It's always a risk to take a cozy series outside of its usual setting as the community becomes an important character, but it works well in this one since so many of Miriam's friends and family members make the journey with her, and we're still getting to read about her behind the scenes of her series. Clever storytelling and an immersive setting work well here.

This series is just so fun! I loved the change of setting, which took all the characters out of their comfort zone and caused extra chaos. The mystery here was pretty complicated and I had a bit of trouble following everything, but it all came together eventually. I still solidly recommend the series and am excited to read the next book. I think Reyes brings a fresh perspective to cozies that’s definitely needed.

These books are so much fun because I always learn something and get to practice my Spanish! I enjoyed the bit of holiday whimsy and the festive Puerto Rican culture (minus the whodunit part). Miriam is such a lovely protagonist and is someone I'd like to be friends with, which is how I measure books I follow series. I cannot wait for the fourth installment!

My thanks to Crooked Lane and Netgalley for this ARC.

Mirian can't seem to avoid trouble, now not just in Miami but also in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. It's not just murder this time. It is also sabotage and profiteering. Reyes makes great use of the setting to connect history, activism, food, and intrigue. This was just the book I needed during a time of transition and a full schedule. It is a fantastic cozy mystery with the fantastic Caribbean flavors that Reyes is so good at writing.

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Barbacoa, Bomba, and Betrayal is the third novel in the Miriam Quinones cozy food mystery series. I greatly enjoyed the first two books in the series with their unique main character, fun side characters, and the wonderful food. This book was just ok. The mystery aspect of this one was not as interesting as the first two. Also, as someone who does not speak Spanish there was definitely whole conversations that were not translated to English so you kind of missed some of what was said.

Overall it was ok but my least favorite of the series. I still look forward to reading the next book in the series when it arrives,

I recommend this series if you’re a fan of cozy food mysteries such as Vivien Chief’s Noodle Shop mysteries and Tita Rosie’s mysteries by Mia P Manansala.

** Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the e-arc I received in exchange for my honest review.**

Another entertaining and well plotted mystery in this lovely series. Fast paced, well plotted, it was a pleasure to catch up with the characters.
The solid mystery is full of surprises and kept me guessing.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Barbacoa, Bomba, and Betrayal is the third book in the Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series. This is my second attempt in trying to like this series. I usually enjoy books with culturally diverse characters, it is a great opportunity for me to learn more. However, with this series, I find it difficult to like any character at all. I sometimes have a hard time liking Miriam, the main character, but her husband and in-laws are a pain. While I understand the necessity of having unpleasant characters in a book, Miriam's husband and in-laws are too much of a pain. Fortunately, the mystery is interesting, and it kept me reading. I really enjoyed the cultural elements in the story, it helped counterbalance the negative aspects.

This is a great addition to the Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series. Miram is not your average cozy-mystery heroine and I love it! The mystery itself involves bitcoin, suspicious deaths, and a missing dog. Add to that some delicious food, an adorable cat with cow spots, and a couple friends with relationship drama. The ending was a little abrupt, but I’m assuming things will be sorted out in the next book. Overall, it was a fun and engaging read.

Similar to the rest of the series, this book still incorporates Miriam’s Cuban-American culture but also adds Puerto Rican and Dominican elements as appropriate. I loved all the historical and cultural tidbits that made their way into the story.

I started to read this without realizing it's book 3 in a series, went back and read the first two books, then enjoyed this book a whole lot more. The way that Miriam finds her way into trouble, and trouble follows Alma, continues to be fascinating and the cultural/anthropological references made while cooking and making of her television show absolutely pop against the backdrop of Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. It was nice to see the showcase of positive and beauty with the cultural struggles that come from the Cuban experience without the negativity that the mother in law exhibits -- rightfully, and depressingly accurately but it was a good break to not have it as a constant.
I'm so glad this is a series because I absolutely want to read more.

