I had read one of the essays previously (which was actually included in this book) which is why I wanted to pick it up and read it. Some of it was rambling on time (which isn't always a bad thing), but it could do with less rambling at times. But overall, I enjoyed reading it.

Lauren Hough should be on a stage somewhere, telling these stories. Lauren Hough should has a book contract that is the biggest contract even given to anyone. The honestly and openness in these 11 essays is just...raw. It's hard to read, but in the best kind of way.

Hough is someone who has lived 1,000 lives and I hope she writes about every single one.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I wish I liked this book. I just could not get into it and did not finish it. Rarely does that happen, especially with an ARC, but I just did not like this book.

In many ways this book is a pleasant surprise that defies categories. In other ways it's unsurprising and not entirely new. If one were to pick this up as part of a trending new genre of former cult member memoirs, it is surprising. Hough describes her experience in and leaving a notorious cult completely unapologetically, not sparing any details either on her experiences within it or how she eventually grew up into an adult separated from it. The title of the book and one of its best essays is already a departure from many cult narratives. I've also read a handful of memoirs lately that have come from a place of unexamined privilege, especially when it comes to money, so this book was certainly refreshing as an antidote to that. Hough may not be the first American with a rural, working-class background to write a memoir, but it is increasingly rare to find queer voices that fit that bill writing in these fields.

But still, the essays get pretty redundant after around the halfway point. Hough's cynicism is best when it's funny and even still great when it's painful, but somewhere in between those two extremes it just becomes waning. The first two essays are told in a pretty straightforward linear fashion, but after that the timeline jumps around from essay to essay, which would be fine if it didn't mean that there are so many re-introductions and repetitions.

Still, at the end of the day, I would definitely recommend this work. I feel lucky to have read it.

Written in propulsive, muscular prose that I greatly enjoyed, offering essays that are swoonworthy and make you want to sit with her for a long while.

This is a powerful memoir. Hough was raised in a cult and despite abuse and victimization, she refused to be a victim. The first essay examines her time in the Air Force, as a gay woman during "don't ask, don't tell" and the systemic abuse she experienced and her ability to triumph against systemic malfeasance. Despite her childhood in a cult, she has remained connected to her family. She wasn't formally educated, but her writing is excellent and her observations are keen. The final essay is breath taking. I kept thinking of "Educated" while reading this and both books are powerful. Hough is a unique voice and deserves wide readership.

- collection of 11 memoir type essays
- these stories read like a conversation
- i reiterate one of my previous statements in a recent review that cults are weird and terrifying
- themes of abuse, manipulation, discrimination, rape
- the last essay hit HARD
- eye-opening and maddening and overwhelming yet hopeful at the same time
- unearths a lot of societal issues

"You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise."
-- 'Still I Rise' by Maya Angelou

Eleven interconnected personal stories, essays, by a woman who was born in Germany, but lived her early years throughout seven different countries, ending up in West Texas. But don’t ask her about that, the way she was raised made her somewhat of a pro at lying about who she is, where she is from, or that she was raised in the Children of God cult. Her parents, along with her and her siblings, went wherever they were told they needed to go in order to follow the Children of God. When she was a teenager she joined the Air Force in the late 1990’s, a way to separate herself from the life she was raised in, to feel like she belonged to a better cause, and to align herself with a more traditional, accepted, American life. A way to distance herself from her past. For her, it wasn’t that much of a change, she was already used to following the rules, or hiding behind them. Trying to fit in wasn’t exactly successful, those rules that most learn in an ordinary childhood weren’t the skills she learned in hers. Her lack of the standard social skills needed in order to blend in made her stand out, but not in a good way. Eventually, she left the military, but not before receiving death threats, along with plenty of emotional scars.

Once out of the military, it was possible for her to be openly ‘out,’ living the life of a gay woman, but found even that difficult to feel accepted in D.C., one of the more accepting places for the LGBTQ community. She lived on little, scraping by to find money for food, along with a safe place to live. Still, that little girl inside her was scarred and scared to let many people in, but eventually would find people she would trust. And then they would evaporate, or turn their backs on her. And still, she tried until, eventually, found her place. Home.

These eleven essays share an inspiring, if heartbreaking, story of a life that has endured through pain, neglect, horrifying abuse both in and outside of the cult, leaving her with emotional scars collected along the way. Still, she has emerged from it like a butterfly out of a cocoon, ready to fly, scars and all.


