NEED TO KNOW

Christine Brown Woolley’s new memoir Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom, comes out on Sept. 2
It reveals never-before-seen details about her life in polyamory, including what viewers didn’t see on the popular TLC series Sister Wives
Read and listen to an exclusive excerpt below

Christine Brown Woolley is finally ready to share her whole story.

Christine, 53, and her polygamous family have been navigating the many highs and lows that come with their arrangement on the popular TLC series Sister Wives. It debuted in September 2010 and its milestone 20th season drops this fall.

The show began by following the family patriarch Kody Brown and his marriages to Meri Brown, Janelle Brown and Christine (his third wife), as he embarked on a fourth polygamous marriage with Robyn Brown. For awhile, the Brown family managed to keep up a happy front. But in the hit reality show’s most recent seasons, the cracks began to show.

Christine’s new memoir, Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom, comes out on Sept. 2 from Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It details her upbringing in the Mormon faith and her life as a sister wife, as well as a revealing look into her life beyond what the cameras showed.

“I feel like there’s a rest of the story that wasn’t told before,” Christine tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Even though I really feel like our show did our best to be authentic and everything … I still felt like there was a huge part that I kept hidden just to be a peacemaker, to make everything work.”

“And then, through leaving, people asked all the time, “How did you do it? How’d you do it?'” the author continues.

The book seeks to answer that, and many other questions, including “what was happening that I didn’t agree with, what was happening that made me stronger, and what made me leave.”

Below, read and listen to an exclusive excerpt from Sister Wife.

‘Sister Wife,’ Christine Brown Woolley’s memoir.

Gallery Books

An excerpt from ‘Sister Wife’ by Christine Brown Woolley

I knew Kody wouldn’t come to my home if the kids weren’t well behaved, the food wasn’t what he liked and the house wasn’t clean and decorated to his taste.

Dinner was ready, usually, when he arrived, but he was picky about what he ate — he liked only basic foods. It was all steak, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts and spinach. I usually had to make a different meal for the kids — and then Gwendlyn was a vegetarian, so it would be three meals. It could get complicated, especially if he didn’t tell me he was coming in advance, which happened often and was one of our biggest fights. I needed to plan, and he felt I was trying to control him.

I wanted him to feel comfortable and relaxed while he was in my home, but it’s funny to think about now: We all had the same job; the four wives handled childcare, shopping, cooking and housework; and we each made sure the house was comfortable for Kody when he came over. Somehow, Kody was the busiest of all of us.

Then something happened that made everything that had come before — the eternal commitment, the moment he told me he loved me after our trip to Nauvoo, my identity as a wife — feel like a farce.

The sister wives wrote a book together published in 2012. For the book, Meri, Janelle, Kody, Robyn and I each talked separately to a writer, who then weaved the story of our early years together, as well as Robyn’s integration into the family. Talking with the writer took me straight back to my twenties, when I was young and crushing on Kody, and admiring Kody and Meri as a couple — so pre- Janelle, too.

Kody had a different memory.

Before we got married, Meri, Kody, and I had got caught in a snowstorm while driving from Salt Lake to Wyoming with a group of people for a retreat at Kody’s parents’ house. I loved seeing his family, and I felt like our bond as friends had grown stronger. We’d been in the car for hours after having to pull over and spend the night on the road. I was starving, and we ended up at a gas station. I ate a lot of junk food back then, and chili cheese nachos were my favorite thing.

“The sight of this chubby girl in my car devouring chili cheese nachos for breakfast put the brakes on our relationship,” Kody wrote in the book.

Are you serious? I thought after reading the draft. You were disgusted with me when I ate nachos? And you weren’t attracted to me? Why did you marry me?

This is what you tell the world about your wife? In your forties, when you absolutely know how hurtful it would be — or you should. In Becoming Sister Wives, we found out stuff about each other that we didn’t know, and it was brutal. I knew Meri and Janelle had struggled, but I didn’t know the details. I felt heartbroken reading that book.

Mykelti read it, and she called me right after.

“I had no idea Dad felt that way about you,” she said. She was so upset.

I was, too. We had been married for about 18 years when I read the book, and I didn’t know Kody had never been attracted to me. I felt so humiliated. The whole world knew almost before I did. And now my kids knew, too.

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On camera, in front of the sister wives, Kody said, “I was not attracted to Christine in any kind of physical sense.”

You can see the hurt on my face, even as I initially tried to make a joke of it.

“You were not attracted to Christine,” the host repeated back. “That’s an understatement,” Kody replied.

Janelle’s face. Robyn’s face. Horrified. I tried to smile through it, but it came out as more of a grimace. Oh, Kody. Gee. We just never know what he’s going to say.

Why did you say you love me? Why did you propose to me?

If you love me now, why would you hurt me so publicly?

A knife to the kidneys.

He played it like it was a tragedy — that he had to marry me. That wasn’t the tragedy. The tragedy was that he kept me from someone who would love me. The tragedy was the narcissism of it, the belief that I wouldn’t have moved on if he had laughed and said he wanted to keep me as a friend.

You’re really putting this in a book?

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Kody later said he felt like he had to marry me because I was “polygamy royalty” because of my grandfathers. Had to marry me why? Had to marry me because you thought it would make you look good while knowing I would be eternally married to someone who didn’t love me?

I was heartbroken.

That new bit of knowledge didn’t help our relationship. That he humiliated me also did not help. What else wasn’t true? I felt as if I had been robbed of the ability to make a good life decision because he hadn’t told me how he felt when he asked me to marry him. I also believed it was unfixable. Chemistry is there — or it isn’t.

But because I had never had chemistry, I didn’t understand how it was supposed to feel. I didn’t know how it felt to be adored. He did his duty and stayed with me every fourth night, but staying the night didn’t necessarily mean physical intimacy. If Kody showed up just before bed and left as soon as he got up, it could feel like punishment. It definitely didn’t feel like companionship.

From SISTER WIFE: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom by Christine Brown Woolley. Copyright © 2025 by Christine Brown. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC

Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom comes out Sept. 2 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.