Review: The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor

The Union Street Bakery

by Mary Ellen Taylor

Publisher: Berkley

Pages: 352

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Life can turn on a dime. It’s a common cliché, and I’d heard it often enough. People die or move away. Investments go south. Affairs end. Loved ones betray us...Stuff happens. 

Daisy McCrae’s life is in tatters. She’s lost her job, broken up with her boyfriend, and has been reduced to living in the attic above her family’s store, the Union Street Bakery, while learning the business. Unfortunately, the bakery is in serious hardship. Making things worse is the constant feeling of not being a “real” McCrae since she was adopted as a child and has a less-than-perfect relationship with her two sisters. 

Then a long-standing elderly customer passes away, and for some reason bequeaths Daisy a journal dating back to the 1850s, written by a slave girl named Susie. As she reads, Daisy learns more about her family—and her own heritage—than she ever dreamed. Haunted by dreams of the young Susie, who beckons Daisy to “find her,” she is compelled to look further into the past of the town and her family. 

What she finds are the answers she has longed for her entire life, and a chance to begin again with the courage and desire she thought she lost for good.


Kritters Thoughts:  The first in a series that takes place just moments from my house in Old Town Alexandria, VA in a small family owned bakery that has been in existence for generations.  The youngest McCrae returns to Alexandria as she lost her job in DC and needs a place to retreat to to put her pieces back together.  She is adopted and doesn't always feel a part of the clan, but retreating to help put the bakery together really brings her into the fold.

First, I am biased because this book takes place in one of my favorite places - Old Town and I could picture each and every moment of this book and it made me fall in love with it.  I also loved the family, the three daughters - two biological and one adopted and how this affects each in the family and where they feel they fit in the equation.  

I don't know much about bakeries, I enjoyed reading the ins and outs and didn't feel too out of the loop without too much knowledge.  I liked hearing the difference between this job and Daisy's previous career path in finance in the corporate world.

Start at book one on this series, it reads simply and effortlessly.  

I will be reviewing the rest of the books in this series (there are three more) the rest of this first week of the year!


Rating: absolutely loved it and want a sequel