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Book: “Death and Dinuguan” by Mia P. Manansala
Publishing Info: Berkley, November 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Love is in the air for the citizens of Shady Palms, but Cupid’s arrow isn’t the only thing striking the town—not with another killer on the loose.
Things are looking up for the Brew-ha Cafe, and Lila Macapagal can’t think of anything that could break the spell, especially with Valentine’s Day coming up—she can’t wait to celebrate with her boyfriend, Jae Park. Adding to the lovey-dovey atmosphere is Hana Lee, Shady Palms’s newest resident. She’s also Jae’s beloved cousin and chocolatier at Choco Noir, the latest addition to the town’s culinary offerings. Everything is coming into place for Hana, who left her old life in Minnesota behind to work at Choco Noir, owned by her best friend.
Unfortunately, beneath the sweet surface of Shady Palms runs a bitter undercurrent, as a series of attacks against women-owned businesses in the area escalates from petty theft to assault and murder when Hana is found knocked unconscious inside Choco Noir, and the chocolate shop owner is put out of business—for good.
With Hana left in a coma, a murderer hiding amongst them, and the safety of the women entrepreneurs of Shady Palms at risk, the Park brothers team up with the Brew-ha crew to put a stop to the villain before they strike again.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
Valentine’s Day is this weekend! I’ll be honest, we aren’t doing much to celebrate the day (we don’t usually make a big deal of it), I’m just going to make a nice dinner for me and my husband and we will probably watch a movie with champagne, and will also get my kid hepped up on chocolate because why not. But I do like picking out a romance or an on theme read for the holiday, and if you are also looking for a book to commemorate the day, “Death and Dinuguan” by Mia P. Manansala is a pretty solid choice. When I first requested this book I hadn’t realized that it was going to be the final story in the “Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries” series, and was pretty sad when I found out. I have enjoyed this series so much over the years, and I had hoped that it would end on a high note for amateur detective Lila Macapagal. And it didn’t quite hit the heights I hoped for.
I’m going to switch it up this time around and talk about what didn’t work first. Overall, I wasn’t as invested in the mystery at hand. One pretty consistent issue is that when so many people are murdered in a small town population, it seems like it should be a bigger problem than the story acknowledges! That’s obviously not unique to Shady Palms, Illinois (thinking of Cabot Cove in “Murder, She Wrote”, or Midsomer in “Midsomer Murders”), but I do think that you have to do something to make each murder mystery interesting enough to be able to wave it away a bit. And in “Death and Dinuguan”, the murder of a chocolate shop owner (with Jae’s cousin Hana, who also runs the shop, left in a coma), I just wasn’t as interested as the story went on, hitting a lot of beats that are pretty familiar to the previous books in the series. I also was able to call the solution pretty quickly, and if a mystery and the journey is entertaining that usually won’t bother me. But I just felt like it was going through the motions this time around, so it was harder to ignore.
But Lila is still very fun and charming. It is so gratifying to see the way that she has evolved from the start of the series, starting as a bit of a prodigal daughter (well, niece) returning to her tight knit community from the big city, and ending as a pillar of the community with a huge village of people who care for her surrounding her. She’s still scrappy but imperfect, sticking her foot in her mouth a few times as she investigates, but always determined to help and solve the crimes that have hurt her loved ones. And while I was kind of underwhelmed by the way this one came together, I think that it did, ultimately, solidify Lila’s place in Shady Palms and shows just how much she cares about her community, and how much her community cares about her. And as a Valentine’s Day story, it’s a nice on theme mystery for the upcoming holiday.
Finally, the recipes. We once again get a nice set of recipes that go along with the story at hand, and I am always going to be on board with recipes included at the end of a cozy mystery, and these are a fun group that readers may not be as familiar with.
“Death and Dinuguan” may have been a bit of an underwhelming end to a series that I really enjoyed, but I think that overall I’m very satisfied with how it all turned out for Lila and her friends and her little dog Longganisa. I will definitely check out what other mystery series Manansala brings forth in the future. So long, Shady Palms! I’ll miss you!
Rating 6: Kind of a clunky ending for an overall fun series, but a nice fast read for Valentine’s Day.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Death and Dinuguan” is included on the Goodreads list “2025 Cozy Mystery New Releases”.
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