Well it’s 6 years old but thought I’d highlight another way to do this as I too used the counter solution but then discovered array_slice which is less verbose.
$posts = get_field('books');
$books = array_slice( $posts, 0, 3 );
foreach( $books as $post):
setup_postdata( $post );
the_title();
endforeach;
wp_reset_postdata();