The latest installment in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series, Guilt and Ginataan does a superb job balancing mystery, character, and humor. The stakes in the investigation were realistic and we get straight to the mystery after the murder is discovered. This cozy mystery boasts excellent character development in Lila that builds on the work done in previous books and expands on her relationships with her friends/business partners, and I appreciated just how much of the dynamic between Lila and her besties that we get.

Am I only reading this for the fun and delicious Filipino food, desserts, and drinks?! It's still a good Millenial age cozy mystery and i for sure appreciate all of the recipes at the back of the book. This one had some Pakistani food so that was fun and I liked the Corn Festival - very midwestern. We didn't get to see as much of the dachsund so hopefully that will be brought back more into the story line for next book.

Autumn in Shady Palms is all about cozy vibes, warm drinks, and...murder mysteries? In "Guilt and Ginataan", the latest in Mia P. Manansala's Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mysteries series, the town's annual Corn Festival takes a chilling turn when Lila Macapagal's best friend Adeena is found unconscious next to a dead body in the middle of Illinois' second-largest corn maze - clutching a bloody knife. With all evidence pointing to Adeena as the culprit, Lila springs into action to clear her friend's name, unraveling political secrets and dangerous motives along the way.

This fast-paced cozy mystery had everything: mouth-watering Filipino recipes, witty banter, and a sprinkle of romance. The blend of small-town drama and culinary delights was addictive. While the ending could have used more detail, fans of the series will devour this installment like I did. A big thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing, as well as author Mia P. Manansala, for the ARC for this book - Lila's adventures never fail to deliver!

Lila and her Brew-ha Cafe best buddies have a booth at the Corn Festival, selling delicious food and drinks. But when they decide to race through the corn maze, one friend is found unconscious, next to a knife and a very dead woman. Now Lila, and her friends and family, have to solve the crime and prove their friend innocent.

This, along with the Laura Child’s Tea Shop series, might just be my favorite cozy mystery series, and one of my favorites series out there. The characters are so vibrant and wonderful, and you become completely invested in them and their lives. The setting comes alive and feels like a place you want to visit. The romance is weaved in beautifully, and all the platonic and romantic relationships are great. And the food! I want to eat it all! The mystery is always really good as well. I highly recommend this book.

Have you read any of this series? You really need to pick it up if you like fun, great BIPOC representation, and/or cozy mysteries. There is a great supporting cast of characters and a little romance. And I almost forgot, there are recipes. The books always make me hungry and I want to try one of those savory corn muffins they kept mentioning.

There is a little less of Lila’s family in this one but a lot of her boyfriend Jae and her dog Longganisa. Her business partner Adeena is framed for a murder in a corn maze and Lila isn’t going to let her take the blame. Lila does her normal sleuthing and putting herself in danger as she works to clear Adeena’s name.

What a fun time catching up with Lila, the Brew-ha cafe and its crew, and meeting the new characters while also trying to figure out the villain before Lila did. I can’t wait to see what’s next for Lila!

This is a cozy mystery that definitely inspires nostalgia and brings me to the food and celebrations of my culture. I think in general I've found that cozy mysteries are hard for me to grasp. - but that again is more of a me thing than anything. I think that in the right mood - someone would definitely enjoy this one!

Another book I’ve read in the middle of the series. This is book five of the 𝑇𝑖𝑡𝑎 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑒’𝑠 𝐾𝑖𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑀𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑦 series No worries. Although this is my first time meeting our FMC Lila, it was easy to fall into this cozy mystery! Quite entertaining with trying to figure who, if anyone, framed Adeena since she was found passed out next to a dead body in the Shady Pines corn festival maze. This one screams all things fall and food reading about fall activities and sceneries! It took me back to my days of living in the Midwest during the fall! I loved listening to all the talk about the Filipino food and the recipes! Definitely made me hungry along the way and wait to try it all.

Now I need to back track and read books 1-4! I was able to connect with the FMC and really feel her personality through the story.

