*Review Contains Spoilers*
This harrowing first-person account is of a woman influenced and ultimately married into the cult of Christian fundamentalism. When I picked this book, I had no idea it would be set in Jacksonville, FL, my hometown! I grew up with many friends at First Baptist downtown, though thankfully my family did not attend there. I even knew the minister of music in the early 90's and I recall how he and his wife refused to go to a movie theater, even to see a rated G movie. When I asked why, they responded that "someone might see them and think they were seeing a rated R movie." So appearances were everything at FBC.
Tia's gut-wrenching tale of abuse was actually terrifying for me. In my 20's I attended a very conservative PCA church in Jacksonville and I had my suspicions at the time that some of the "Elders" were controlling and abusive. Tia found out that was true the hard way. The abuses she suffered at her husband Allan's hands are nearly unforgivable. I'll never forget the story of the young girl who "saved herself" for marriage, only to be brutally raped on her wedding night and honeymoon. I'll never forget that her husband threw her out of the car on a bridge, bare-footed, when she was visiting their baby in ICU. I don't know how she survived. I'm thankful that she did.
Her tale of abuse only gets worse as the family moves to Tennessee. Tia is forced to become increasingly isolated, because her husband and Elders knew that isolating her was power.
The reason I did not give 5 stars is that the final 15% of the book becomes a bit of a mess. While I applaud Tia's ongoing healing work in counseling and therapy, the story seemed to nearly halt. Everything turned inward, into a long-winded account of her therapy appointments. It would have been more consistent to tell her readers how her daily life improved because of her work in therapy, instead of just dropping the "action" and all the characters and just focused on her inner work. I almost sympathized with her second husband when he asked for a divorce. It was clear she wasn't involved with anyone other than herself at that point;
Despite the ending, I strongly recommend this book - especially to anyone who was once drawn in by the Duggars (19 Kids and Counting) or was raised in a very conservative Christian home. I feel like I teetered on the edge of it in my 20's, but thankfully pulled back. I can see why this book was extremely therapeutic to write, and I wish Tia all the best as she continues to write.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC e-book of A Well Trained Wife.

It’s hard to know where to begin. As someone who grew up in religious fanaticism, I related to so many feelings Tia Levings expresses in her book A Well-Trained Wife. I read this a few months ago and meant to write a review for release day, but found it difficult to process my own feelings. Religious trama is so hard to see the other side of, and Levings explored it so rawly and yet with great nuance.
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Her story is chilling and so worth reading. If you enjoyed Educated or I’m Glad My Mom Died, you would definitely connect here as well. I want to include some quotes that stood out to me. I’ve also included them in the pictures of you want to swipe and read them there.
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“Boys got what they wanted. Girls gave it up for God.”
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“Supposedly, God loved us all the same but how did that work? We weren’t all the same. Some were rich, some poor, some good, some ugly. If church was a glimpse of heaven, then God played favorites.”
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“I knew I was still too close to going to hell with decapitated liars and baby killers because I hadn’t discovered the secret rules that no one said out loud. So, Sundays became a chance to study and be observant.”
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“But she doesn’t have a name. She’s no one outside of what she does.”
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“At church, friends are forever ‘if.’”
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“…burst a blistered bubble I realized I’d been protecting for years: the idea that the world was inherently dangerous.”
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“I lived in a state of high-alert that bad things would happen to me, while simultaneously pushing away the memory of the bad things that had already happened.”
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“Say no. Take time out. Let them deal with their feelings of disappointment without trying to assuage their pain by compounding my own.”

The only way to know the experience of someone inside a system is to hear their story. Perhaps especially if the system in question is a particularly fundamentalist conservative iteration of Christianity and quite secretive about its inner workings.

Tia Levings is a survivor of marital abuse, religious trauma, and church harm several times over. Her memoir, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, details her nothing-short-of-miraculous resilience and incredible strength in the face of unfathomable treatment at the hands of those nearest to her, those who had promised to love and cherish her, and those who had an absolute responsibility to her to treat her as an equally worthy, equally valuable human being. Not only did these various people and their institutions (of what? certainly not the kind of actual faith I've read that Jesus actually modeled and taught) not treat Levings as a fellow human with respect, dignity, honor, and compassion --- which is the fairly (I thought) universally understood agreed-upon minimum every person deserves, the lowest bar possible --- but they also actively perpetrated against her the most appalling abuses, betrayals, manipulations, and abandonments.

You may, and certainly can, talk about "the best intentions." For the purposes of this particular review, I will allow that my shock and disgust with those who so badly mistreated her compels me to keep her voice, her experiences, hard as they are to read (imagine, if you can, how hard they must have been to live), centered, and to leave room for others to hold space for her perpetrators. (Even Levings herself, with true grace and the utmost mercy, gains a level place from which to see through and behind some of the actions others took against her.)

