If you like Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe in the Ladies Detective series, several readers have said that you'll like these two books about Materena Mahi and her family and friends on the island of Tahiti.

Breadfruit by Celestine Vaite

Women who want romance, men who won't commit, interfering in-laws, making ends meet - some things never change, even in a tropical paradise.

Materena lives with Pito and their three kids in Faa'a PK5.5, behind the petrol station, and life is good. Until one day Pito comes home drunk and asks Materena to marry him. Materena wants a ring on her finger and a framed wedding certificate on the wall. But the father of her three children, Pito, thinks that when you give a woman a ring and a wedding certificate she's going to start acting like she's the boss. "Eh," he insists, "it's the rope around the neck." Then again, if there's no ring, a woman can tell her man to pack his bags and go home to his mama whenever she likes. So what does Materena really want? Becoming a madame, eh? Materena wouldn't mind that…But as she starts rounding up the relatives to organise everything she realises there's more to getting married than meets the eye. And that includes reminding the groom that he proposed in the first place. Warmly funny and full of unashamedly sexy strong women, Breadfruit is a delicious taste of life in the tropics.

Frangipani by Celestine Vaite

In Tahiti, some mothers say that daughters are a curse, others say they are a blessing.Aue, teenagers!

Materena is just about ready to throw her daughter Leilani into the street. 'It doesn't matter what I do,' she confides to Mama Teta. 'It's always the wrong thing. I'm going taravana!' And if that wasn't enough, now there's a boy on the horizon. Materena, champion professional cleaner of the Mahi family and the best listener in all of Tahiti, is usually the one solving the problems. Célestine Hitiura Vaite's irresistible follow-up to the much-loved Breadfruit is a book filled with wisdom, laughter and two of the stubbornest women you will ever meet. It's such a vibrant, colourful slice of Tahitian life you can almost smell the frangipani.