This short story was so lovely! The cover was what initially drew me to this book, and I'm so happy to say that the story itself was just as beautiful. I definitely think this has merit as a short story, but I would also love to see this made into a novella or full-length book. I think it has such potential if it were to be lengthened.

I only wish that the ending was rounded out a bit more. I would like to know what it meant for the baker to be "bound" and the nature of the brothers fae-ness. Otherwise, I think this was a great listen!

It was a wonderful short story and found it enjoyable to listen to something very different from what I normally listen to.

I really enjoyed this story. My only complaint is that it was too short. I'd love to have at least a novella if not a full length novel to explore these characters, what happened before, what happened after.

This is a very short book but I enjoyed listening to it a lot. It was very engaging. The story itself is magical. I love folklore and this one did a great job at giving that vibe of fairytale/folklore in a story. It features Riley who went on a mini-adventure due to a request of a mysterious man who showed up in the bakery where she works. I will never get tired of reading stories that feature a plot where humans and magic coexist, and I'm glad I requested this book. I think the writing is not limited to a younger audiences so this book is perfect for all ages.

What pulled me into True Loaf was the cover art. The simplistic art held a cryptic beauty to it and I was interested too know more. True Loaf was inspired by a Balkan folklore and follows Riley and an unlikely task to obtain a special ingredient for a customer. While listening to this short story I was fully imesersed in it. In such a short time the author does a fantastic job in pulling in the reader and keeping the story moving with just the right about of description and intrigue. I really enjoyed this short story and I am very glad that I picked it up.

It is a story inspired by Balkan folklore. It is short and leaves a lot to the imagination of the reader. I liked the extra chapter at the end explaining the symbolism in the story, it helped better understand it. the ending is very open and i had a lot of questions. Overall, I enjoyed the story but i felt like something was missing.

Firstly, I loved the cover, such cute details!
In terms of the story, I loved it! This is a short story inspired by a Balkan folklore with a more modern twist. It centers on Riley, who works in a bakery located in a relatively small town. Life is predictable until one day a man she has never met before asks her to make a special bread made out of material that is only found in the forest. She encounters strange things within the forest and an even stranger occurance when the man returns for his bread.
Such a cute and short read!

3 stars. As far as short stories go, this one is cute, sweet, and quick. Nothing of substance to be gained, but it was a nice quick read. Review to come.

A short & sweet book which is well written and kept my interest throughout. The audiobook was a nice short length, perfect for listening to whilst painting. The story takes you on a short and sweet journey, hitting major balkan folklore symbolism & makes a nice change from any traditional 'man saves woman, man marries woman' kind of tales. Only qualms come in the ending - as much as this is a micro story, it missed the mark - it was rather abrupt, and whilst it mostly wrapped things up, suddenly you're left with more questions in the form of what happens next.

I was very bored by this story. The call to action isn't particularly interesting. Then very little seems to happen, until suddenly a brief climax takes place. And then the story is over and nothing is explained. Nothing is made clear. I was disappointed.

As a new reader venturing into more folklore-based reads, this is a great epitome of folk-based reads. I really enjoyed the brief read, then the description by the author after of how and why she wrote this with her intent and objective, She also describes some folklore-based resources that are worth looking into. I highly recommend, it's worth the small time investment.

As someone who has been on the fence when it comes to audiobooks, struggling to connect with the story on the same level as when I physically read the book, this was a pleasant surprise. The length of the story gave it more of a podcast feel and the use of voice that the narrator applied fit perfectly with the setting of the story. I loved the fact that this was a fifteen-minute, bite sized listening experience. I found myself enjoying this experience more than my pervious audio book trials because of the length that didn’t require a prolonged period of concentration from me. The story on the other hand had a definite folklore-ish tone which could be seen in the words chosen and the general rhythm of the story. My only complaint is that the ending felt like a dead end, as if there was more planned but the author ran out of their word limit and thus just had to stop it. It did not have the smooth tapering out that you find in fairytales and folk tales, it was abrupt and seemed to be more of a prequel to a novel than a story on its own. The premise of the story with the stranger that arrives in a small town and has a strange request is reminiscent of all the most classic fairytales, while the ending just did not keep with this theme when it alluded to a greater plot. I would most certainly pick this story up if it were turned into a novel length tale, where the characters are more fleshed out and not as 2D as the characters of short stories tend to be. I would also enjoy diving into the story that was alluded to at the end, it really had my curiosity piqued.
The voice actor did this story justice with their use of different tones, pitches and tempos throughout, keeping me engaged and keeping the story true to itself and what it was written as.
After this listening experience I am officially considering listening to more short story audiobooks. Anything that encourages the audience to try a whole new world of genre can be called a success and that is what this was.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me a copy of the True Loaf audiobook. This was a great short folk story with a good narrator! I would love to hear a whole collection of Balkan folk stories by the author!