Truly, what was done to her could have come right out of your average horror movie. That she remains standing, and standing tall and unapologetically who she has become along her healing journey, is a testament to her unbelievable courage in the face of life-threatening circumstances and to those who (within and without any particularly Christian space) lent her their strength, compassion, and, when she named her traumas at last, belief. (There is perhaps nothing so powerful as someone saying, "I believe you" when you've just shared the breadth and depth of the kind of scars Levings herself bore.)

Fundamentalist conservative Christianity has a dark, dark underbelly, and most of those within the system are unwilling or unable, for many reasons, to see it, let alone to claw their way out of it and into the light. I am so thankful Tia Levings is one such person. Her powerful story must --- MUST --- be read and felt throughout Christendom.

Because, church? If you're listening? You must do better.

Content warnings: Do be aware that this book, per its very nature and subject matter, contains discussions of abuse, including physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, religious, spiritual, institutional, and systemic. That said, I did not find the content gratuitous; what was shared needs to have been brought to light that others might know.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest, though not necessarily positive, review. The opinions expressed are my own.

Tia Levings was a good Christian wife. She and her husband joined a fundamentalist movement that promoted patriarchy, wife discipline, and isolation. But over time, the facade of peace and godliness crumbled. Tia longed for more, and she eventually found freedom.
This book was a tough one for me to read. I also grew up in a fundamentalist church and strove be that that kind of wife. In the past decade, I've found freedom. But reading this story brought all those teachings back to my body and mind. I found myself feeling anxious, angry and discouraged. However, I am not looking back. I might feel stuck sometimes, but like this author, I am free!
I appreciate that this book includes some helpful information for other women who want to escape fundamentalism and be all they are created to be. For example, women could create an escape plan and seek therapy.
In places, the flow was choppy, and I wasn't always sure who the author was talking about. But otherwise, this book is a heavy but interesting read.
Favorite quotes:
"The church called Allan’s demons spiritual warfare. Seeing demons pointed to spiritual truth, not illness. Allan didn’t need medicine— I needed correction." I too experienced this false belief.
"(P)uritanical high-control religion. All those God-rules had numbed the entire human experience." Sad but true. Takes many years to reconnect with our humanity.
"Maybe it was my job to fix him. God could heal him through my love—this was a wife’s highest calling."
"Christian wives kept their husband’s secrets and they protected their family’s appearance." But "There was a lot of our truth he wanted to keep from them (my parents). And, I suddenly realized: visibility meant safety. Stay where I can see you, Mom used to say." YES! Keeping women isolated means they can't share truth and break down the fragile patriarchy that relies on women's solitude.
"I could see how women rationalized discipline as a method to keep the peace." Safer for the woman and the children.
"I didn’t just let erratic violence continue happening— I helped by refusing to leave." Complicity is real! And is often a way for abused foix to remain safe.
"I didn’t know how to appreciate what I couldn’t imagine. So, I judged her instead." TRUTH!
Orthodox teaching: "You were saved; you are being saved, you will be saved.”
"I’d spent so many years blaming Allan for our problems that I’d spent very little time exploring my own discontent and complicity. And I’d never considered all the ways I’d forced myself to shift, adapt, and change to meet so many expectations. What would it be like to choose myself? Or hell, just be my Self?" YES!!! Choose myself!

This was a beautifully written book. I remember seeing Tia on Shiny Little Things and was excited to read her book of resilience and strength. She is such an inspiration.

An absolutely incredible book that I will read and recommend to everyone for years to come. As a survivor of high-control evangelical christianity myself, this book really spoke to me and was revealing (and accurate) in the ways it described Christian Patriarchy. I think Tia's story is so important - and all too common in communities across the U.S. - and I feel honored she shared it publicly. There was a good balance of personal narrative and religious context throughout the book and I felt fully engaged. Thank you for the ARC and the opportunity to read and digest this important memoir.

If you're not already concerned about people espousing a return to "traditional values" and the rise of Christian Nationalism, you sure will be. Tia Levings writes with an excellent perspective and vulnerability on her experiences and what she sees happening in the country currently that reflects what happened to her.

I absolutely devour this. It is a nonfiction book that reads like fiction. What this woman went through is unimaginable, but at the same time, I totally get how she got caught up in it. Such a wonderful story.

Quite the chilling memoir of a woman in a fundamentalist Christian group where men are the 'head of the household' and need to sadistically discipline their wives.

I found this book incredibly compelling. I heard the author on a podcast, and knew I needed to read the whole book. The most fascinating and terrifying aspects of the author's life were how normalized and "hiding in plain sight" the behaviors of the religious community were. It made me think a lot about the women I know with high numbers of children who I know are religious, but are private about their faith. Are they ok?!?! This is a really important read for people who may also be involved in a religion that has very prescriptive rules, but I also think it's very important for those of us far outside religious communities to see what it's like inside them. I think that there can be a lot of blame placed on women for upholding these patriarchal structured, and there are definitely women who do, but it's also important to think about those who are trapped. I am also consistently fascinated by the intersection of evangelical religion and politics. This is a great memoir for folks who enjoyed Educated by Tara Westover or The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon.

