Lila Macapagal is a bright and affable young woman who is going through something no one wants to: a bad breakup. To mend from her breakup, Lila returns home to her family and support system to heal and get support for the next chapter in her life.
Lila returns to her family and they greet her with enthusiasm and open arms. They cry with her and they support her as she goes through her hard time. But after allowing some time for grief, Lila's aunts ask her to help her run and ultimately save her aunt's failing restaurant. Lila is initially reticent to dive back into the world of cooking and food, but she ultimately agrees to help her aunt and her restaurant, both of which she loves very much.
Her aunts also push her to find love once again. She balks at her aunts, who she feels are too pushy (but typically Filipina). Everything changes, however, when Lila's ex-boyfriend enters her aunt’s restaurant. He is a food critic, and his opinion could mean the success of failure of the struggling restaurant. As a result, Lila does everything she can to impress her former boyfriend. When she goes up to him, though, he drops dead, alarming Lila and everyone in the restaurant.
The police arrive and question everyone in the restaurant, including Lila, who becomes their prime suspect. However, Lila is not arrested. To head off an arrest, Lila enlists the help of her family to find out who killed her former boyfriend. And as a family, she and her aunts (and a friend, a barista) begin their investigation, which takes several unexpected twists and turns.
Lila and her family and friend group find out who killed her ex-boyfriend, but he is a powerful man with connections. They prove his connection to her ex-boyfriend's murder (by arsenic, as they later discover) and send him off to prison. But they also discover that he likely killed more people, something that alarms them and the police.
At its core, Arsenic and Adobo are about the importance and power of family, murder, mystery, intrigue, standing up for yourself, being in an immigrant family, and the family itself. It is a deeply complex novel about a young woman who stands up for herself by finding the person that murdered her ex-boyfriend with arsenic, a potent chemical.
Tonally, the novel is intense, violent, and mysterious. The novel explores how much people can get done when they act as a team. And Lila and her family certainly get a lot done as a team. They solve who murdered her ex-boyfriend and learned more than that. Along the way, the novel is also incredibly entertaining and equally frenetic.
