Juliet Brody and Reverend Simon Brook are getting married at the start of this scrumptious mystery. With a name like MARSHMALLOW MALICE, you can see this one fits right into the Amish Candy Shop Mystery series, which has included titles with licorice and toffee. In this case, the proprietor of the shop, Bailey King, has been particularly asked for a marshmallow-frosted wedding cake.

Harvest, Ohio is warm in midsummer, and Bailey has her work cut out, being maid of honour to her good friend, keeping the cake from melting and protecting it from the interested attentions of Jethro the dappled pot-bellied pig which goes everywhere with the nerve-prone Juliet. Bailey's boyfriend, Sheriff Deputy Aiden Brody, is both Juliet’s son and the groomsman, and everything is almost perfect until a wedding crasher accuses the groom of some misdeed and says he doesn’t deserve happiness. Juliet, creditably, won’t hear any ill of her intended, and the marriage proceeds. The ill-omen remains, and mishaps start to occur. The next morning, this includes a dead person discovered by Bailey on the church steps.

Although the town is in Amish country, Bailey is a New York chocolatier who has come here to run an elderly relative’s shop. Some of the Amish will talk to her and some keep their own counsel. She continues to learn about the quiet community. This time, she learns that some of the Amish drink. They should never drink to excess, but nobody is perfect. Having helped to resolve a few mysteries is a label that sticks, and Bailey gets to know rather more about certain people than she ever wanted.

Amanda Flower keeps coming up with charming, funny, and exciting incidents in the life of her hard-working, creative chocolatier. At the back of this book is a recipe for chocolate marshmallow sticks, so simple that anyone could make it. Between making and selling those, picking strawberries to dip in chocolate, and exploring other industries, Bailey and her friends keep as busy as bees.  Enjoy this mystery MARSHMALLOW MALICE which will be best for fans of the series but would read well as a standalone.