#arc
#netgalley
#barbacoabombaandbetrayal

What a delightful book! I chose it solely based on the title and cover art (it’s not the only method I use, but the art work was just fun). Here are things I did not know: This is the third book in a series; I enjoyed it without benefit of the
two preceding books AND the cookbook; Spanish is not required but certainly helpful if you don’t wish to look up the
few things that are not pretty obvious. None of these apparent obstacles were in any way a deterrent to my total
enjoyment of this series, Book 3, Barbacoa, Bomba, and Betrayal. Featured character, Miriam finds herself in a
situation when a visit to her parents, in Punta Cana, turns into a hunt to try to understand whether they are being
victimized by a crooked real estate developed and property manager. When she’s called out of town for work,
the work trip that was to be a fun taping for a local television network featuring Miriam and her delicious Puerto Rican delicacies Miriam begins to feel danger around every corner..
Someone is trying to scare the family way from their vacation rental property
and figuring out who one can trust is quite the project. Add that Miriam is delightfully 5 months pregnant
and her friends are doing their best to keep things fun while she tapes her cooking / food segments.
Worry, though, is the word of the day. Will things turn around for her family, and her trip to Puerto Rico?
I loved this book, and would recommend it to people who enjoy Joanne Fluke and her Hannah Swensen
food, family and murder series, and folks who enjoy learning about different locales, food and languages.
The recipes are all in the back of the book, and they are super simple to follow. I mentioned this is my
entry into this series, and it was fairly easy to keep things straight, except when the Author, Raquel V Reyes,
does a masterful job teasing bad guy vs. good guy! For returning fans, I would say you’re in for a ride!

I loved this latest in the Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series! Usually, when sleuths leave their home for a book, we see them struggle with investigating outside their comfort zone. However, for Miriam, we see her enveloped in more comfort than usual. Between her time with her parents in the D.R. in Punta Cana and shooting her show in Puerto Rico, we see Miriam welcomed and embraced in a way she isn’t always in Coral Shores surrounded by her white in-laws and county club drama.
I also liked the way we see our regular characters coming into this story in ways that feel a bit abnormal, but still believable. Alma and Jorge appearing at the same time might be suspicious timing or just the popularity of holiday destination trips.
I also really loved the amount of Spanish we see in this book. The previous two had a good amount sprinkled in, but Miriam and her friends’ use of Spanish isn’t as common due to the setting. In this book, English dialogue almost becomes the rarity in a fun switch of perspectives. We still get Miriam offering context clues for words that may not be familiar to readers or close to English words, but it felt like it was more immersive in a realistic way. We even get the differences between some dialogue for the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

This is obviously a love letter by the author about Caribbean food and Puerto Rico. Instead of Miami, where the first two books take place, Miriam and son go on a surprise visit to see her parents in the Dominican Republic and she continues on to Puerto Rico for a week of filming various places and foods around Three Kings Day. Of course, when a man is murdered nearby to where she is staying, she and her friends are pulled into a mayhem, real estate scams and bitcoin entrepreneurs.

Reyes also packs in colonialism, its legacy and the privileged position of Americans in Puerto Rico to the detriment of local residents to this day (which sounds a lot like modern colonialism) which many of us are probably not aware of, or at least not this extent. I appreciate the knowledge.

Reyes uses a lot Spanish in dialog and at times English and Spanish in a short exchange. It seems very natural. I don't know Spanish but I get the gist of most of what is going on. Though there are some long exchanges where I was lost. However, nothing instrumental to the mystery is left untranslated.

I thought the investigation was a bit light in this story but the strong characters and descriptions of food and locales more than balanced it out. If you aren't hungry by the end of this book, well... Not exactly a frothy cozy mystery but definitely worth a read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Reyes masterfully weaves together intense spanglish, multiple cultures, and delcious food into a perfectly bound story. I am a little slower at reading this than I am with an english only mystery, however it's purely for my stubbornness of remembering all the spanish I've forgotten since high school (over a decade ago 😶) instead of just looking it up or reading further for her translations that are worked back into the storyline. The latter means you don't need to understand any spanish to keep up! The mystery was well-woven into the story of Miriam's film screening.

Maybe it's because I just had my baby girl but I was really able to connect with Miriam and appreciated both her Velma nickname plus her anthropology background. I'm also absolutely going to use the recipe for Arroz con Pollo in the back of the book! I haven't had it in years and this version sounds yummy, though I might nix the olives!

In this third installment of Raquel V Reyes' delightful Caribbean Kitchen series, Miriam's husband, Robert, surprises her with plane tickets for her and Manny to visit her parents in Punta Cana. Miriam soon realizes that something fishy is going on with the property her parents manage. There are broken pipes, a dead rat, and green algae in the pool. Unfortunately Mariam can't investigate. The producer of her cooking show wants her to go to film The Three Kings Day special in Puerto Rico.. On her arrival, she is met with a crime scene. Miriam's friends, Alma and Jorge, arrive with their significant others and soon Jorge's partner disappears. The host of her guest house, Dona Santos, is attacked and has to go to the hospital.