Pub Date: 13 Apr 2021

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group / Vintage

Lauren Hough is an incredible writer. I've known this since her Cable Guy essay went viral, which is when I started following her on Twitter. I've been looking forward to her first book for as long. You can tell when you read her debut, this memoir in essay format, that she loves to read and she loves good writing. She has mastered the conversational essay that draws you in with her sarcasm and self-deprecation, then breaks your heart with her vulnerability. Her essay about what jail is really like and how easy it is to get put there indefinitely, is especially horrifying - that chapter took place in my very own wealthy, "progressive" county in the suburbs of DC. Hough doesn't try to be inspirational or aspirational. She's processing her own traumas and sharing them with the world, maybe so another queer kid or cult survivor won't feel so alone. I wish her every possible success and I can't wait to read what she writes next.

Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing is one of the most powerful and unforgettable books I’ve read this year. Lauren Hough is a gifted writer with an original voice and story. She explores shame and hiding, abuse and survival, lies and truths, belonging.

Through eleven personal essays, Hough details her childhood, growing up and ultimately leaving the abusive cult, The Children of God (aka the Family of Love). She writes of her experience as a lesbian airman in the Air Force and being forced out by homophobia.

Leaving a cult and the military didn’t alleviate her circumstances; being poor in the US was something else to (attempt to) escape. Hough tackles how poor and working class people don’t have equal access to basic human rights: Justice, housing, education, healthcare (for mental/physical health; addiction) and do what they can to survive. Still, she acknowledges the ways that she was treated better than if she were a person of color.

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. I’ve been recommending this to friends and will be purchasing a copy once it’s released.

I was so intrigued by the premise of this essay collection, but unfortunately the writing and storytelling didn't keep me interested.

Lauren Hough reveals that she was born into a cult, but that's far from the most interesting thing about her. This collection of essays explores so many fascinating aspects of Hough's life: being gay in the military, living in poverty, spending time in jail, working a physically demanding job, and so much more.

Her writing style is no-nonsense; she doesn't sugarcoat any of the tragedies and troubles she's lived through, and some sections were so powerful I had to read them multiple times to truly absorb her words. I especially appreciated her comparisons between the followers of a certain former president and cult members, and although that comparison has been made by others, it rings especially true given Hough's history.

This book is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the impact that well-written creative nonfiction can have.


Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this book. I think Hough has a very distinctive voice, but it never wears on the reader. I don't always agree with Hough's political assessments, but I think her work is plainspoken and elegant.

I tend to enjoy memoirs more than your average bear (if bears do, in fact, enjoy memoirs). But Lauren Hough's Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing is the crème de la crème. Hough's personal essays are composed of all the elements that make up a great memoir: compelling stories, good writing, and a relatable/likable narrator.

Let me start with the stories. Holy guacamole has this woman seen some THINGS. She was raised in a sex cult known as the Family. She is a lesbian who was in the Air Force in the days of DADT and the essay that details the reasons why she left is mind blowing (I'd think it was completely made up if I didn't know this was a memoir). She went to jail because... well, the mechanics behind that one are also stranger than fiction. She's been all kinds of harassed during her stints as both a cable woman and a bar bouncer. The sordid details of just one of these essays is enough to make your head spin - and yet this woman was able to craft eleven unique tellings of outrages things she's experienced in her life. It doesn't make for an easy life, but it makes for a fascinating one.

Hough's writing is uniquely her. She's sarcastic and witty and hilarious. These stories, if penned by another author, could come across as angsty and bitter. But Hough's voice makes them more it-is-what-it-is followed by a glimmer of hope. Don't get me wrong - she's no Pollyanna. But these stories didn't come across as incredibly depressing as they could have been. Instead, they come across at times as funny, at times as not-so-funny, but always leaving the reader something to ponder.

As soon as I finished this book my first thought was that I'd love to sit down and discuss it with Hough over a beer. Hell, I'd love to just chat with her about anything. If these essays are any indication, she's immensely likable, relatable, interesting, humble, and other adjectives with positive connotations that are escaping me at the moment. Although my life has been anything but similar to Hough's, I have a feeling we'd be able to find common ground nevertheless.

One minor gripe (a gripette, if you will) is that since these were all published as individual essays before they were smooshed together to make this here fine collection, there are a number of instances where there's some heavy overlap in the details from one essay to the next. It was a little awkward to read an anecdotal story in one essay to have it pop up again later in the collection and have it treated as if it was the first time said anecdote was revealed to the reader.

This is so well-written and so hard to read. Lauren Hough was born into a cult in which it was common for people to swap partners and if you were female, you were taught to sexually please men even if were only 12 years old. The cult was called various names, including The Family of Love, which had famous adherents like Rose McGowan and River and Joaquin Phoenix. The followers had to be completely dependent on David Berg, their alcoholic leader and failed preacher, so that meant abject poverty, and being forced to sell things like posters to passersby to convert them. They were taughtthat anything was OK if it was done in love, so if you lured a man to bed for money, it wasn’t prostitution if you told him about Jesus.

