Kasey has to come up with a huge idea at work to impress her boss and the investors of her company. The only thing she can think to pitch is the small company Mags' Desserts, which is owned by her grandma Mags and her "best friend" Celia. Kasey is now headed home to North Carolina to try to get her Gram and Celia to agree to a deal, but they aren't interested. While home, Kasey finds more than desserts being baked in the kitchen. There's locked cabinets, whispered conversations, weird messages in the business records, and clients being found dead after receiving deliveries from Mags Desserts. Wanting to get to the bottom of things, Kasey enlists her long-time crush Jackson to help her. As they work together to get to find answers, while also dodging Kasey's persistent bosses, Kasey and Jackson also find exploring their past crush on each other.

What happens when you take 2 baking women, a meddling granddaughter, a well-meaning nephew, an overbearing brother-in-law, and two pushy bosses? The Usual Family Mayhem, of course. This book was such a fun read! Kasey gets herself stuck in quite the mess and has to find a way out of it. Not only is she having to convince Gram and Celia to sell their company, which she doesn't want to do, even if it means saving her job, but she's convinced herself that Gram and Celia are using their pies to kill men. So she enlists the help of Jackson, her teenage crush, to help her prove/disprove this theory while also trying to distract her bosses from wanting to buy the business. At the same time, there's a blooming romance between her and Jackson. There's so much going on in this book that there's never a dull moment. I couldn't put this one down until I turned the last page.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for providing this book, with my honest review below.

The Usual Family Mayhem seems like it would have a quirky cast of characters who I’d enjoy in a fun story, and I’m so glad my instincts were right. I loved reading about Kasey’s attempt to both hoodwink her way into staying in her current job (because free bagels) and her unique family who have a home bakery that may just be poisoning bad me. The home bakery part of the story was even more enjoyable due to her very southern Grandmother and her partner. Both are funny and caring while also teaching Kasey to have some mettle. Unique to this story Kasey’s Grandmother’s partner is a woman (I found this unique given Grandma is part of a generation that hid their feelings, and this a southern town). I loved the relationship between the two and that we find that their possible path as murders, and their relationship, came from getting through abusive relationships with men.


The mystery was a fun one due to Kasey’s partnering up with a since childhood love interest who is charming and funny in his own right. Overall this story didn’t hit a misstep, I enjoyed both friends and foes and loved how easy it was to read with its balance of some tough subject matter that was lightened with humor.

I have no notes to add to this hilarious and amazing novel. It was definitely new for me to read something like this but I very much enjoyed it