Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: September 2, 2025
Page length: 320
Price: $14.99 (Kindle)
I don’t really believe in polygamy but during COVID, I got sucked into the Sister Wives reality show and have watched every season of this family. I, along with the world, took this journey and watched this family fall apart in the public eye. My favorite wife would have to be Janelle because I relate more with her personally as well as out of all the children, hers was my favorite to watch. Yet I also watched Christine’s story and was thrilled when she finally made the decision to walk away after all the mistreatment going on. Nobody should live with that. So when this book came out, I had to grab a copy.
***Spoiler Alert from here on out!***
I read this book in one day. She starts off talking about her childhood and Grandpa Rulon who was murdered by two wives of another fundamental group. He was the leader of her Church and was called the “Great Leader” which is why Christine was considered royalty. She talks about being close to Rulon as well as her father. This could explain why she expect more then she got from Kody later on.
She tells of always saying “It’s fine” as the type of woman who holds the good and bad in but portrays everything is good to the world. I relate well with this as I used to be that type of person. Always putting others' needs before my own and not wanting to make waves. It is very freeing to break those chains and speak your mind.
She weaves the story of how she and Kody met and how horrible the wedding, as well as the honeymoon was. It was red flags from the start and only confirmed years later in front of national television how much he wasn’t attracted to her. In truth, he should have never asked for her hand if he didn’t want to marry her. However since she was "royalty", in my opinion, Kody wanted to tie himself to her family for his own personal gains.
She talks about how it was like being newly married and moving into a home with Meri and Janelle. She goes through each birth and talks about the children as well as telling stories of the good times. But she also tells about the bad times like why she and Meri will never be friends. The "big fight" was over nothing more than one of Christine’s kids being a dime short of buying something in the story and Meri was embarrassed enough to rip into the child.
It seemed Robyn joined the family after finding out about the show which leads me to think dollar signs was her only real motive in joining the family. Like you can see in the show, Robyn was good at twisting people's words around to cause issues between the couples. I started questions Robyn's motive when she was talking about how she didn’t want the other wives to feel left out so she refused to take any pictures alone with Kody on their wedding day. However, there were pictures that surfaced showing this was a complete lie. Just one of many from her. Ever since then, I had a dislike for Robyn. You could clearly see she was on a throne while the other wives were working to pay off her debt, take care of her kids and support her lifestyle.
You can also tell Kody’s attitude completely changed throughout the seasons. The way he talked about his wives was good in the beginning but turned horrible and emotional abusive. I don’t even think he likes Robyn but he thought it would be a good tv show if he was going to marry a new wife. Now she is the only one left. I also didn’t like how the family money was spent to clear her debt and she ended up living the good life when it was the other wives who put in the work to build the family funds. Did she bring in ANY money besides the show? The other wives worked but I can't remember Robyn every talking about a job she had to bring in money.
One story we didn’t know about was in the chapter “Kody Brown: Lord of the Rings”. All the wives had claddagh rings which we knew about. But we didn't know that both Meri and Janelle’s had a diamond in them. Christine asked to add a diamond to hers but Kody said no. One day she noticed that Robyn’s was updated with a diamond and she told Christine that Kody had surprised her with it. Christine was upset, as I would have been as well. She asked Kody about it and he accused her of comparing relationships. Christine took hers off and let it fly across a field. After finding out, Kody later bought her a new claddagh ring with a rose in the heart to replace the one she tossed.
At the very end of the book, while looking at the pictures, pay attention to the captions. In one family picture of Kody, Christine, Aspyn and Mykelti, it reads that Robyn used that picture to have her cringy family portrait drawing of Kody and her kids when they were babies. Robyn eased Christine and her kids and replaced with her own kids. What kind of person does that?
She finished the book by talking about her relationship with David. It was so good to read that he was able to help her heal from the emotional abuse she had to suffer all these years. They do seem like the perfect couple. Maybe they both needed to go through what they did in order to find each other in the end.
I will admit, the chapter on Garrison was hard to read and I did find myself in tears. The world watched him grow up so it was hard to hear about his suicide at such a young age. Being a veteran myself, it is a sad story we hear way too often. My heart goes out to Janelle and the rest of the family.
In all, I enjoyed the book for what it was. It was good to hear her story from her own words rather than the heavily edited tv show. I do hope to read one from Janelle and Meri’s side as well. I believe writing a book helps in the healing process as it lets you get it all out so you don't need to carry it anymore. You get a different perspective of what was really going on and how they truly felt. I personally would also like to know how Kody and Robyn spent the family money living the good life while the rest of the wives and children were living on a budget.
