Mango, Mambo, and Murder by Raquel V. Reyes is the debut novel of the Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series. Offered as a Read Now on Netgalley when I word on got, it was a cozy mystery and I had to grab it.

What I enjoyed about this particular story that differentiated itself from a lot of other cozies was that the protagonist was a married woman who is also a mother. Typically, the amateur sleuths are single women with the potential of a romantic interest in the picture. I also liked the latinx culture infused within the story that made this different from others.

However, the small criticism I have is that Miriam didn’t really get involved with the investigation until well into the story and some of the Spanish sayings were a bit lost on me. But I do understand especially in the initial novel of a series, you have to establish the character and relationships she has with the other main players of the story.

Thank you Crooked Lane Books for the arc. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I'm a huge fan of cozy mysteries and always looking to try new series, so when I saw this new one I was super excited to try it! I love the premise and involvement of Cuban food, and, of course, it has an adorable cover. However, ultimately, this book was really just... fine.

The highlights were the MC, Miriam, cooking, and certain characters finally getting what was coming to them. But the ending certainly left something to be desired, with Miriam outright ignoring her friend begging her to call the cops and doing something stupid instead, and her husband (who has been shady all book) revealing his big ~secret~ that he totally didn't need to keep secret from his WIFE. And Miriam just forgives him?? I didn't get it at all. Miriam's MIL is also completely racist, which is acknowledged in the book, but never really rectified or addressed by her son. I guess this is a series, so there's still time, but that part felt so egregious it was hard to swallow.

As a final thought on something that did not affect my rating of the book--there's a lot of Spanish in this book. I took high school Spanish ~10 years ago and can catch a bit here and there, but this book had more than I could understand, and didn't always provide the necessary context for non-Spanish speakers. Unlike a book like A Lot Like Adios or Island Affair, which I think integrate Spanish successfully in ways non-Spanish speakers can understand, this book had a lot of back-and-forth in Spanish and at times I felt like I was missing content by not being able to understand. Maybe I'm not the target audience then, but I wish I had known that before I had picked up the book.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books for my eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4 stars - 6/10

Miriam, her husband, and son move back to Miami. Unfortunately for Miriam, their new home is close to Robert's mother. I'm surprised that Miriam and her sister-in-law don't post on Reddit about their mother-in-law. The focus is more on Morgan's life than the mystery which I found enjoyable. Looking forward to the next.

I was kindly provided an e-copy of this book by the publisher and/or author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I think there's plenty of new exciting cozy mystery series and this is one the best debut I read in 2021.
It's an engrossing, entertaining and well written story that features an unusual MC (Maria is food anthropologist and a latina).
There's plenty going on in this book and I couldn't put it down as the author is talented storyteller and the plot kept me reading.
The mystery is a bit on the background and it wasn't hard to guess the culprit but what I really appreciated was how the characters were developed and how the author deals with some very serious issues like racism.
I can't wait to read the next book in this series.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This book was great! It was a bit of a departure from usual cozies in that the protagonist is married with a 4-year-old and it takes place in Miami instead of a small town somewhere, but other than that it was still an awesome cozy. I especially liked the Spanish dialogue throughout the book as it allowed me to draw on 5 years of Spanish between middle and high school. My teachers were excellent since I was able to translate nearly all of it. It was nice to flex those language muscles again.

The book is about a woman, Miriam Quinones-Smith, who moves to Miami with her husband Robert and her darling little boy Manuel, Manny for short, when Robert takes a new job. Unfortunately, they are very close to Roger's mother, who is a xenophobe and does not care for Miriam. Miriam's bestie, Alma, takes her to a Women's Club luncheon where one of the patrons faceplants into her chicken salad right next to Miriam. Then the bestie winds up fingered for the crime. Miriam is determined to help out her friend and find the real killer.

The atmosphere created in this book in the niche rich section of Coral Shores carved out from Miami almost gives the reader the small town feel of normal cozies. Everyone is in everyone's business. Miriam is a lovely protagonist who is smart, funny and fiercely loyal to her family and friends. Again, I really appreciated the bilingual aspect of the book as well. I would absolutely read another book in this series...and another...and another. Delightful beginning to a new cozy series I hope continues for an infinite number of books. This is one I am going to buy.

