Bookish Brews Snapshot
Mango, Mambo, and Murder by Raquel V. Reyes
Miriam is just trying to get accustomed to having to move to Coral Shoes, Miami. At least she has her best friend Alma introducing her to everyone, until someone face plants into her salad and dies at an event. The worst part? The police are blaming Alma! Miriam knows she needs to do what she can to clear her best friend’s name.
😭 Emotional 🎭 Dramatic 🌺 Friendship Goals 🔎 Mystery
- Genre: Mystery
Book Review
After moving to Coral Shores with her husband to be closer to his family and so her husband can work at the family company, Miriam has trouble adjusting to Miami. When her best friend, Alma, takes her to an event to help get her acclimated to the area and the neighborhood, someone passes out face-first into their salad! To make matters worse, for some reason law enforcement seems to think that it was Alma? Miriam is dedicated to doing what she can to clear her best friend’s name because she knows it definitely was not Alma!
Cozy mysteries have this delightful way of being just as much about the small tangential pieces of characters lives as it is about the main plot. Though this book is a murder mystery, I felt that the mystery plot was quite secondary to the descriptions of food, the Splanglish chatting, and the setting. Especially describing this Cuban community with such small and important details that only someone who’s lived in a similar community could understand. This book is about a murder mystery, but it’s in almost larger part about love, community, and food.
While this book takes place in Miami, the majority of it takes place in the small community of Coral Shores, which gives this book the small town feel that fits with the cozy mystery genre. This is an exceedingly clever way to pull of the warm small town feel in the growing metropolis that is Miami, especially since Miami was the natural setting for this story centering on Cuban American heritage.
Miami is home to the highest concentration of Cuban Americans in the country and the sixth largest metro area in the USA. Early Cuban migration to the Miami area was small, but during the 15 year period after the Cuban Revolution, waves of Cuban exiles left Cuba and settled in Miami for its close proximity and to be near the existing Cuban population. Since then, the Cuban population in Miami has been growing to what it is now, with an estimated 60% of the population being of Cuban heritage.
So naturally, Miami has become a hotspot for Cuban food in the USA. It’s common for cozy mysteries to center around food (who doesn’t find food cozy?) and spend a significant amount of time describing the food and Mango, Mambo, and Murder is no different. You could even almost say that it’s about food. Understanding the context of Cuban migration to Miami, the book starts to feel like a love letter from the author to anyone who understands the community that immigration patterns and food bring together.
Mango, Mambo, and Murder is the perfect read if you are looking for something light and breezy. There is clear skill in crafting a story that takes on so many moods all at once and Raquel V. Reyes manages to skillfully and artfully balance them all perfectly.
