One Thousand Gifts Review

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp is a Christian non-fiction book on the topics of joy and gratitude through a partial memoir format.

I was really anticipating this book, but was sad to find it didn’t rise up to my hopes. I ended up giving it only 3 out of 5 stars, it was just okay. I found Voskamp’s voice difficult to read. Her writing style just didn’t work for me, it was often confusing and / or unclear. Sometimes it was like she was trying to write in a thought process or in a dialogue like manner, but it was just frustrating to make sense of. I found myself many times wishing she would just write in complete and clear sentences.

This is especially sad, since I think Voskamp has something important to say here. Not only on the topic of gratitude itself, but also a practical application that could have an immense impact on our individual walks of learning to be grateful and accepting the gift of joy. Furthermore, she discusses the effect of gratitude on trust, anxiety and fear (which is an area of my own life that I have struggled with for years).

Overall, I have learned a number of valuable messages and tricks to set myself on the right path to finding joy and full trust in God. However, the writing style just bogged me down and made it so much harder to get through.