Add to that Lauren is a lesbian. When your entire upbringing has taught you to please males, being a six-foot-tall lesbian is a challenge. Then she joined the Air Force, and things didn’t get better. Her struggles with poverty and acceptance and making terrible relationship choices because she had no idea what healthy relationships should look like make for a harrowing read. She talks about the inanity of our “justice” system that unequally punishes the poor and black folks. Lauren is white, and her struggles with insomnia and PTSD were all helped by marijuana, which was not legal for a long time and is still not legal everywhere. Thus, she tried all the antidepressants the VA would supply her with, but those didn’t help the problem, they just made her move through life like a zombie.

She did a lot of work as a bartender or bouncer, which paid barely enough to live in squalor, and meant that she and her friends would have to go to work sick because they didn’t get paid otherwise. Her personal experiences with being poor, getting into the prison system, struggling with anger and lack of education and lack of access to healthcare make for an important lens with which to view these issues.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel, which RELEASES APRIL 13, 2021.

This book was astonishing. Hough manages to share deeply personal experiences, connect those experiences to larger societal issues, AND does the whole thing with humor and pathos. So many books that discuss growing up in a cult are exercises in voyeurism, but Hough avoids this completely. She instead writes about her experiences in a way that is both unique to her, and will be familiar to anybody who grew up as an outsider.

How she grew up provides the building blocks for wide-ranging essays that weave her life into our cultural shortcomings in class, race, mental health, gender and sexuality in a way that doesn't let any of us off the hook. Does that last sentence make the essays sound boring and academic? They aren't that at all. 'Cell Block,' about her arrest and time in solitary confinement, covers all those issues and is also evocative, heart-breaking and made me laugh out loud once (I'm not allowed to quote it, but it involved Infinite Jest). 'Solitaire' is not just about being discharged from the Air Force under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it's also about how she grew up impacted her dealings with authority, what makes the question, "Where are you from?" so loaded, and what made the Air Force so appealing in the first place.

To have one or two essays that find such a perfect pitch is wonderful, but every essay in the book finds that balance. Throughout, including an expanded version of the viral 'I Was a Cable Guy. I Saw the Worst of America,' Hough writes in such a natural voice that I can't wait to hear an audio version. She's funny, foul mouthed, and curmudgeonly. She's also angry and sad and passionate and deeply caring. It's been awhile since a book has engaged me this much, and I can't wait to share it with others.

This is a collection of essays. I rarely read a collection of essays, but I'd read Hough's piece about being a cableman and really liked it so I wanted to see what all her other stories looked like too. And I was not disappointed.

"Most of the time, I figure it’s better to know the universe doesn’t pay out favors for magical thinking."

Hough doesn't hold back her punches. The first story takes place when someone blows up her car because she's gay and then she gets blamed for it and has to have a trial. It's incredible how messed up how our justice system can work (and in the military nonetheless) and how your life can turn upside down in one moment.

"I’ve learned, if not to expect the worst, to not be surprised by the worst."

By all accounts, Hough has lived an unusual life. Brought up in a cult, her roots are all over the place and her family is in pieces everywhere. I didn't grow up in the United States and had never heard of this cult before so all of it was new to me. She writes about it matter-of-factly and not with self-pity or even anger the way you'd expect someone who has gone through all that might have.

"You may think you have friends who’ll help you bury a body. But when the cops show up and flash their badges, your friends will point to bodies you’ve never seen to keep the cops from looking their way. There are only two sides, and when it comes down to it, even those with nothing to hide will side with those who have the power."

Hough's pieces are each more incredible than the last and yet they are full of life, wisdom, reality and life. So much of real life. I appreciated her no nonsense writing and found myself feeling incredulous, angry and frustrated at the number of life's hurdles she's been dealt.

"Fact is, there are more than two doors, forgiveness or Kathy Bates. The third door is, you don’t have to forgive at all. You can just go right on living your life with one less asshole to deal with."

I really hope she keeps writing and telling her story.

with gratitude to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

"Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing" by Lauren Hough is a memoir of the author's life as a gay (former). member of the armed services, bouncer, cable guy, and ex-cult member. The book crisscrosses between events in her childhood, mainly involving traversing the globe as Children of God member, and the unfortunate event that led to her dismissal from the air force and life after as a gay woman trying to make a life for herself in the DC area. The book highlights how what is essentially childhood trauma, and the acts of leaving and separation, lay the groundwork for what and how she experiences events and relationships in the subsequent decades of her life. Hough has a really interesting story, and I really appreciate hearing from LGBT voices, so this is a good read.