Manansala does not disappoint! I really enjoyed this one. With cozy mysteries sometimes there is not character development in the story. However our main character Lila grew so much with this story. I also enjoyed the focus on Adeena, Lila’s best friend as opposed to the mystery somehow always centering Lila. My only gripes with this is that we really did not get to see much of the “aunties” which was a bit disappointing as that is what I look forward to. I also thought that the mystery was a bit easy to guess. I usually cannot guess with these books but I did guess about 20% of the way in which was disappointing. All in all, I truly cannot wait for the next installment!

I’m always happy to read a new Tita Rosie’s kitchen mystery. I remember when the first book, Arsenic and Adobo, was published, and it was so exciting to see more diversity in cozy mysteries pushing up against some more complicated themes. Those characteristics have held true, with new and interesting characters, into the fifth book of what is for me a very “comfort read” series!

It's time for the annual Shady Palms Corn Festival, home to the second largest corn maze in Illinois, and this year, the festival is put on jointly by Shady Palms and neighboring Shelbyville, a larger and wealthier municipality. Yvonne, the wife of Shelbyville’s mayor, spends much of the first day of the festival flirting with Elena, Lila’s business partner and Adeena’s girlfriend. When the trio finally get a break at the end of the day, they bet on who can complete the corn maze first, each starting from a different location.

Their friendly wager is forgotten when Lila hears screams coming from another part of the maze. As usual, she runs towards trouble, and in the middle of the maze, finds Yvonne, dead by a knife wound, and an unconscious Adeena holding the bloody weapon. Circumstances couldn’t be more damning for Adeena, but Lila is confident in Adeena’s innocence and undertakes one of her investigations to find the true guilty party.

GUILT AND GINATAAN has all the elements that make the series beloved—Lila’s family and meddling godmothers, her adorable dachshund, and handsome dentist boyfriend as well as the Brew-ha Café. By expanding to a new town, though, the book contains additional settings and characters.

In addition to the central mystery, the book has a triangle—one between Lila, Elena, and Adeena, and how the three can manage the communication challenges and jealousies that come from Lila and Adeena being BFFs while Elena and Adeena are in a relationship. This to me was a very relatable part of the book!

Four recipes appear at the end of the book—every time I read one, I think, “This time, I’ll try one!” Maybe for the sixth book!

I really wanted to love this latest instalment in this series, because I love the series and its characters so much! There was lots that was great about this book, including the same familiar characters and their community, and the deliciously autumn-cozy feel of the mystery. I'm here for the queer representation that allows the queer characters to have experiences that don't revolve around their queerness and it being the central issue for them, but who are three-dimensional characters with flaws and life experiences and meaningful relationships, not just being sidekicks. That's why I was so excited that this latest novel was Adeena-centric! But sadly, it fell a little flat for me. I thought we would learn more about Adeena and her family and her story, but because it was still all coming through Lila's lens, it ended up being Lila feeling sorry for herself that she wasn't more important to Adeena, which felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to flesh out Adeena's character and her relationship with Elena. I will definitely still look out for the next book in this series, because I continue to love it!

While we hang onto the fall season with the paranormal, we might as well with the normal: a corn maze. Well, perhaps not so normal, as the corn maze in Mia P. Manansala’s fifth addition to her “Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery” series, “Guilt and Ginataan” (Berkley, $19), turns deadly. As autumn blankets the charming town of Shady Palms, the vibrant hues of falling leaves signal not just sweater weather, but the kickoff of one of the community’s most beloved events — the annual Corn Festival. The centerpiece of the festival is an impressive corn maze that stands as the second largest in Illinois. Lila Macapagal, owner of the charming Brew-ha Cafe, joins forces with her closest friends and fellow cafe staff, Adeena Awan and Elena Torres, to partake in the festival’s delights, making a playful bet on who will conquer the maze first. The discovery of a body at the heart of the labyrinth, however, causes the lighthearted atmosphere to take a sinister turn.

