After a broken engagement and growing disillusionment with her floundering acting career, Piper Donovan has left the bright lights and big city of New York to live at home with her parents and occasionally help her mother Terri out at her bakery, Icing On The Cupcake. Piper keeps her hand in the acting game by taking on a small reoccurring role in a daytime soap opera that her best friend, Glenna, stars on.

When Glenna announces that she's marrying her new boyfriend, math teacher Casey Walden, Piper offers to make the wedding cake. But the wedding bells just might not ring after a co-star is horribly murdered and Glenna begins to receive threatening notes warning her against going through with the marriage.

With help from her occasional boy-friend, FBI agent Jack Lombardi, Piper follows the many leads that all seem to lead right back to Glenna's new fiancé, but the math just doesn't add up to show enough proof to arrest the math teacher. The real killer just might have the last laugh unless Piper can mix up a new suspect before the bride doesn't make it down the aisle.

Meanwhile, when she isn't busy tracking down a killer, Piper must puzzle out the reason behind her mother's sudden odd behavior in the bakery and finds her parents have been keeping an important matter secret from her for a very long time.

Author Mary Jane Clark is well-known for her career with CBS News as well as her mesmerizing "KEY News Mystery" series. But growing up with a mom who baked and decorated cakes for all the kids in the neighborhood, Clark knew that writing a mystery series that featured cake decorating would be a natural for her. And she was right! TO HAVE AND TO KILL is the first book in Clark's debut "Wedding Cake Mystery" series, and it is as sweet as buttercream icing, but also as suspenseful as waiting to see if the cake is going to rise.

I found the heartwarming relationship between Piper and her mom is the key ingredient to this new series, but I also appreciated Mary Jane Clark's expertise in developing and presenting a flawless mystery that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. (Plus as a former cake decorator myself, I can attest to the correctness of Clark's descriptions of making icing roses -- she "nailed" it on the head! Cake decorators will know what I mean!)

TO HAVE AND TO KILL mixes up the best in sweet family fiction with a spicy little murder story that results in a cozy mystery novel that is a pleasure to enjoy. I look forward to future books in this series.