Homicide and Halo-Halo is the second book in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen cozy mystery series, a set of novels that revolve around a young restauranteur solving crimes in the small town of Shady Palms, IL. I would strongly recommend reading the tales in order since a lot of the character building and relationship building between the characters is done in the first volume.

After almost dying while solving the mystery of her ex-boyfriend’s murder, Lila Macapagal is ready to put sleuthing behind her and concentrate on opening a café with her best bud Adeena and Adeena’s girlfriend Elena. The decor, beautifully redone by Elena, has turned their small, bland space into a welcoming, enticing local, and Adeena has outdone herself by creating unique drinks that will tempt even the fussiest of palates. The only problem is that Lila is experiencing major baker’s block. Everything she makes turns into a disaster – and the shop is just days away from its soft opening.

Lila is on the verge of confessing her failure to her business partners when she is saved by the bell. The ringing bell over the café door to be exact – her cousin Bernadette walks in and advises Lila she is needed at her Tita Rosie’s restaurant. Turns out Detective Park is there waiting for her because he wants her help with a new case.

Lila is serving as a last-minute addition to the judge’s panel for the Miss Teen Shady Palms pageant. It was a position she would normally not have taken but since they offered to give the café a catering contract, as well as a free booth at the Founder’s Day Festival (something she and her partners could not afford on their own), she agreed to the gig. As a former winner, she knows how important the pageant is to the community and how much the scholarship awarded to Miss Teen Shady Palms means to the girl who receives it. Detective Park wants Lila to use her position to serve as his eyes and ears inside the pageant. Someone has been sending the city threatening letters, demanding they shut the contest down, and te police are concerned for the safety of everyone involved and anxious to discover if the nasty notes are just sour grapes or the prelude to violent action.

Lila of course agrees to spy for the cops. She begins that very night at the first pageant session by getting acquainted with her fellow judges – Rob and Sana – and Valerie, the event director. She enjoys meeting the two ladies. Valerie has done a lot to make the contest more modern and inclusive, allowing anyone who self-identifies as a young woman as well as teen moms to participate and requiring the contestants to take part in volunteer work as well as excel academically. Sana seems smart and strong and compassionate, all excellent qualities for someone determining the winner of such an important competition. But Lila is disgusted to watch the married Rob hit on every woman within a few feet of him – including the teenage contestants! She determines to keep an eye on him at all times, something the other two women heartily agree with.

But they don’t have to worry about Rob for long. The next morning he is found dead, the victim of an apparent homicide. Was Rob’s murder just unfortunately timed, a result of his lascivious behavior rather than his work on the pageant? Or is this the first act of someone willing to do anything to keep the event from happening?

Culinary cozies are all about good food, good friends, and good times. Ms. Manansala delivers on those expectations, providing a wonderful meringue cookie of a book that deals with serious subjects in a light-hearted, sunny manner that makes it a complete treat to read. The cast of characters is very diverse and the author creates a setting where everyone is welcomed and included. Especially if they bring food – which Lila often does. The delicious goodies she makes are described in delectable detail, causing at least this reader (and I would imagine many others) to have a hankering for sweets.

What cozies are not about is serious crime-solving, and the author continues that tradition as well. The mystery is interesting – I’m always up for a good whodunit – but the resolution is not reached in a realistic manner. That is par for the course for these books, so this is in no way meant as a critique. I did enjoy watching our amateur sleuth discover the villain and was pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the case.

When last we saw the funny, feisty Lila, she was in the midst of a love triangle, deciding between the delightful, sweet-natured, caregiving Jae and the serious, intelligent, compassionate Amir. In this book, she realizes she needs to make her choice and moves closer to a final decision.

Lila also examines the darker side of being a fledgling detective, mainly that having your life endlessly endangered by nosing about for clues can create some mental health struggles. Detective Park has been urging her to receive counseling for possible PTSD from the dangers she faced in Arsenic and Adobo but Lila has been reluctant to do so. Throughout the tale, we watch her struggle with that decision and come to some realizations about herself as she does.

The aunties play a smaller role in this book than in the last, which I thought was a good thing. They still do their part, just in a less obtrusive way. The rest of Lila’s loving, boisterous family makes an appearance as well, especially her cousin/arch-rival Bernadette who winds up being the primary suspect in the homicide. The secondary characterizations are a bit sparse but that is to be expected in a novel told in the first-person style.

One sour note in our savory story is that the author’s political opinions, via Lila and her friends’ dialogue, come across very, very clearly. I think it is normal for people at this moment in time to be very political and discuss their views on just about any issue with a slant towards their chosen idealogy but it veers dangerously close to sounding like tedious lectures here..

Despite that, Homicide and Halo-Halo is a fun book and the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen series as a whole is a refreshing, diverse voice in the cozy category.  I would recommend it to fans of that genre – but be sure to read book one first.

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