As the initial shock subsides, the reality sets in — the victim is none other than the wife of a prominent local politician, and the scene is rife with incriminating evidence. All signs point toward Adeena as the prime suspect in this shocking murder case, who was found unconscious next to the body, knife in hand. Lila’s intuition tells her that Adeena could never commit such a heinous crime, and determined to clear her friend’s name, she embarks on a perilous journey to reveal the truth.

Lila and her Brew-ha crew begin unweaving a tangled web of secrets, hidden motives and swirling rumors that threaten to engulf the quaint town. With each new clue, Lila uncovers not only the complexities of the townsfolk’s lives but also the darker undercurrents that lie beneath Shady Palm’s charming facade. This exhilarating, cozy mystery beautifully weaves themes of friendship, loyalty and the indomitable spirit of small-town life amid the thrill of a chilling whodunit.

It's Corn Festival time in Shady Palms. They have a small-ish town so they have teamed up with nearby Shelbyville. Of course, Brew-ha has a stand. And they impress not only the mayor of Shelbyville but also her wife. And it's the wife that ends up dead in a corn maze with Adeena nearby clutching a knife.
Lila has a lot of realizations in this book, especially as she ends up talking to the murdered woman's best friend who also ran a business with her. The parallels in her own life are startling. The woman even has a doxie as well.
I didn't love the ending of this book. It didn't feel as sewn together as previous books but the overall tone of the book is the same as previous in the series and the story moved along the characters really well.

Four stars
This book comes out November 12, 2024
Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery #5
Follows Murder and Mamon
ARC kindly provided by Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

These books keep getting better! Always enjoy being in the cafe and all the yummy food talk.
Love a small town mystery and this crew always is up in the investigating. Enjoying the progression of all the romantic relationships. The struggles with balancing friendships and relationships as you get older
So fun that I didn’t know who the murderer was because there were a few that seemed sus. It’s always interesting when everyone has some sort of motive.

One of my favorite mystery series is Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mysteries which is now on volume 5, Guilt and Ginataan. The series revolves around Lila Macapagal, a Filipino American living in Shady Palms a small midwestern town. Her aunt owns the Filipino restaurant, Tita Rosie's Kitchen, but Lila is now co-owner of a café with two of her friends, Adeena and Elena which provides a fusion of their Filipino, Mexican, and Pakistani heritage.

Living in an area with a large number of immigrants from the Phillipines, I've been lucky enough to have tried several of the dishes discussed in the novel, which are delicious! The ginataan in the title refers to a variety of dishes served with coconut milk including a popular rice ball dessert. This is not a novel to be read on an empty stomach.

The novel also provides a younger voice and perspective than often I find in cozy mysteries and many novels touch on contemporary social issues. As much as Lila's family can be a source of interesting drama, I really enjoyed the latest novel which focuses on a crime pinned on one of Lila's friends since I find the dynamic between them is always a highlight for me. This novel provides both a unique self-contained mystery while also driving forward the larger story of Lila's life in Shady Palms.

This series is just so much fun. It’s exactly what I want in a lighter mystery.

Lila and her friends/business partners are attending the annual Corn Festival when Adeena, Lila’s best friend, comes across a dead body in the corn maze. Unfortunately, she passes out and when everyone finds Adeena, she is on the ground with the murder weapon in her hands.

First of all, I need a Corn Festival to be a real thing. All of the different corn themed foods and activities they described sounded amazing. Maybe it’s the Midwesterner in me, but it sounded like so much fun. Lila is her usual charming self in this book. I always appreciate that she puts effort into her investigating and it isn’t like she just stumbles into things and solving mysteries. I also love the cast of characters. Adeena, Elena (Adeena’s girlfriend) and Jae (Lila’s boyfriend) are fun and sweet. The one thing I did get annoyed with in this story was the Elena/Adeena dynamic.

