This mystery was just an absolute joy to read. It had all the markers of a fantastic start to a cozy mystery series: fantastic lead, compelling characters, and a twisty mystery with a personal connection. Miriam Quinones-Smith has just moved to her husband’s hometown of Coral Shores, Miami, where her best friend, Alma, also lives. When a socialite dies at a Women’s Club luncheon, a tox screen reveals she’d died of a drug overdose, and an anonymous tip fingers Alma as the pusher.

Miriam is determined to prove Alma’s innocence, and believes that a more likely suspect is Dr Fuentes, a Cuban herbalist who sells overpriced herbal mixtures that promise weight loss, fertility, and other such medical claims. All the socialites in town love his products, and the arrogant doctor is a hilariously entertaining character to read about. I enjoyed reading about the investigation, and the somewhat jokey friendship Miriam forms with the detective on the case. Detective Pullman did confuse me at times, since he seemed to alternate between asking Miriam for help, and asking her to stay out of the investigation, but overall, I thought they worked well together. The one big snag for me was the big reveal, which felt anti-climactic. Worse, the way it was handled seemed to render Miriam’s detective work redundant, which just emphasized the sense that she was meddling unnecessarily in the investigation.

That being said, the best part of the book for me was the entire world Reyes built around the mystery. I love Miriam and Alma, and I especially love how awesome their friendship is. I also love how casually bits of Spanish are sprinkled throughout the dialogue, and how colloquial it all sounds, for example, how they say “porfa” instead of “por favor.” The way the author incorporates Spanish reminds me of how my friends and I sometimes speak Taglish rather than just straight Tagalog or straight English, and how we sometimes shorten words or phrases in Tagalog while in casual conversation. So the bits of Spanish make the dialogue sound more natural and true-to-life for me, and I love that the author chose to do that.

I also love how the author explores the racism Miriam experiences in marrying into a white family. Miriam’s parents live in  Her mother-in-law Marjery is racist, but often through microaggressions where it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s worth pushing back or whether you should just let it go. So I love how the author depicts Miriam’s responses to Marjery’s microaggressions, and I especially love how this climaxes in one beautiful scene where Miriam finally pushes back. For context, Miriam has a doctorate in anthropology, with a particular interest in how food intersects with culture. In this scene, Marjery makes a snide comment about Miriam’s cooking, and after Miriam snaps back, she thinks,

I’d never pushed back at my mother-in-law. It felt liberating, and I wanted another round. My arsenal of ten-dollar words was at the ready. The socioeconomic legacy of colonialism in the Caribbean was in that pot of peasant stew, and I’d be more than happy to educate her on it. [89%]

Yes, yes, YES!!! As a Filipino, I rarely see my cuisine accorded the same gourmand respect as some Western cuisines, so Marjery’s snobbery around Miriam’s Caribbean dish totally hit me hard. I’ve also experienced how that type of cultural snobbery often goes hand-in-hand with intellectual snobbery, so Miriam’s eagerness to whip out her “arsenal of ten-dollar words” made me cheer out loud. I totally got where she was coming from, and I was more than ready for her to verbally rip her racist mother-in-law to shreds.

The subplot around Miriam’s job at the Spanish language station was also a lot of fun. I love the little touches that gave the station a community hub feel, such as the daycare where Miriam could leave her son Manny while she’s filming, and the way Miriam and the other staff never had to explain culture-specific content for non-Latinx viewers.

A weakness for me was in the subplot around Miriam’s husband getting a job with his beautiful ex-girlfriend, who still seemed interested in him, and who, of course, Marjery very much preferred. Miriam just seemed to jump to outrageous conclusions much too quickly, and more than once, I just wished she made more of an effort to talk to him before spiralling towards the worst case scenario.

Still, overall, this was a really fun book, and I’m looking forward to reading more of this series.

