A harrowing but redemptive memoir on Levings growing up in a fundamentalist church, filled with rules and abuse. It was a tough story to read and am thankful for a good ending.

“A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy” by Tia Levings is a powerful and heart-wrenching memoir that takes readers deep into the life of a woman trapped in the oppressive world of Christian patriarchy. Levings recounts her early years as a wife in the Quiverfull movement, where women are expected to be silent, submissive, and fully devoted to their roles as homemakers and mothers. The seemingly wholesome exterior of her life conceals a grim reality of isolation, strict discipline, and emotional abuse.

Levings beautifully and courageously details her emotional and physical struggles within this deeply restrictive environment, showing the profound impact of a system that devalues women’s voices and autonomy. As her story unfolds, she begins to question her role and, more importantly, the future she is shaping for her children. Faced with an impossible choice, Levings ultimately decides to break free, risking everything to protect her family.

This memoir is not just a personal journey; it’s a larger commentary on the ways extreme belief systems can infiltrate marriage and family life, often with devastating consequences. Levings’ honesty, vulnerability, and strength in telling her story make A Well-Trained Wife both a deeply emotional and enlightening read. Her resilience is inspiring, and her story will resonate with anyone who has fought for personal freedom and autonomy in the face of societal or familial pressure.

An essential read for those interested in understanding the darker side of patriarchal religious systems and the courage it takes to challenge them.

An important look at the tradwife phenomenon through the lens of a woman who lived it. Tia's story is real, and raw and a warning against the rising patriarchal trends.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

This memoir was impressive. The themes were relatable to much of American culture. It was a pretty heavy read emotion wise so be warned, although I do recommend. I found this shocking. I think it is important to note their are very triggering events such as death of animals, domestic and child abuse. This is a beautifully portrayed memoir of how religious identification can be used in a negative way, and not just positive. This book made me think a lot about what other women endure in their religious community that is NOT supportive of both partners, but rather just 'getting in line' for the male of the family.

This book, given everything, was emotionally a lot to read. It was gripping, infuriating, and so so wonderufl. It's... absolutely wild that this is where we are and seeminly where we're going. What... what a read. Everyone should read it.

- A WELL-TRAINED WIFE might be the most harrowing book I’ve ever read, period. Even knowing that Levings gets through it to write this book, I was clutching the book and mentally screaming the whole time.
- For most of the book, Levings is simply relaying events without much extra commentary. Even so, one can see exactly how this theology and worldview has infiltrated mainstream life in large and small ways.
- The last section, where Levings is out and in therapy, remarried, etc., feels a bit rushed and that’s where she crams in the lessons as well. It reads like it may have benefited from a few more years of distance and healing, but I do understand her sense of urgency in telling her story.

Tia Levings’ memoir A Well-Trained Wife is gripping, enraging, and ultimately triumphant and I couldn’t put it down. So happy to see it’s flying off the shelves and getting all the kudos it deserves. It reflects the lived impact of Christian extremism on women and children. Levings was interviewed in the Netflix documentary Shiny, Happy People about Christian cults and she's been a calm, steady voice in helping people understand what's happening with Christian nationalism in our country and the danger it poses.

As someone who was raised in a fairly conservative background, I was very interested in reading this book. I admire Levings' courage and willingness to share the nitty gritty details of her upbringing and unmask the abuse that she experienced. With a reemergence of "tradwifes" I think it so important for the dark side of so called traditional values and the harm that these values can do to both children and women,

I love reading memoirs about leaving religion or high control groups. This book was no exception! I really appreciated reading Tia's experiences. I also watched the documentary Tia was involved in, Shiny Happy People, and have always been fascinated by the experiences of those who have left extreme fundamentalist Christian groups and the Quiverful movement in general. I googled Tia Levings after finishing the book and plan to also listen to her podcasts!

A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings is a powerful memoir that explores the corrosive elements of Christian fundamentalism. This is especially timely given the romanticization of the tradwife movement, which has significant overlap.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

This was such a personal and heart wrenching memoir. It gives vibes of trad wife/patriarchal marriage/Project 2025. This is a shocking story. I thought I had an idea of how women are treated in this community, but to hear it in the author’s voice is devastating. It is terrifying to me that the Republican base is built on Christian extremists. I want none of these “values” anywhere near me or any other woman. I appreciate the vulnerability required to share this story. Levings repeatedly used the term “invisible and interchangeable” to describe herself and other wives, which drove home their position in this community. What a powerful read.

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written and told chronologically. It was raw and vulnerable about living in an evangelical marriage. I’m glad it ended well.

My heart hurts for what she went through. I can relate so much to how she grew up but I’m incredibly grateful that I got out in my teens and I have such a beautiful life, that I choose!!! Whew the traumas in this book that I could relate to. I’m so happy that her and the kids finally got out and are getting their freedom and their happiness. They get to experience the trie meaning of love now. What a great read!

*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.