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2 Books I Finished Recently

In 2023, I set a goal to finish one book per week. I’m aiming to listen to 30 minutes of an audiobook per day (while cooking, cleaning, and/or driving) and read 10 minutes of a book. By doing this, I hope to fairly easily be able to finish one book per week.

I kind of fell off this plan for the past two months while I launched my own book… but I’m excited to get back to a lot more reading in the coming weeks and months — and we’ll see if I can make up for my reading hiatus and still end the year finishing 52 books!

You can follow along on GoodReads to see what I’m reading, what books I finish, and the star rating I give each of them.

Book #5: Carnegie’s Maid

This was a quiet but engaging story. As in, it didn’t feel like there were all these crazy subplots happening or that the novel took a bunch of twists and turns, but the simple story drew me in.

For some reason, it reminded me of The Last Bookshop in London. It was a uncomplicated storyline and yet it kept me listening and made me think.

It’s a historical fiction book that tries to answer the question of who could have inspired the philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. I loved learning more about this time period in history and also thinking what it would be like to be a maid. I thought it was fascinating to hear the conversations the maids and house staff had amongst one another and how they had such insider information.

It was my first time to listen to/read a book by this author and I immediately went and put some of her other titles on hold.

Verdict: 4 stars

Book #5: Brave Enough to Be Broken: How to Embrace Your Pain and Discover Hope and Healing

I read a pre-release copy of this book in preparation for having the author on my podcast. I truly loved getting to know Toni a little through our podcast interview and instantly fell in love with her honesty and her hilarious personality.

I will say that I think that she’s a better speaker than a writer right now (this is also her first book, though, and if you’ve been around here for awhile you know how much I learned from doing things all wrong with my first book!). I felt like this book could have been tightened up some and I would have loved more depth in other areas (that said, I had a pre-release copy and it had some typos in it, so it’s possible the final version was a little tighter). I also felt some of her exegesis of Scripture of some areas was a little weak or theologically inaccurate.

But overall, I appreciated her vulnerability and her willingness to share the struggles and heartbreak she’s gone through and learned from. I also loved how she talked about what we don’t heal from, will leak out from us in a dysfunctional way and negatively impact all those around us.

One of the sections in the book that I felt was especially valuable was when she talked about how to find a good therapist/counselor. I often hear from people asking for recommendations on how to go about locating someone who is solid and going to really help them process through things well. Toni’s insight and suggestions were fantastic and very helpful. She also has some very practical resources at the back of the book.

Verdict: 3 stars