This is book one in the series and I used the audio to get it started and to finish (I am knitting socks) and I really wanted to read, but I needed to work on the socks and drive my kids to different things. 

It was a fun read/listen. Mel and Angie have opened a cupcake bakery (why cupcakes? Because you feel better about buying a cupcake over a whole cake) and have run into some issues. 

1. Their competition keeps driving by the store and doing things to try and ruin their business. Olivia runs her own bakery selling cakes, cookies, and cupcakes and she spends the day driving back and forth past the shop. When their friend and financier's fiancee is found murdered by Mel, she uses it to help push her own business forward. 

2. Their friend, Tate, is a wealthy man who is engaged to an evil, pushy woman who makes everyone unhappy. Mel and Angie don't like her at all, but Tate wants them to make the "cake" or cupcakes for the wedding. But she wants a contract that won't allow them to use anything that has been made before and cannot be used ever again. It seems she has done this to all the people working on her wedding (the dress and the photographs). She claims other people's work as her own and makes them sign contracts that are unfair and hard to break. 

3. Tate's fiancee is found by Mel the morning after her cupcakes are delivered by two of her assistants (not Mel's assistants). Mel was ordered to arrive early to discuss changes and does not respond to the calls and knocking of Mel. Mel is originally looked at as the suspect because she made the cupcakes and arsenic was found in a cupcake, but none in the bridezilla. Then it is believed that Tate murdered her. Mel feels that she needs to find the truth and get the real murderer arrested. 

The story was fun and there were recipes at the end. I think the only thing I found was that I knew by the middle of the book who had murdered the bridezilla and that at one point I think I heard that she used oil instead of butter to make her cupcakes moist, but then the recipes use butter over oil (keep in mind I listened and read at same time) and I didn't have time to go back and look to see if that was the way it was written. 

Great start, interesting finish, fabulous characters, but oh my didn't this drag on forever...

Also, the Scottish nostalgia theme was a wee bitty much.

“He’s dead, McDonald.”

“Yes.”

“Since you were with us in the study his death disproves his theory.”

Ha! Yes! Such an odious man.

LoL, also the bodycount is racking up here ... of the unlikeliest of victims.

This is dragging on a bit now.

“As a psychologist,” Barley assured him, “you cannot but be aware of the demoralizing effect of fear even on the strongest characters. It corrodes, as rust corrodes iron. It demoralizes. Fear is one of the nursing mothers of crime. Like greed. Like jealousy. McDonald was afraid; Mrs. Eoghan was afraid. They were mice in the presence of the cat. The time was approaching when the cat would pounce…”

He threw himself back with staring eyes and open mouth. His thoughts seemed to coil round his head like smoke.

As "rust corrodes iron"? Erm, ... what?

I'm generally not fond of a psychologist having a part in a mystery. (Except, for Mrs Bradley. But then she's different.) Ironically, tho, in this one the psychologist doesn't go about using his profession as a substitute for old-fashioned sleuthing. 

All the psycho-babble seems to come from the police...