When her husband's new job takes Miriam from New York to Miami, she has enough to handle with a toddler, an increasingly absent husband, a pushy best friend and an all-too-intrusive mother-in-law. When women around her start dropping dead and fingers point to Miriam's friend, she takes it upon herself to learn who really killed these people.

This is the first book in a new series, and I was excited to read it. I loved the descriptions of the setting, and most of the characters, although there were several who set my teeth on edge. The mystery itself was good, but the over-abundance of Spanish phrases, even entire sentences!, led me to deduct a full star in my final rating.

I've never studied Spanish at all, and while I was able to figure out the meaning of some of these simply through context, the rest were impossible to figure out, and I got tired of having to look them up. I won't be looking for the next book in the series unless the author either provides a translation of the Spanish or a glossary of some kind.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.</i>

Really creative. I did think it was a bit too dark for a cozy mystery but not quite "thrilling", I loved the cultural exploration though and the food descriptions!

Mango, Mambo and Murder is a delightful addition to the cozy mystery canon, with a Latinx sleuth with an intriguing background and a devotion to helping others.

Miriam Quinones-Smith (there's a tilde missing there I don't know how to insert online) has married her grad school sweetheart and moved back to Miami with him. The culture clash is funny, if a bit overdone-- he comes from a very rich WASP family, while she is a Cuban from Hialeah, a poor neighborhood a few miles away. What really makes the book stand out is the vivid portrait of contemporary Miami, from the way everyone intersperses words of Spanish in their English to bits about Santeria and Miriam's fear that her cousins will turn her four-year-old son into a miniature Papi Chulo-- a Latinx type of gentleman adorned in gold chains and big sunglasses.

There is a LOT of untranslated Spanish, most of it understood by context, but here and there an important word threw me off. Miriam is a food anthropologist, with a PhD in Latin foodways, so she brings an academic and research approach to not only solving the mystery, but succeeding at her new part-time job with a Caribbean Kitchen TV show. Her accidental milk mustache, when preparing her first item, a batido (milkshake) becomes a charming way that people begin to recognize her as herself, not just the latest member of the Smith family.

I loved reading a cozy mystery with a Latinx flavor. There was so much here that felt authentic and cozy in a way that I had never encountered before. The use of food was perfection and made my mouth water. I also loved that Miriam is trying to teach her son Spanish and is connected to her culture. The mystery itself was not the strongest element but I really did care more about the characters and their relationships than I did for any other part of the story.

Making the move from New York to Coral Shores in Miami with her husband and toddler has Miriam off balance. Add a domineering mother-in-law to the situation and Miriam is trying to find her way. She now has a PhD in food anthropology and it soon steers her to a food segment on a Spanish language morning show. It gives her an escape from the fact that her husband is a jerk, her toddler is explosive and her mother-on-law makes her miserable. It's her mother-in-law who makes her attend a luncheon that has murder on the menu. That's bad enough but when Miriam's best friend, Alma, is soon the prime suspect, Miriam finds her strength and sets out to clear Alma and hopefully not become the next murder victim.
Besides being a well written mystery the food had me drooling. The descriptions of Caribbean food and culture, including information on herbs, kept me engaged start to finish. I hope there will be more mysteries for Miriam to unravel.
My thanks to publisher Crooked Lane and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I love a good cozy mystery but was disappointed in this one. The Spanish and then English translation was just plain annoying. I also felt like there was too much story and not enough mystery. I’m sure others will love this one but I doubt I’ll read more in the series.

Miriam is trying to reset after a move home to Miami from New York. She's unemployed now, she's got a young son, her husband is not being especially supportive and then there's her mother in law. Luckily, her BFF Alma comes to her rescue with a job as a food expert (she's a Phd food anthropologist) on the local tv station but that doesn't mean she's exempt from attending things like a women's club lunch- where another attendeee ODs. Then there's an herbalist and more death. Unfortunately, Alma is a suspect and so Miriam heads into investigation mode. It's a bit more complex than the usual cozy and the atmospherics are fun. Know that there's untranslated Spanish in conversations throughout but that the meaning is easily discernible from context. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good start to a new series.

