Blackmail and Bibingka

Lila's cousin Ronnie is back in town after a long absence, and she is sure he is still up to no good. Ronnie, Pete and Izzy will run the Shady Palms Winery featuring a Filipino-inspired coconut wine. But when one of their major investors dies of poisoning after knocking back a bottle, Lila realizes Ronnie may be in a lot more trouble than he ever has. Sneaky sleuthing fortified by Filipino pastries to the rescue!

Blackmail and Bibingka
Tita Rosie’s Kitchen, Book 3

I Picked Up This Book Because: #Bookopoly/Continue the series

Media Type: Audiobook
Source: BC Public Library
Dates Read: 3/6/23 - 3/9/23
Stars: 4
Narrator(s): Danice Cabanela

The Characters:

Lila Macapagal:
Ronnie, Grandma, Tita Rosie, Jay, Jay’s brother, Lila’s business partners, so many other characters

The Story:

This family keeps growing and growing and I love it. I love how this author incorporates food and culture into these gripping mysteries. I’m firmly not on team Ronnie, I really don’t like the way he treats his family, especially his mother, but I do understand some of his behavior.

3.75 stars
This is turning into a favorite series. The stories still have that stilted tone to them, but the mysteries themselves are good and genuinely keep me guessing and trying to pull clues, I enjoy seeing the characters now, and watching as they interact with new to us characters.I love all the descriptions of food, the author clearly enjoys giving us mouth-watering scenes of the Filipino foods.

TW/CW: Death, mentions of suicide, infidelity, peril

BOOK RATING: 3.5/5

NARRATION RATING: 4/5

REVIEW: So yes! I am adding audiobooks to my reviews! I’ve always loved them, but to this point I’ve pretty much just listened to books I’ve already read so I don’t count them (I know I could, I just don’t). Well, now I’m going to try to listen to new books on Audiobook, so we’ll see how that goes!

On to my review!:

Blackmail and Bibingka is the third book in the cozy mystery series that started with Arsenic and Adobo. It follows a young Filipina-American woman named Lila as she finds herself caught up in mysteries in her small Illinois hometown.

In this book, Lila’s wayward cousin returns home to buy the local winery with his show more co-investors and as soon as he does, things start going wrong, things that Lila will have to solve!

I am not, as a whole, a big fan of mysteries. However, this is one of the few series that I’ve truly enjoyed. I like Lila, and I like learning more about Filipino food (which is a big part of these books as her aunts and grandmother own a restaurant). This book continued with those plots. This book, though, was a bit slow. It seemed that there was a lot of downtime with nothing terribly interesting happening, and it seemed that a lot of this time would have been better spent advancing the mystery. The conclusion seemed a bit rushed to me, which also would have been helped with a little less ‘fluff.’

Nonetheless, this is a nice, relaxing book and I did enjoy reading it. Fans of mysteries would probably enjoy it even more than I did! show less

I really enjoy this series. The characters are great- witty, clever, and fun. I also enjoy the culture that's embedded. My only hesitancy is how many murders can one small town really have?! This is starting to become a little hard to believe.

The Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mysteries are probably the best cozy mysteries I've ever read. The mysteries are interesting, and the characters are engaging. There are several romances involved, which I usually hate, but in this case, they are absolutely delightful.
Manansala's books are now a must read for me, and I can't wait for the next one to come out.
Oh my gulay!

I loved seeing these characters again and i loved the christmas elements of this read!! It was a quick read and loved seeing all the characters again!! I also felt like the start of tihs book was a tad rushed but overall i enjoyed the plot and loved how each book changed the game a bit.. i did not love this book as much as the first two but for christmas themed mystery it was very fun.