Well, from one set of ancestral cultures that produced dragon boats to another, finished
Aunty Lee's Delights by award-winning Singaporean writer
Ovidia Yu, 1st in her cozy mystery-with-recipes series starring the eponymous elderly widowed Peranakan (Straits Chinese) lady and owner of a namesake teashop, which had the obligatory recipe and an interesting bonus Q&A in the back between the author and Canadian mystery writer Louise Penny.
This was a cute, lightweight read with her making friends and influencing people to solve a couple of mysterious murders (and I'm in agreement that putting a tourist resort in a spot that used to be called "Island of Death" in the local language is just asking for trouble, narrative causality-wise). Maybe a little too cute, since either my tolerance for charmingly interfering eccentric busybodies who know best and meddle with everyone's lives, whom everyone trusts and respects except for the obligatory boorish uncouth ingrate fools who nevertheless have to grudgingly admit that said busybody is good at what they do has gone down significantly since last I read a batch of cutesy gimmick cozies, or this was an unusually saccharine variation thereof.
But aside from that, I did rather like the look into contemporary Singaporean culture and the mix of Chinese and Malay and expat characters, and the assorted aspirations of the workers and the middle class and the wealthy, and I'd give a mild recommend for it to anyone interested in that sort of setting and approach. I don't regret having gotten the 2nd one on sale a while ago (the reason why I checked this 1st out of the library, to read in order) and I'll get around to reading that eventually. It just gave me the feel I usually get when picking up a six-pack of late-night discount
dahn tat over at the T&T: I still like the flavour and don't think I wasted my money, but two bites in, it's pretty clear that the bakery used somewhat more sweetener than suits my personal taste and since I'm a lousy, lazy cook who doesn't bake, it's not like I can fix the issue by making my own, so it's something I'm just going to have to put up with if I want to experience halfway-decent egg tarts (albeit in smaller doses than I was anticipating).