anyone buying that.  Lila Macapagal is back home from Chicago and is temporarily helping out in her Tita Rosie’s Filipino restaurant.  Unfortunately Derek Winter, a food critic who has been writing nasty reviews all over town, including her auntie’s, takes a face plant into his dessert, poisoned.  The dessert which Lila had […]

There is more food in this one than in the last one, if that’s even possible. Have your local Filipino restaurant on standby whilst reading.

Homicide and Halo-Halo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen, #2) by Mia P. Manansala

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I told myself I would continue with this series if the writing got better in this book, and it did! There were a couple rather tragic instances of dialogue (see below*), but for the most part both the dialogue and inner narration/characterization for Lila got much better. I feel like I have a better handle on who she is as a person, where in the first one she was sort of a blank slate. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but I […]

Come for the murder, stay for the food.

Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen, #1) by Mia P. Manansala

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I had a good time with this! For a first novel and for a cozy, it was very good. I really only have two complaints, and Manansala can definitely improve upon both in future books, and I hope she does, because I’d like to keep reading this series. It has some things I really like going for it. Like a lot of culinary cozies, this book follows a young woman (Lila Macapagal) fresh off a break-up, who has recently moved home to help in her […]



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