Lauren Hough

'Hough's writing will break your heart' - Roxane Gay, author of Difficult Women 'Each one told with the wit of David Sedaris, and the insight of Joan Didion' - Telegraph 'This moving account of resilience and hard-earned agency brims with a fresh originality' - Publishers Weekly Searing and extremely personal essays from the heart of working-class America, shot through with the darkest elements the country can manifest - cults, homelessness, and hunger - while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners. As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family." Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America--relying on friends, family, and strangers alike--she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self. At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one's past when carving out a future.

The New York Times bestseller

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing

This is a memoir in essays about so many things--growing up in an abusive cult, coming of age as a lesbian in the military, forced out by homophobia, living on the margins as a working class woman and what it's like to grow into the person you are meant to be. Hough's writing will break your heart. --Roxanne Gay Searing and extremely personal essays, shot through with the darkest elements America can manifest, while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners. As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe--to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile--but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond The Family. Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She's taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America--relying on friends, family, and strangers alike--she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self. At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one's past when carving out a future. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

Essays

arwen

gr u can delete my review i will post it again idc

The New York Times Bestseller

jini

white cis women mass extinction when ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

dija

Thank you goodreads team for notifying me after you deleted my review 💞 now i am writing another one 💞💞 i hate this book ✊🏼

kris

genie !!

"A memoir in essays about so many things—growing up in an abusive cult, coming of age as a lesbian in the military, forced out by homophobia, living on the margins as a working class woman and what it’s like to grow into the person you are meant to be. Hough’s writing will break your heart." —Roxane Gay Searing and extremely personal essays, shot through with the darkest elements America can manifest, while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners. As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe--to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile—but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family." Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She's taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America—relying on friends, family, and strangers alike—she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self. At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one's past when carving out a future. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

marie

Alost

In a world where people get victim blamed for a honest review it's a fitting protest. Oh and I'm stoned.

Fraser Simons

Growing up in a cult, Hough’s uses an examination of her past trauma as an intersectional interrogation of American values, prejudice, heteronormativity, queerness, and many other things. Some inadvertent topics too, I’d argue. Such as how internalized patriarchal concepts enable people to spot those traumatized for further abuse and manipulation. Her lived experience is pretty much the embodiment of this. 

From being jailed by her abusive ex for shoving her, completely deriding the small amount of agency she’d accrued after being dispatched by the airforce for “admission of being gay”—the papers of which follow an individual more-or-less like a felony (after she’d been exonerated of a crime she couldn’t have been committed in military court)—to living in abject poverty, Hough details various life events that shape her, and further strike the themes running through her stories. 

The schizophrenia of western culture parallels these events. Systemic issues in every facet of interactions with people, especially the disenfranchised, and the disturbing problem we have in constructing belief systems that are just as messed up as the cult she was indoctrinated into. 

Sometimes resistance is simply survival in such a society, and we ought to celebrate that more in others, rather than internalized capitalistic ideas. 

As far as craft goes, I listened on audio and that makes it so much more difficult to gauge prose. It was engaging, decently narrated, but not stand out. There are a couple quotable lines that were particularly well done, but otherwise it’s a steam or consciousness that, when exceptional, means you just don’t notice it. I’m sure it’s technically difficult to pull if, but neither is it as impactful as different stylistic choices. The pacing was good; never overstaying it’s welcome. Themes are particularly fantastic and of note, interwoven and made real with a lived experience narrative. 

It’s an impressive achievement that exceeded my expectations. I do think the stylistic choice for the prose will put some people off, or else really click with others. Kind of like Virgina Woolf does.

Sofie

Uninspired. Boring. 

Yes I definitely read this book and am not writing this review just because of the problematic author and goodreads deleted my last review.

im gonna be one step ahead of goodreads and re-evaluate my own review. book bad ✋🏻

isabela. 

Courtney Wise

I put off finishing this book for several weeks because I didn't want it to end. Lauren Hough spent her life hiding who she is and in this book, she is vulnerable and open about herself. When she was young, she couldn't tell people she is gay because of the Army's "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy and the era's blatant homophobia. She couldn't reveal to her friends and girlfriends that she was raised in a cult. She is open about both of those things now, but this book shows how hard that journey has been for her. I follow Lauren on Twitter where she is brash and funny and that is why I picked up this book. Besides, anyone who loves dogs as much as she does is someone I want to know more about!

agnese

i wish gr would put the same amount of effort they put into deleting 1-star reviews for this book, into updating their website’s interface.

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing The New York Times bestseller

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