After Daisy's Financial Co. does a nosedive and is bought by another her investment team is let go. Few other positions are available in the market downturn. She heads home to the family bakery in Alexandria, VA to take over the management. Both sisters now run the bakery after her parents retirement but neither wants to handle the financials and the bakery is teetering. The major thrust of the story revolves around searching out Daisy's birth mother who left Daisy at the bakery when she was 3 and then adopted by the McCrae's. An old journal given to Daisy leads them on a search for family history. There are ghosts and an ex-fiance moving to town as well. I liked the story for the most part but I couldn't warm up to Daisy. She spent her life obsessed by her missing mother and pushed everyone who loved her away. Just wanted to shake her. ( )

read 2022

This book has great family characters that well developed. The following year. I won the next in the four book series, Sweet Expectations. The second book was even better than the first. We were evaculated from our apartment this month and I finally read the books together.

I loved the story. at first I really did not understand Daisy's ambition in finance but that changed she decided to return to the family bakery and got to know the business from the ground floor and do the books. Her dad had a series of mild heart attacks and it was crucial to protect him from the physical and emotional stress of the business was left at the bakery at the age of three and quickly adopted when the investigation of the abandoned baby left lead to nothing.

Daisy never felt that she was a true part of the family, not sharing their genes, but the longer that she stays in the attic of the bakery and works with her sisters and feeling closer to her adoptive mother, the more she belonged with them.

Romance, hurt feelings, depression are large elements of this story. Be sure to read book two in this
series! ( )

I am always out for new author's and I have to say that Mary Ellen Taylor's "The Union Street Bakery" is definitely an author potential readers should be on the look out for in the future.

The main protagonist in the novel is Daisy McCrae. Daisy's life changes suddenly when she is fired from her job at an investment firm in Washington D.C. With recently ending a long-term relationship, not being able to afford her rent, she returns to her adopted family's bakery in Old Town, Virginia to help her sisters' run the bakery.

After a run-in with a long-time customer that bequeaths a slave's journal to her, Daisy finds herself searching for the truth behind her real family and trying to fit in with her adopted family.

I really loved the character of Daisy and her two sisters Rachel and Margaret. All of the characters feel very fresh and are are fully fleshed out for this novel. I also felt for Daisy since she feels as if she is not a true "McCrae" since she was adopted and has a hard time trusting people not to live her. I don't want to give away too many details since I have to say that I really love how Ms. Taylor sketched out Daisy's history. It comes to you a piece at at a time.

Also it's pretty apparent that Ms. Taylor has some knowledge of Old Town, Virginia, D.C. and even baking. I was very fascinated to hear about the history of that place and the understanding of slavery in that time and place. I for one did not realize that Old Town was originally part of the district of Columbia. I always assumed it was part of VA. I was also fascinated to hear about the slave trade that was ongoing, the open seaports, etc.

The two minor quibbles I definitely had which caused me to lower my rating by one star were the following:

1) when the novel switches to Daisy's ex boyfriend point of view I found that jarring. We had been in Daisy's head for about half of the novel by then so I do hate switching horse's mid-stream so to speak; and

2) when the novel showed the journal entries. I just did not believe that a slave from the 1850s would be able to speak near perfect English and let alone write it. I wish we had gotten more details on how that came to be, it was just glossed over.

The way that the novel ends definitely leaves it open to interpretation that there will be sequels starring Rachel and Margaret. Definitely hope so!

I 100 percent recommend this novel! ( )

Average story. Interesting baked goods. :) ( )