Death by Dumpling – Vivien Chien

Blurb:
Welcome to the Ho-Lee Noodle House, where the Chinese food is to die for. . .

The last place Lana Lee thought she would ever end up is back at her family’s restaurant. But after a brutal break-up and a dramatic workplace walk-out, she figures that a return to the Cleveland area to help wait tables is her best option for putting her life back together. Even if that means having to put up with her mother, who is dead-set on finding her a husband.

Lana’s love life soon becomes yesterday’s news once the restaurant’s property manager, Mr. Feng, turns up dead―after a delivery of shrimp dumplings from Ho-Lee. But how could this have happened when everyone on staff knew about Mr. Feng’s severe, life-threatening shellfish allergy? Now, with the whole restaurant under suspicion for murder and the local media in a feeding frenzy―to say nothing of the gorgeous police detective who keeps turning up for take-out―it’s up to Lana to find out who is behind Feng’s killer order. . . before her own number is up

My Thoughts:
In this book, we follow Lana Lee, after a brutal break-up and quitting her job she starts working at her parent’s restaurant as a server, not where she wanted to be at 27. However, when the landlord Mr. Feng turns up dead after Lana has delivered his lunch order, her world is turned upside down. The people she thought she knew now have unimaginable secrets.

I enjoyed this book, I love a good mystery and I loved that I couldn’t figure out who was responsible for Mr. Feng’s murder. I liked Lana as a character, I found her quite relatable and I really enjoyed her and Megan’s relationship they seem to be very close friends and never fight for long.

One thing I didn’t like was that the conversations seemed a little simple at times which was a bit distracting but I did still enjoy the book.

I liked Detective Trudeau a lot, and I wish I could have gone into the book and just given Lana a shake because it was so obvious to me that Trudeau liked her, even though he wasn’t being obvious about it. I liked that there was a massive difference in Ian and Trudeaus approaches to asking Lana out.

Overall I thought this was a great cozy mystery and a great intro into the Noodle Shop Mystery books!