I really appreciated this book. Although there are 30 songs in here, I’m pretty sure I was only familiar with 23 of them—but almost all of those are favorites of mine. I’ve been interested in the stories behind different hymns for years, so this book was right down my alley for the most part.

While a couple of the stories stuck out to me, I failed to connect with others, so I ended up feeling like this book is a bit of a mixed bag. Besides telling an overview of the hymn writer’s life, and what brought them to write the hymn featured here, this also traces how the song became widely known today. After that, there is generally a short devotional at the end, some of which are longer than others. I appreciated having that diversity, but personally, I would have liked to see a bit more storytelling in here. I feel like there’s a lot to learn from different life stories, and that wasn’t always as strong of a point as I had hoped.

Even though I wished there was a bit more of some aspects, and more succinctness in others, I did enjoy this book overall. It isn’t a quick read if you were to go through it from one end to another (even though the book is short, there’s a lot of information here), but each chapter can be taken on its own as your interest is piqued by one song or another, and individually, they don’t take long to read. Recommended if you want a good overview of these songs; some of the stories were fascinating! I think my top two favorites were “This Ole House” and “Victory in Jesus”.

I requested a free review copy of this book from Baker Books (thank you!), and this is my honest opinion of it.