This is only the second cozy mystery that I have read and I liked it. The main character, Miriam, a young Cuban American who is trying to launch a Youtube Spanish cooking show, gets caught up in trying to prove that her friend was not involved in murder in her small town in Miami. The first in a Caribbean Kitchen series, the story unfolded at a good pace and the mystery aspect was entertaining but very easy to deduce who the murderer was. There were a lot of Spanish phrases used in the book to reflect Miriam’s heritage but I wish that they would have been translated but it was relatively easy to figure out what the phrases meant in the given context. It would have also been good to have some of the other characters more fully developed but perhaps that is to come in the next book in the series. An entertaining, easy read.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. Mango, Mambo and Murder is out on October 12.

Thanks to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for this eARC!

This was what I like to call a “cozy kitchen” mystery. Which means that along with a whodunit that wasn’t too scary or intense, there was also a lot of good food. Miriam was Cuban, as were many of the recipes. I loved reading all of the recipes at the back of the book and really hearing the descriptions of delicious Cuban cuisine. Miriam was an excellent main character. Seeing the story through her eyes made me really invest in all the outcomes of the book. I definitely wanted to know who had killed the two women. However, I was equally interested in Manny, Miriam’s cooking show, and what the heck Robert was doing out all the time.

I particularly like Coral Shores as the setting of this book. It felt like it could be on a TV show where there’s a new murder every season and the plucky detective/cat lady/grumpy old man is somehow the only one who can figure it out. The people who live in town are characters. They seem to lead diverse enough lives to be able to carry multiple entries in this series.

The only downfall for me was that the solution to the mystery seemed really obvious. The killer is who I thought they were. Their motivation was a surprise, it wasn’t a big enough twist to make this a five star read.

If you know me, you know I am a foodie. Give me a book with a culinary theme and recipes and I am in heaven. Currently, I am ready to book a flight to Miami and try the food mentioned in this book. I am drooling reading the recipes.

This was an excellent start to a new series and I am ready for book two pronto. The characters are colorful and fun. The scenery described is beautiful. The food I've already mentioned.

There are a lot of Spanish phrases and sentences throughout the book. Most I understand from my limited high school and college Spanish but a few I had to look up. Since I read a NetGalley I am not sure if the final printed book will have a glossary. I would love to listen to the audiobook if one is recorded.

This is set to release in October and I suggest you pre-order now. It is that good.

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher, Crooked Lane Books, through NetGalley. All opinions expressed in the above review are entirely my own.

I’m not sure that I’m the target audience for this book. I liked Miriam and the author’s writing style but the mystery was fairly easy to solve. Also I didn’t like most of the secondary characters or the fact that the book kept switching back and forth between English and Spanish since I don’t speak Spanish.

I think it’s funny that some cozy series I have so much fun with while others I can’t really get into. Mango Mambo and Murder was a case of a book that I couldn’t connect with. The main character Miriam is a new mom, has just moved to a new house in a new town right down the street from her mother-in-law. While I found this to be relatable, I felt like most of the book focused on Miriam‘s life and I didn’t get as much Caribbean culture and food as I was looking for. The beginning of this book felt rushed, with the murder happening at chapter 2 and I was still trying to figure out who is who and what was going on.
Overall it’s not a bad book, if you are a cozy lover I’m sure you will like this one. I enjoyed it but I didn’t love it and I think I will not be continuing the series. This is definitely a case of it’s me not you.

This new cozy series, Caribbean Kitchen Mysteries, begins with Dr. Miriam Quinones-Smith’s frustration over the family’s move to Miami from New York City. Leaving her academic career as a food anthropologist in NYC, Miriam takes on a short-term gig as a Caribbean cooking expert for a local Spanish TV show in Miami.

A woman drops dead during a Women’s Club luncheon at Miriam’s table. Then a second death occurs, and Miriam begins investigating. Raquel V. Reyes generates a mystery that relies on the Spanish-speaking protagonist eventually working with the detective on the case. The story also involves Miriam’s family, son Manuel, husband Robert, and very intrusive in-laws.

A cozy with a heavy Spanish influence, not bad at all. Just a couple of things that ticked me off, Alma was too pushy, and Miriam was a pushover. The storyline was a good one with a mild excitement and intrigue level. A relaxing tea time read for sure.

A great start to a new cozy series! While I found the beginning to be a little hard to get into this book really picked up steam once bodies started dropping. Highly recommend for its diversity and food descriptions.