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Thank you to Crooked Lane Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Mrs Rochester’s Ghost is a contemporary, gothic retelling of Jane Eyre. Former TV writer Jane takes a job at Thorn Bluffs to tutor the 13 year old daughter of tech entrepreneur Evan Rochester. His supermodel wife Beatrice drowned about seven months ago — Evan insists it was a suicide, but rumours circulate that he murdered her. The Thorn Bluffs estate is gorgeous and, in true Wuthering Heights style, overlooks a cliff atop crashing waves, and is often shrouded in fog. Jane thinks she sees a ghostly figure of a woman amidst the fog, and while she knows it may simply be a product of her naturally overactive imagination, she can’t help but think it may be the ghost of Beatrice Rochester wandering the grounds.

Many re-tellings of Jane Eyre critique the limitations of the original’s feminism by giving Bertha Rochester the opportunity to tell her side of the story. Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea filters the ‘mad wife in the attic’ trope through a decolonization lens, portraying Bertha’s ‘madness’ as a British colonial attempt to suppress ‘Other’-ness. Earlier this year, Rachel Hawkins’ thriller The Wife Upstairs reimagines both Jane and Bertha as brilliant, calculating women, who both have their own agendas in their relationships with Rochester. Both retellings explore the patriarchal roots of diagnosing women with madness, and weaponizing this diagnosis against women who may be deemed too much outside the social norms to handle.

Marcott takes a more traditional, straightforward approach to her retelling, which could have been subversive in its own way, but ultimately fell short for me. In this novel, Beatrice is outright diagnosed with mental illness. The story cites her diagnosis as bipolar disorder, but she also hears voices and has hallucinations, which as far as I know isn’t part of being bipolar. I could be wrong, but it made me wonder if she also has other mental illnesses that haven’t been diagnosed, or — more chillingly — if the medicines Evan forces upon her actually caused her condition to worsen.

The snag for me is that the novel holds back from delving too deep into the possibility that Evan is truly a villain, or that Beatrice was truly victimized by his treatment of her. The novel hints at it, mostly through the lens of people warning Jane that he was abusive or that he’s otherwise bad news, but Jane herself doesn’t seem too concerned. The rumours do keep her cautious about her attraction to Evan, and she’s often sympathetic to Beatrice, but there’s little interest on her part about truly understanding Beatrice’s condition, or the ramifications of how Evan dealt with it. Even when Jane learns about Evan having gaslit Beatrice about her fears of him cheating on her, Jane merely comments that it was “unkind”, then thinks no more about it. For a woman in 2021 to see that incident merely as unkind, and not as full of red flags, is a bit tough to swallow.

For that matter, I was very much not a fan of the romance between Jane and Evan. Evan creeped me out even before I learned about the gaslighting, and I just couldn’t see his charm. To be fair, from what I can remember of Jane Eyre, I don’t think the original Rochester was ever particularly attractive either. But while the original Jane’s happy ending was contextualized within Victorian sensibilities, modern-day Jane has plenty more options beyond Rochester, and was in fact offered some of those very options (another job, another home) right within the story.

Worse to me is how the novel treats Beatrice. As with many modern re-tellings, Rochester’s wife is given a voice — she narrates the events leading up to her drowning seven months ago — yet in many ways, she’s still treated like the wild, mad Other of Bronte’s original. She already has a tenuous grasp on reality within her chapters, describing the housekeeper’s language as “witchy”, a professional rival as a literal bird who caws, and a nearby rock as Mary Magdalene. Her violence is primal, almost animalistic, and much of her internal monologue is so metaphorical it sometimes sounds nonsensical.

I don’t feel qualified to speak on the mental health representation in this novel. It’s possible that this portrayal of Beatrice’s mindset is accurate, and true to what some people actually experience. But I very much feel like she deserved better. I wish we’d seen her perspective before she stopped taking her meds. Or her personality beyond the paranoia and fear that characterized that fateful day. She was a beautiful, success model, and I wish her mental illness was explored with more nuance than just as a tragedy that made her completely unable to function in the world. Even when Jane feels sorry for Beatrice, it feels more like pity than empathy, and at many points, I felt like Beatrice was portrayed as less than human.

The author also doesn’t do Evan any favours by not giving us his perspective beyond what he shares with Jane and Beatrice in their respective chapters. His perspective may have given us a clearer idea of any love, affection, or sympathy he ever felt for Beatrice, but with us just hearing it from him telling Jane that he did like Beatrice once upon a time, he just came off as cold and unfeeling.