There are eleven essays ( memoir essays) in the collection
of “Leaving Isn’t The Hardest Thing”......
I was soooo incredibly engrossed immediately —-
that after reading the first two stories: ‘Solitaire’ and ‘The Slide’....
I went to Twitter and typed Lauren Hough’s name....
wondering....
“Who the hell is this woman?”....
.....SHE SHOULD BE ON TV...SHE HAS A PERSONALITY FOR IT......FOR HER OWN SHOW....
Lauren Hough is INTERESTING AS ALL GET UP!!!
Ha...it was no accident that I notice Rachel Maddow was a big fan and following her too.

Lauren has had life experiences that are shocking, hilarious, incandescent, heartbreaking, brutal, disturbing, cringing, laughable, sultry, and just plain fascinating. .....
Her stories are deeply personal ...edgy... unapologetic....

The language and subject matter is raw, thought-provoking- sometimes excruciating harrowing, rigorous, piercing, extremely gut-wrenching, humorous, down right fascinating.....
.......and sizzling exquisite!

There is a fair amount of profanity and explicit sex — so I wouldn’t suggest reading this to your children....
But for MOST ADULTS....who can tolerate a little walk on the dark side in your in reading diet....
even if not in your own life....readers could easily be blown away by this book.....by Lauren’s life! She sure knows how to tell a story and hold our interest.

We learn a lot about Lauren through her memoir essays....and if you’re like me....you’re left being a huge fan. I’m now a regular follower of Lauren on Twitter. She’s so real - she makes me laugh...and cringe at the same time!

When I look at Lauren’s physical size ( wouldn’t want to piss her off).....lol....
next to my size....I wondered if she might consider being friends with pint size straight married old fart — such as me?

I’ll admit it....sometimes I simply fall in love with authors whose books affect ( not necessarily known as the greatest authors in the world but something about ‘them’ or their work moves me profoundly, > whose exuberance disposition excite me......
thinking:
Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Claire Fuller, Isabel Allende, Robin Black, David Vann, Stephen King, Mary Roach, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Isabel Wilkerson, Anna Quinlan, Liz Moore, Dani Shapiro, Augusten Burroughs, ....etc...etc...that I simply want to have them over for dinner...hang out with them!!!
Lauren Hough just joined my fantasy dinner list!

Laughing here ....wondering??? What authors are fantasy dinner guests for you? (my reading friends?)....

All I really want to say.... yes I am so darn glad I didn’t miss reading Lauren Hough’s first book of essays.
I will be following her on Twitter. And if Lauren gets her own TV show, I’m going to try to figure out how to be a guest on.

Extraordinary essays from a kick ass woman who has been a cable gal technician, an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a bartender, a barista, delivery driver, dabbled in drugs, sex with men & women, grew up in a God cult, ....was born in Germany...raised in seven countries and West Texas.
She lives in Austin today.

A little sample writing from Lauren Hough:
“There are levels of privilege. Now that I’ve jumped a level, from blue-collar asshole, possibly crazy veteran with a criminal record, to writer who no one would suspect has a criminal record, or if they do suspect, they don’t care, I do have to talk about it. For nothing will change. Because people still believe, despite all the evidence, that cops don’t lie, that the system is just, that people in jail deserve jail, and, mostly, that it won’t happened to them. I can tell you solitary confinement is torture. I can quote the stats on who’s in jail, how many are serving serious time who haven’t been convicted of anything at all.
But unless you understand it can happen to you, to someone who looks like you, that you can end up in solitary, guilty or not, and lose your goddamn mind, unless I can make you feel it, you won’t fucking care”

You rock, Lauren Hough!

Want to come for dinner?

5 stars

I loved every second of reading these essays, even when they were deeply scarring - and they were - and I can't wait to read more.

Hough's life is riveting, and the kind of person with her experiences might roll them up, tuck them away, and smile like the lady in the "Black Hole Sun" video as they try to go through life with a history of unimaginable trauma. Or, they can be the one of the most riveting and vulnerable storytellers you've ever encountered. Obviously, Hough takes the latter path.

Some of Hough's experiences might not be relatable to every reader (lucky you!), but there is not a moment when SHE seems unrelatable, and that is a feat. Her writing is funny, biting, cathartic, exposing, and gripping, and I am fully addicted to it. You will be, too.

TW: rape, sexual assault, child abuse