It was such a nice read! I'm not one to read many folklore-inspired stories, but this one caught my eye with the cover and the fact that it's very short. The additional information in the end was really interesting, adding more layers to the comprehending of the plot and making me look for more stories like this.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to listen to this audiobook. I loved it so much that I listened to it twice! It's super short, so that was easy to do, but the story was wonderful. A magical and funny fairy tale. I want more from this author and the narrator!

True Loaf starts when a young baker receives unusual request to bake bread made with yarrow. She goes out into the forest to find the ingredient she needs, where she meets a mysterious stranger. The next day, she bakes bread which has some unexpected consequences.

For such as a short story, it was interesting, but it left me with a lot of questions. and the story just kind of stopped, it wasn't a satisfactory ending. I liked the portal fantasy aspect of it: the young baker had to step into another world to find the yarrow. I would like to see this story expanded into a full novel: there wasn't enough substance in this short story which raised a lot of questions.

The audiobook for this story was really short: just 16 minutes long. Penny Scott-Andrews reads the short story and Claire Glover reads the "Bonus Content" at the end. I didn't really care for either of them. Oddly, they both read the story in a similarly stilted way. Thankfully, Penny Scott-Andrew's delivery seemed a lot more natural as the story went on.

If you like Balkan fairy tales, you might find this enjoyable, but I thought it was just OK.

This was such a cute short story. I listened to it with my five year old son and he enjoyed it just as much as I did. The story was about Riley who works at a bakery when one day a very strange man comes in with a request to make some Yarrow Bread 🥖. So she goes off to find the ingredients for the strange request and stumbles upon a world 🌎 she couldn’t imagine in her wildest dreams. Like most folklore it is short and sweet and it played with the idea that supernatural coexist with humans.

This is perfect for children because my son was able to stay immersed in the entire thing. If you have a 4-7 year old you know that most of their tv shows are no longer than 20 minute episode and they have plenty breaks in between.

I would recommend this to a friend and special thanks to NetGalley and the published for this advanced audiobook.

I loved this short story and I want more! I would happily read a full length novel about Riley and her fairy prince. How did she get to work in the bakery, where did he come from, will she follow him? The narration was great and I loved the extra bit at the end with additional information on how the story got together. I'll definitely listen to True Loaf again:)

I was initially interested in this book because of the title: True Loaf. What could that possibly mean? This is a super short story, the audiobook being only 15 minutes long. I thought then, why not, let's give it a listen.

One day a man shows up at Riley's bakery and requests yarrow bread, which sends Riley on a quest into the forest to find some yarrow root. Because of the extreme briefness of this story, there is absolutely no depth given to the characters, the world, or anything else in the tale. To be honest I'm not sure what this point of this story is. It saddles the line between a fantastical folktale and contemporary fiction, but not in a good way. Riley mentions the plants having magical properties, but she also mentions calling the cops, which felt super out of place in the story.

It feels like L. Austen Johnson wrote the beginning of a story and then stopped. True Loaf ends at a place where a whole novel could jump off, but then there's nothing else. There is bonus content at the end of the audiobook in which Johnson describes the Balkan folklore influences behind True Loaf and proceeds to analyze every aspect of her story. She explains how her story follows the structure of such fairytales and mentions it combining her academic and personal lives, which makes me think she wrote this story for a college class on how to properly use folktale story structures. That's what it feels like, and if that's the case then it works. But as a story that I would consume outside of knowing that, it just makes no sense.

Unfortunately, I didn't care for this story and therefore cannot recommend it. I guess if you are into Balkan folklore then you might enjoy it, but other than that it is not worth a read.

What a fun original fairy tale! This was very short- about the same length of classic fairy tales, and it would fit perfectly in a collection of fairy tales. Definitely recommend for fans of both new and old fairy tales. I would love to have a full-length version of this one day and see this story explored more!