diff --git a/src/api/pyproject.toml b/src/api/pyproject.toml
index aed813a..9c0b879 100644
--- a/src/api/pyproject.toml
+++ b/src/api/pyproject.toml
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ dependencies = [
     "fastapi>=0.115.5",
     "ebooklib>=0.18",
     "python-dotenv>=1.0.1",
+    "pydantic-settings>=2.6.1",
 ]
 
 [tool.ruff.lint]
diff --git a/src/api/src/create_book.py b/src/api/src/create_book.py
index e4132ee..5e42436 100644
--- a/src/api/src/create_book.py
+++ b/src/api/src/create_book.py
@@ -1,41 +1,43 @@
 from typing import Optional
-from dotenv import load_dotenv
-
-load_dotenv()
 import re
 import unicodedata
-from os import environ
 from enum import Enum
 import backoff
+from dotenv import load_dotenv
 from ebooklib import epub
 from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
-from pydantic import BaseModel, field_validator, model_validator
+from pydantic import model_validator, field_validator
+from pydantic_settings import BaseSettings
 from aiohttp import ClientResponseError, ClientSession
 from aiohttp_client_cache.session import CachedSession
 from aiohttp_client_cache import FileBackend, RedisBackend
 
+load_dotenv(override=True)
+
 
 class CacheTypes(Enum):
     file = "file"
     redis = "redis"
 
 
-class Config(BaseModel):
+class Config(BaseSettings):
     USE_CACHE: bool = True
     CACHE_TYPE: CacheTypes = CacheTypes.file
     REDIS_CONNECTION_URL: str = ""
 
     @field_validator("USE_CACHE", mode="before")
     def validate_use_cache(cls, value):
-        # Thanks https://stackoverflow.com/a/78157474
+        # Return default if value is an empty string
         if value == "":
-            return cls.model_fields["USE_CACHE"].default
+            return True  # Default value for USE_CACHE
+        return value
 
     @field_validator("CACHE_TYPE", mode="before")
     def validate_cache_type(cls, value):
         # Thanks https://stackoverflow.com/a/78157474
         if value == "":
-            return cls.model_fields["CACHE_TYPE"].default
+            return "file"
+        return value
 
     @model_validator(mode="after")
     def prevent_mismatched_redis_url(self):
@@ -53,7 +55,7 @@ class Config(BaseModel):
         return self
 
 
-config = Config(**environ)  # type: ignore
+config = Config()
 
 headers = {
     "user-agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/103.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
diff --git a/src/api/uv.lock b/src/api/uv.lock
index 156561f..85a9400 100644
--- a/src/api/uv.lock
+++ b/src/api/uv.lock
@@ -191,6 +191,7 @@ dependencies = [
     { name = "aiohttp-client-cache", extra = ["all"] },
     { name = "ebooklib" },
     { name = "fastapi" },
+    { name = "pydantic-settings" },
     { name = "python-dotenv" },
     { name = "rich" },
 ]
@@ -201,6 +202,7 @@ requires-dist = [
     { name = "aiohttp-client-cache", extras = ["all"], specifier = ">=0.10.0" },
     { name = "ebooklib", specifier = ">=0.18" },
     { name = "fastapi", specifier = ">=0.115.5" },
+    { name = "pydantic-settings", specifier = ">=2.6.1" },
     { name = "python-dotenv", specifier = ">=1.0.1" },
     { name = "rich", specifier = ">=13.9.4" },
 ]
@@ -616,6 +618,19 @@ wheels = [
     { url = "https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/33/72/f881b5e18fbb67cf2fb4ab253660de3c6899dbb2dba409d0b757e3559e3d/pydantic_core-2.27.1-pp310-pypy310_pp73-win_amd64.whl", hash = "sha256:981fb88516bd1ae8b0cbbd2034678a39dedc98752f264ac9bc5839d3923fa04c", size = 2001864 },
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "pydantic-settings"
+version = "2.6.1"
+source = { registry = "https://pypi.org/simple" }
+dependencies = [
+    { name = "pydantic" },
+    { name = "python-dotenv" },
+]
+sdist = { url = "https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/b5/d4/9dfbe238f45ad8b168f5c96ee49a3df0598ce18a0795a983b419949ce65b/pydantic_settings-2.6.1.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:e0f92546d8a9923cb8941689abf85d6601a8c19a23e97a34b2964a2e3f813ca0", size = 75646 }
+wheels = [
+    { url = "https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/5e/f9/ff95fd7d760af42f647ea87f9b8a383d891cdb5e5dbd4613edaeb094252a/pydantic_settings-2.6.1-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:7fb0637c786a558d3103436278a7c4f1cfd29ba8973238a50c5bb9a55387da87", size = 28595 },
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "pygments"
 version = "2.18.0"