This was such a fantastic memoir about Christian patriarchy, the system as a whole and how scripture is mangled and misused to abuse and suppress women, as well as Tia’s own experience and life story. Her story was heartbreaking, infuriating, and, as she finally found the strength to break free, hopeful and empowering. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her to put her whole story on the page but it was such a compelling and powerful memoir. If you enjoy memoirs, especially those exploring faith, I definitely recommend picking this one up!

This was one of the only non-fiction books I have read this year. I found it difficult to read as it was the truth about a scary Christian Fundamentalist marriage and I felt terrible for Tia Levings throughout the book. But luckily, the ending was positive and I am so happy she freed herself of her marriage.

Couldn't put this one down. Tia shares her deepest memories and seems to spare nothing when explaining how she gradually fell deeper and deeper in to the control of her abusive husband while having the various church groups (I would label them anywhere from fundamentalist to cults in varying degrees, depending on the group at the time) condone his actions.

Sadly, this is still happening in many controlling church/cult groups as I have witnessed in my own extended family. If you think that your church is "fine", then please read to see what else is out there that you may be missing in churches that you may think are "fine". I know that there are mostly wonderful churches out there that help many people (and Tia encountered a wonderful church group as well, which helped her), but this is. a great book to read to realize what others have experienced.

it also made for such a gripping read even if you don't care about church or Christianity. She writes really well.

Trigger warnings for domestic abuse.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

This is one of the most uncomfortable reading experiences I have had - in a life changing way! It is literally painful to read through Levings' recollection of her teenage and adult years as a wife who is abused, both by her husband and by the churches they attend. We all see the train wreck occurring, but due to extreme indoctrination and a lack of support, Levings is left with very few choices, people, or places to go to for safety. I think this is an important read. It is so frequently hard to understand why someone "just doesn't leave" and Levings' book reminds us yet again that it is never that simple and allows us a window into how one can become so isolated that they are left with very few choices. Despite all these things, Levings finds her way out and somehow survives. May we all learn from her strength and the battle she fought for her own autonomy and safety.

I was captivated by Tia's story of survival. I was horrified at what she went through. It was a very hard book to read! Knowing Tia's survival story is not the only one out there, and there are currently people living similar traumas based in religious teachings, makes this book that much more heart-wrenching! The more light shed on any abuse that may be happening within Christian Fundamentalism, the more hope for change! What a courageous woman for sharing her story..

In A Well-Trained Wife, Tia Levings takes us through her experience living under strict Christian fundamentalism. “Who was I before I heard about God?” Tia’s memoir is an emotional journey. Her story is raw, real, captivating, vulnerable, eye opening and educational. This book took me through so many emotions. Although very tragic and horrifying this was an important perspective. “I spotted the lifeguard throwing me a line. It was just too far for me to swim.” Tia is an inspiration working to deprogram from the church’s teachings to save herself and her children. I think it’s important how she connects her experiences with religion and other social movements. Kudos to her as she continues doing the work fighting towards freedom, happiness and healing. This is not a light read. I would highly recommend checking the content warnings.

This was a really interesting read. As someone who grew up in Christianity - albeit not quite as intense of a version - there were a lot of parts of Tia's story that resonated with me. Books like this are important. As much as it was about her experience with faith, it was more about her resilience and the persistence of her curiosity. While this book does address her experience with domestic abuse, it is not gratuitous. Ultimately this is a powerful memoir that is worth the read!

Oh, how I loved this one! What a brave and devastating story to have to tell. I must admit that I am a bit of an addict when it comes to reading about cults and extreme religious sects, and personal stories like this one never fail to move me. I instantly sent a link to buy it to my book club friends. I will be thinking about this for a very long time.

I loved A Well-Trained Wife even though the book made me angry. The things that go on in the name of “God” or religion are tragic. I hope this book hits number 1 on the best seller list so more people understand how some people are treated, especially women and children. The people that need to hear this story most likely will never have a chance to read this book which is a shame.

I admire Tia Levings for taking control of her life and getting out of a bad situation. I am sorry that this happened at all and wish she had gotten out sooner. Hopefully, her life is on the upswing and her children have success.

I finished this book over the weekend and I have recommended it twice already. Thanks NetGalley for an advanced copy of A Well-Trained Woman.
#NetGalley #AWellTrainedWife #TiaLevings

Here's a story that needs telling. Sad but yet admirable that Tia finally found the courage to leave a life of repression, a life she was raised as the true Christian way of life expected for women in her secular indoctrinated upbringing. So important to know that just because one wears the cloak of Christianity, extreme in this case almost cult-like, there still could be the hidden abuse and repression of women and children that is accepted. Not in every case, but it was in this one. I like that she found that the more she freed herself, the more she found others to help her. This was her story. It was riveting. Many thanks to #netgalley #tialevings #awelltrainedwife for the opportunity to read and review this book.