When Adeena is accused of murder, you would think that Lila and Elena would work together. Instead, Elena gets weird and starts to do things without telling Lila and I don’t feel like we ever god a good enough reason as to why. Lila on the other hand gets super possessive of Adeena, frequently telling Elena how she knows Adeena best because she’s her best friend and she doesn’t know her at all. I mean, if someone had said that to me about my partner I would be ticked.

I did sort of figure out the mystery, but it was fun to see how Lila would figure it out and the true motive. The only complaint I have about the mystery itself is that it felt like it resolved very quickly. I would’ve preferred a slower reveal/wrap up, but I understand not wanting to drag it out.

This is another solid book in this series. Lila is up to her usual shenanigans and baking creations. Her aunties aren’t in this book as much, so it’s a little less goofy than the last one was which I appreciate. I always enjoy these mysteries and can’t wait for the next one!

we're back in shady palms and of course, trouble is always stirring up in this small town.

i thought it was such a fun twist that adeena was in the hot seat and focus of the book, plus focusing on the friendship between lila, adeena, and elena. the found family aspect of the previous books really came into play in guilt and ginataan. i was pleasantly engaged throughout the entire story, even if it was a bit predictable.

i've adored this series for so long and absolutely love the way mia p. manansala writes her cozy murder mysteries. as a filipina woman, i see so much of myself in lila and how she offers up her time to help and spend time with her family and loved ones. not to mention all of the food! there is so much culture and love that goes into filipino food and i love all the recipes included.

thank you so much to berkley publishing group and netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What I liked most were the things that keep me coming back, the characters and all the food descriptions. I also liked the mystery and how easy it was for Lila and her friends to get people to tell them things, but I guess that is the way things work in cozy mysteries. Everyday citizens are way smarter than the cops, but also in Shady Palms, it seems the police force is pretty inept anyways.

Even though I like Lila, she has big main character energy and it came out strong in this book. Afraid of being the third wheel in her relationship/partnership with best friend, Adeena, and Adeena’s girlfriend, Lila’s jealousy is overwhelming and she comes off as a teenager instead of a late 20-something woman.

Despite that, I love spending time in Shady Palms and getting to know more about the characters and their lives. Even though I’m a big city girl, I definitely enjoy being a part of this small town world.

This delightful novel is truly a fresh read that captivates from the very first page, boasting a fantastic twist that keeps readers on their toes. The author’s incredible ability to weave intricate plots while maintaining an air of charm is nothing short of remarkable; it leaves me in awe of how she continues to create such engaging stories time and again. Moreover, this book has a universal appeal that extends beyond adult readers; it would undoubtedly resonate with teenagers who love less dramatic mysteries reminiscent of Agatha Christie. Overall, "Guilt and Ginataan" is an enchanting addition to contemporary literature.

When a woman is found dead in a corn maze, and Lila’s best friend is found unconscious beside the body holding the murder weapon, Lila knows she needs to find the killer.

I finished this book in one day because it was that good! I didn’t want to put it down.

The story has a cosy setting, diverse characters, and delicious food. Beyond that, there’s strong character growth, perfect pacing, and a well-plotted mystery. Just the right number of suspects and clues so the reader can solve alongside, Lila.

Recipes at the end of the book look delicious, but I haven’t had a chance to try them yet.

Perhaps my favorite in the series so far.

My thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.

Guilt and Ginataan by Mia P. Manansala is a delightful and engaging cozy mystery set against the charming backdrop of the Shady Palms Corn Festival. Lila Macapagal and her quirky crew at Brew-ha Cafe are thrust into the heart of a suspenseful investigation when a dead body is discovered in a corn maze, and Lila's best friend, Adeena, is found holding the bloody knife. With sharp wit, vibrant characters, and a fun blend of Filipino culture, Manansala crafts a fast-paced whodunit brimming with red herrings, intriguing twists, and heartfelt moments. As Lila works to clear Adeena’s name, readers are treated to a rich mystery with humor, friendship, and a dash of romance, making this a perfect fall read for fans of cozy mysteries.