I think – maybe I’m wrong – one of my sisters-in-law recommended this mystery series to me.¹ Anyhow I bought one and then another and then I couldn’t stop reading them. That’s the way things work sometimes.

Lila has returned to her home town after living it big in the big city, dreaming of owning her own café in Chicago, with loose-leaf teas and hand-ground coffee. Instead she finds herself answering a distress call from her aunt to work in her Philippine restaurant, the kind of place where “gossiping aunties” sit at a table all morning, nagging their god-daughter (Lila) about her hair, her clothes, her weight.

When their Worst. Customer. Ever. – and a local food critic who pans the restaurant, to boot – gets killed in the restaurant, the landlord tries to use it as an excuse to evict them and the local detective narrows in on Lila because she dated the dead guy in high school. Luckily Lila’s handsome lawyer brother steps in to defend them from the prickly detective assigned to their case.

I really enjoyed this book. The culture felt familiar to me and the food sounded delicious. The problems the main character runs into with people typing Filipina culture felt true to life. (The critic insists they should give him chopsticks although, unlike many other cultures in Asia, chopsticks are not traditionally used in the Philippines.)

The other day, a Filipina I know went to get a manicure with a friend. The manicurist asked the friend whether the Filipina spoke English. This Filipina has lived in the US for over 60 years, graduated for Harvard, and is the head of a large organization. She wears Eileen Fischer and speaks English better than the lady doing her nails. I asked how she replied – she was too stunned, she said, to push back.² I was angry on her behalf. Having men dis you is bad enough – having another woman do it, just because you look different than them is totally unacceptable.

Lila runs into some of this in the book, but it’s really more about a family restaurant trying to make it work, a young woman who wants desperately to make her way in her world but gets pulled back into the older generation’s way of doing things. Oh, and there’s a murder mystery in there, to boot.

If you like cozy mysteries, give this a shot. It’s a fun read – but it will make you really really hungry.

1. Or maybe not. Her tastes lean more toward Colin Cotterill than cozy. Colin Cotterill – I need to write about some of his books, they’re really fun! ↩︎
2. Or maybe just too nice – or maybe too scared, since manicurist was in hostile political garb from head to toe. ↩︎