"My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliche'.
Not many romantic comedies feature an Asian-American lead (or dead bodies, but more on that later), but all the trademarks are there.
Girl from an improbably named small town in the Midwest moves to the big city to make a name for herself and find love? Check.
Girl achieves these things only for the world to come crashing down when she walks in on her fiance' getting down and dirty with their next door neighbors (yes, plural)? Double check.
Girl then move back home in disgrace and finds work reinvigorating her aunt's failing business? Well now we're up to a hat trick of cliche's.
And to put the cherry on the top, in the trope of all tropes, I even reconnected with my high school sweetheart after moving back to town and discovered the true meaning of Christmas. Ok, [this] last part is a joke."
Thus opens Mia Manansala's first in a new mystery series and I loved that she laid it all out there. The high school sweetheart is now an obnoxious restaurant critic who seems determined to drive Lila's Tita Rosie's restaurant out of business with his bad reviews. And when he drops dead after eating one of Lila's specialties? Well you do know what comes next. The number one cozy mystery trope: heroine is accused of murder and must find the killer to save herself from prison. Along the way she also has to save the family business too, keep her family from interfering in her personal life, and oh yeah, make sure she doesn't get killed in the process.
The cozy-mystery, rom-com tropes are all here, but Lila tells her story with such wry humor that I was hooked. Add in Lila's extended Filipino family and the talk of so much gorgeous-sounding food? I'm already in for the next book.