Hello and happy Saturday. If you’re up for a cozy day at home, maybe doing crafts, or even chores (I like doing chores sometimes), and you want an audiobook to listen to in the background, you’re in luck because I’m here to suggest two. I’m referring to The Union Street Bakery and its sequel, Sweet Expectations, by Mary Ellen Taylor. You’ll find both novels available on Kindle Unlimited, in written and audio versions.

I’m not going to cover much of the sequel, obviously, but I can tell you that you can totally do without it if you’re not feeling like reading a series, or even a duology. I think that the fist book wraps up in a way that will leave readers satisfied, and both volumes have different subplots, so you get your sense of closure and resolution either way. Now because I was in that cozy mood, I did consume the two books back to back and I have no regrets.

The Union Street Bakery is a novel set in Alexandria (?), Virginia. It follows our main character, who has lost her corporate DC job and must go back to her hometown, where her family runs, you guessed it, a bakery. She is the adopted child of the owners and was actually abandoned by her birth mother at the bakery (I promise it’s the last time I’ll use that word in this post), so that’s also part of the subplot. It was an enjoyable story, and it gave me similar vibes to other novels I’ve covered in this blog about women in her 30s realizing their lives are just getting started and they’re not defined by their professional or romantic status.