Thursday, April 1, 2021

Review: Murder Lo Mein by Vivien Chien

 


About the Book


Genre:
Cozy Mystery

Format:
Audio 

Publisher:
JournalStone LLC

Release Date:
June 12, 2019

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Everyone agrees that the food at Ho-Lee Noodle House is delicious—unless it happens to be deadly.

Lana Lee’s stake in her family’s Chinese restaurant is higher than ever now that she’s been made manager. So when she enters Ho-Lee into Cleveland’s Best Noodle Contest, Lana makes it her business to win—at all costs. But when a local food critic receives a threatening note in a fortune cookie and is later found dead, face-down in a bowl of lo mein, all bets are off. . .

Now, along with her sweet-and-sour boyfriend Detective Adam Trudeau, Lana decides to take matters into her own hands and dig into the lives of everyone involved in the contest. But when she receives an ill-fated fortune, Lana realizes that in order to save the reputation of her restaurant, she needs to save herself first.

My Review

Lana Lee is trying hard to fill her mother’s shoes as the new manager of their family restaurant, Ho-Lee Noodle House.  She is excited to enter her restaurant in the annual Best Noodle Contest.  Their restaurant never comes in first place, but this year Lana is determined to win it all.  The contest takes a deadly turn when one of the contest’s judges is found dead.  

Despite objections from her detective boyfriend, Lana insists on investigating the death.  When another body turns up dead and Lana receives a threat as well, it’s a race against the clock to find the killer.

This series keeps getting better and better.  Lana Lee, as well as her friends and family, now feel like my old friends.  I always enjoy my visit to Ohio to catch up with their antics.  Listening to this series on audio makes it all come alive.  The narration is wonderful.

The author does a great job at continuing to develop the characters, especially Lana and her boyfriend’s relationship.  It’s moving at a realistic pace.  Their romance takes a backseat to the mystery aspect of the series, which is what I like in my cozy mysteries.

The story never slows down and kept me guessing until the end.  I didn’t guess the culprit and was very satisfied with the ending.

I’m looking forward to the next book…the only problem is my constant craving for Chinese food while reading this series.



For reading challenges:
Craving for Cozies Reading Challenge 2021
Cruisin’ thru the Cozies Reading Challenge 2021
Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge 2021

Disclosure:  I borrowed this audio from the library . All opinions expressed are my own.

2 comments:

Thank you for stopping by and visiting my blog! I always love reading comments and getting to know my readers!

After some careful consideration, I've decided to become an award-free blog. Although I appreciate and am honored by each and every award I've received, your comments and friendship are enough award for me. Thank you all so much for your thoughtfulness.

Due to way too many spam comments, I disabled the Anonymous User comments. We'll see if this works, otherwise I'll have to go back to word verification.