{"id":6107,"date":"2024-11-08T08:16:17","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T16:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6107"},"modified":"2024-11-08T08:16:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T16:16:17","slug":"mia-p-manansala-guilt-and-ginataan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/mia-p-manansala-guilt-and-ginataan\/","title":{"rendered":"Mia P. Manansala: Guilt and Ginataan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tita Rosie\u2019s Kitchen #5<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When this series opened, Lila Macapagal, our heroine, was a young woman with a broken heart who had left the big city of Chicago for her little hometown of Shady Palms.\u00a0 She began the series working in her Aunt Rosie\u2019s restaurant; by book five, she and her besties, Adeena and Elena, have opened their own place: the Brew Ha Cafe. As this book opens, they are manning their booth at the local corn festival (hey, it\u2019s Illinois), offering up an unbelievable array of delicious sounding treats featuring corn.\u00a0 Warning: don\u2019t read these books hungry.<\/p>\n

When the booth sells out, the friends decide to head to the corn maze, each staking a different entrance and racing to be the first one out.\u00a0 Of course things go south \u2013 there\u2019s a scream, and Adeena is found passed out, clutching a bloody knife next to the body of Yvonne, the wife of the mayor of the neighboring town, Shelbyville.<\/p>\n

This is a book all about rivalries.\u00a0 Shelbyville is a tad larger than Shady Palms, and the Shady Palms mayor is a little jealous of the mayor of the larger city.\u00a0 The three woman who are our main characters are finding a little unexpected rivalry of their own.\u00a0 While Lila and Adeena have been almost life long friends, Adeena’s partner is Elena, and that of course is a different relationship, one that comes to the fore as the investigation into the murder gets underway.\u00a0 Lila, despite having her own adorable boyfriend, hunky dentist Jae, still feels like not only a third wheel around Adeena and Elena, she feels like her friendship with each woman is no longer valued.<\/p>\n

The jealousy and rivalry gets in the way of the investigation and it\u2019s not until the three women first acknowledge it and then have it out later in the book that things get more workable.\u00a0 The women\u2019s friendship is one of the strongest parts of the novel, and this adjustment in their relationships plays out in a pretty believable way.<\/p>\n

Manansala also paints a very vivid picture of Shady Palms and its community of business owners, many of whom are related to Lila.\u00a0 I wish this outing had had a bit more of Lila\u2019s family, who are the hilarious and loving backbone of this series.\u00a0 There is a nice Cinderella moment about partway through where Lila goes \u201cundercover\u201d to a fancy dress boutique and purchases the slinky dress of her dreams. I love a Cinderella moment.<\/p>\n

While I truly enjoy this series, the characters \u2013 and the food! \u2013 I thought this was not the strongest outing.\u00a0 I did appreciate the dissection of the friendship between Elena, Adeena and Lila, which was very true to life, but this book lacked some of the bite of the other novels.\u00a0 These are definitely cozies but author Manansala often has a more serious agenda.\u00a0 In this one both the agenda and the mystery were just slightly thin.\u00a0 However, this is still a superior series and I\u2019ll be looking forward to book six.\u00a0 — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tita Rosie\u2019s Kitchen #5 When this series opened, Lila Macapagal, our heroine, was a young woman with a broken heart who had left the big city of Chicago for her little hometown of Shady Palms.\u00a0 She began the series working in her Aunt Rosie\u2019s restaurant; by book five, she and her besties, Adeena and Elena, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[189,1931,1929,1798,1930,1928,711,1276,1368],"class_list":["post-6107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-berkley","tag-corn-festival","tag-filipino-cooking","tag-foodie-cozies","tag-fractured-friendship","tag-guilt-and-ginataan","tag-mia-p-manansala","tag-robin-agnew","tag-tita-rosies-kitchen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6107"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6118,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions\/6118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}