This fluffy first in a promising new cozy series from bestseller Clark (Dying for Mercy) introduces 27-year-old, down-on-her-luck actress Piper Donovan. After a painful breakup and too few acting gigs in Manhattan, Piper has returned home to Hillwood, N.J., where she's assisting her mother, Terri, at the family bakery, the Icing on the Cupcake. Piper is pleased to be preparing the cake for the upcoming wedding of her friend Glenna Brooks, the star of A Little Rain Must Fall, a daytime soap opera that Piper appeared in before her character was killed off. An actual murder, the cyanide poisoning of one of Glenna's A Little Rain Must Fall co-stars and her former lover, Travis York, threatens to derail the wedding. After further dangerously sticky developments, Piper confronts the surprising killer. Piper having to deal with Terri's macular degeneration lends some emotional weight. (Jan.)
She understands how to hang on to her audience. Her characters are the sorts with whom many readers identify.” — USA Today
The number of characters with motive for murder keeps you guessing,and the action-packed short chapters keep the story moving. You’ll also learn a little about cake decorating, and there’s a sweet surprise at the end. — Library Journal
She understands how to hang on to her audience. Her characters are the sorts with whom many readers identify.
She understands how to hang on to her audience. Her characters are the sorts with whom many readers identify.
Piper Donovan is newly single and struggling to find acting jobs after her soap opera character was killed off. She moves back in with her parents and helps out in her mom's bakery, which is renowned for its beautifully decorated cakes. When one of Piper's famous former costars asks if the bakery can make her wedding cake, Piper gets involved in a real-life soap opera replete with murder, romance, family issues, and a varied cast of characters including an FBI agent, a director, a photographer, a costumer, a jeweler, a drama teacher, and more. VERDICT The first book in best-selling suspense author Clark's (Dying for Mercy; Lights Out Tonight) new series is an old-fashioned whodunit set in a modern world that's high on suspense and low on gore. The number of characters with motive for murder keeps you guessing, and the action-packed short chapters keep the story moving. You'll also learn a little about cake decorating, and there's a sweet surprise at the end. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/10.]—Samantha J. Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY
Clark abandons long-suffering TV newscaster Eliza Blake (Dying for Mercy, 2009, etc.) to launch her new Wedding Cake Mystery series with this glossy tale of premarital homicide.
Glenna Brooks and Piper Donovan have both appeared on the soap opera A Little Rain Must Fall, but that's where the similarity ends. Glenna, continuing as the show's most popular star, is about to marry Casey Walden, a teacher at the Metropolitan School for Girls, which her daughter attends; Piper, who's been virtually unemployed since her character was killed off, is moving back in with her parents. Since everything about Glenna's wedding has to be perfect, she wants famous photographer Martha Killeen to snap the pictures and Piper's mother Terri, who owns The Icing on the Cupcake, to make the cake. But the course of true love doesn't run smooth, and murder interrupts a high-profile charity auction at which the cast has gathered to benefit the school. Was the killer Glenna's embittered ex-con husband Phillip? Casey's brother Arthur, a jeweler who's not about to share the proceeds of the family business? Casey's yearning ex-girlfriend Jessie Terhune, an opportunistic drama teacher? Soap-opera king Quent Raynor, scheming for a coup that will publicize his show's move to Los Angeles? Or Martha herself, whose financial woes have made her desperate for the sort of comeback she could achieve by photographing a murder in progress?
Rated PG-13 for brief violence. But no sex, no language, no detection—not even Piper's FBI friend Jack Lombardi does himself proud—and only a single recipe, which you can find on dozens of online sites.