As a retelling of Jane Eyre, it’s very faithful to the original, and may satisfy fans looking for that. Personally, I preferred contemporary retellings that take more liberties in updating the story and characters for present-day sensibilities. I highly recommend The Wife Upstairs for just that kind of contemporary spin.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

While spending the night at her cousin’s apartment, Corinne discovers a new app has mysteriously been downloaded onto her phone. Called Met, the app tells Corinne that she’s already met her soulmate, and offers to bring about four people from her past who were potentially The One. What happens after that is all Corinne’s choice. Except that while one person after another from her past shows up, Corinne already finds herself becoming attracted to someone else, whom she met after the app appeared: her cousin’s friend Cory. Should Corinne believe in the app and wait for it to reveal her soulmate, or should she give Cory a chance?

Have We Met? begins with a cute concept, but the conflict it sets up doesn’t quite hold up for long. For one thing, Corinne isn’t the superstitious type — her friend Elise is much more excited about the possibilities from the Met app than Corinne is — and for another, the first couple of potential soulmates the app sends her barely create a sizzle. The main romance is pretty obvious from the start, which makes the various snags set up by the app seem perfunctory, and the climactic solution pretty predictable.

What I loved most in the novel was Corinne’s character arc beyond the romance. I loved the glimpses of her friendship with Joelle, and I loved seeing her move from grief over Joelle’s death to starting to figure out life without her best friend. There’s a great moment when she first sees the Met app, where she thinks that she’s already met her soulmate in Joelle, and I love that idea of soulmates potentially being platonic.

I also love how her friendship with Joelle, and the mementoes Joelle left for her, helped Corinne figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Corinne mostly just takes on temp jobs almost at random, mostly just to pay the bills, with maybe a substitute teaching job here and there to make her mother happy. So I liked seeing her journey in going after a job that she believes will actually make her happy in the long run, even as she recognizes the financial limitations that particular career path can have.

The friendships were also really strong for me. Beyond Corinne’s friendship with Joelle, I love her friendships with Tiwanda and Elise. Both women encouraged Corinne to go beyond her comfort zone, and most of all, where just there for her whenever she needed support. I love that she found that, even when she wasn’t really looking, and that these new friendships can help her move on past Joelle’s loss.

In contrast, the romance fell a bit flat for me. The two main characters grow close when Cory uses Corinne’s apartment as a workspace — he’s a physical therapist who travels to his clients’ locations, and often drops by nearby friends’ apartments to do paperwork in his downtime. Thing is, he initially drops by Corinne’s apartment unannounced. After some initial coy banter about texting first beforehand, Corinne basically tells him to just drop by whenever. And clearly that arrangement worked for them, but I’d hate this super relaxed approach to my personal space, and the fact that Cory so casually assumed it was okay right off the bat really rubbed me the wrong way.

There was also some cutesy dialogue about the similarities in their names — Corinne initially has Cory in her phone as “The Other Cory” — that got a bit cringey after a while. And the cute form of Cory’s big apology wasn’t quite set up enough for me to work. I get that it was supposed to mimic the academic language of his professional writing, but because we don’t much of this kind of language from him at all, either in dialogue or through his work, the format wasn’t quite as impactful as it could have been.

Still, the book overall was a good, entertaining read. I also love how diverse the cast of characters are: Corinne, Cory, and a few other major characters are Black — there’s a scene involving Cory helping with Corinne’s hair care that I found very sweet. Elise is Asian. Cory is bi — he says so straight out, and when Corinne first meets him, he has just broken up with a man and refers to potential future partners as “she” or “they.” One of Corinne’s potential soulmates is non-binary — they’re a teacher, and the second grade students casually inform Corinne that this teacher uses Mx instead of Mr or Ms. Corinne’s younger brother Lito is Deaf, and the story also touches on the tension between him and non-signing members of their family. The author is a sign language interpreter herself, and there are a few descriptions of signs included in the story.

The end of the novel teases at the potential for a sequel featuring Tiwanda. Tiwanda was a pretty awesome character in this book, and it’ll be fun to see her find her own Met match.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.