Needless to say all of this keeps Miriam busy. The author delves into the subject of gentrification and the development of older properties by investors and displacing the older population of Puerto Rico. Some of the dialogue is in Spanish and the author does not offer a translation, which I feel should be included as not everyone can read Spanish. This was a good mystery and it keeps the reader engaged. Miriam and her friends are likeable characters and we have gotten to know them from the previous books. This can be read as a standalone, but I recommend reading the previous ones. The food sounds wonderful and makes me want to try my hand at preparing some of the dishes. I look forward to Miriam's next adventure and more yummy food.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Crooked Lane Books, for an ARC. The review is my own.

I loved how much Miriam gets to be a foodie and discuss history and societal issues. We get such a good feel for Puerto Rico. It is not just the setting, but also the issues facing the island and how people are trying to make it better. And Miriam is the perfect voice for us to learn through.
The mystery is complicated and twisty. I loved uncovering all the pieces and seeing how it tied into the issues we are learning about. The use of Spanish felt authentic and the narrator did a great job seamlessly using both Spanish and English.
If untranslated language isn’t your thing, you might not enjoy this one. Also if you want a murder and investigation, this one is not your typical murder and investigation cozy.
If you like a strong sense of place and lots suspects, you will like this one. If you like lots of suspicious actions and Miriam’s food anthropology career, you will love this one.
I was along for the ride with Miriam, so I loved the story.

I’ve enjoyed the two Raquel V. Reyes A Caribbean Kitchen Mystery titles I’ve picked up - last year I was able to get an advance listen copy of the second book (Calypso, Corpses, and Cooking), and enjoyed it a lot so bought the audio of book 1 (Mango)… which I keep meaning to read! Now I’ve read the ARC for book 3 and absolutely have to go back and see how the series begins.

I don’t think there’s really any spoilers in these later books (other than Miriam, our cozy mystery solver (a food anthropologist), is very pregnant, something she learned at the end of book 2). You can read them as standalones, because the details aren’t discussed from the other mysteries.

Miriam and young son Manny have flown to the DR (Punts Cana) to spend some time at Christmas with her parents who now live there and manage a holiday condo complex… but her work/show comes calling and makes her fly to San Jose to do some food segments for Abuela Approved in Puerto Rico during the holidays. She comes across another mystery that she and her team have to solve (Alma and Jorge of course are with her), when the odd renter from Punta Cana keeps showing up everywhere, and when Jorge’s new beau doesn’t come home… the team is on it! This is definitely a head-scratcher.

Another great cozy mystery, which I’m really getting into, with excellent writing! It’s written such that I couldn’t figure out where she was taking us or how it was going to play out (I couldn’t figure out the clues this time). Definitely a recommendation for fans of cozy mysteries! I also enjoyed that it’s Latinx and had a lot of Spanish dialogue - I’m not a Spanish speaker so I had to figure out what they were saying (a language lesson).

I received an advance copy from NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books, and this is my honest feedback.

I have mixed feelings about this book. This is the first of the series that I have read and I loved the settings from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. I learned a lot about the Caribbean culture and food while reading this.

There were a couple different mysteries going on in this book and I enjoyed that they eventually tied together.

The mixed feelings with this book come with some of the content. There is a lot of Spanish included which I unfortunately do not remember much of so I felt I missed some things. There is also a lot of talk about colonialism. While I appreciate the need to discuss the injustices caused, it’s not something I want in a cozy.

This story lack the excitement I anticipated. Its intrigue level was on the medium side with a low engaging point, and it was mildly captivating.

A nice addition to the series that will be fine as a standalone. Know that there's a fair amount of Spanish- almost all of which is completely understandable even without any knowledge of the language because of the context (and points to Reyes for incorporating Spanish into the text). Also know that this has a bit more of a bite than the standard cozy as Miriam confronts issues of colonialism and discrimination. She's meant to be in the Dominican Republic with her son and parents for the holidays but has to cut her time there short because she's needed in Puerto Rico. And then there's a murder in Puerto Rico, taking her down the path into investigation. The mystery is well done with, yes some tropes but it's got mad atmospherics. And Miriam is terrific. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.