Bachelor Nation viewers looking for answers should look no further than Hannah Brown’s new book, God Bless This Mess: Learning to Live and Love Through Life’s Best (and Worst) Moments.
“My life has been shared very openly [and] vulnerably through a lens of a television show. It’s always been for entertainment,” the 27-year-old former Miss Alabama exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the book’s Tuesday, November 23, release. “And while a lot of that was my real life, there’s a lot of parts that fall through the cracks [and] that are filtered out. Instead of it being told through a funnel of other people, I really wanted to take the time and be able to share my story my way and the most authentic way.”
ABC viewers met Brown when she competed for Colton Underwood’s affections on season 23 of The Bachelor, which aired in 2019. She was later named the season 15 Bachelorette and got engaged to Jed Wyatt during the finale. While the show was airing, however, the country singer’s former flame Haley Stevens came forward and alleged they were dating when he left to film the series. Wyatt downplayed his relationship with Stevens (who is now dating the former Bachelorette’s brother, Patrick Brown) at the time. The author nearly got back together with runner-up Tyler Cameron and third-place finalist Peter Weber after the quick engagement.
“I didn’t trust myself enough to make a decision. And I think that is what you see kind of as a pattern in the book,” Brown told Us of navigating all her post-show feelings. “If you don’t really trust yourself [and] know yourself, then it’s really hard to make decisions about love and relationships, especially in an intense amount of time.”
In the book, Brown wrote a lot about her childhood trauma and pre-Bachelorette relationships. (For a complete breakdown of those chapters, click here.) When it comes to her time in Bachelor Nation, she notes that she felt like she went 15 years’ worth of life in three years, beginning with filming season 23 of The Bachelor in 2018.
“The relationship/Bachelor stuff was hard to write too because I was processing it all and there was so much that happened that one time in my life,” she told Us. “So trying to really, like, dig through the weeds, go back into that time, was definitely hard. This book was a challenge, for sure. I’m so happy and proud of myself for writing a book, but when you’re writing about the most painful times of your life, it has been emotionally exhausting too.”
Brown concluded that the book is an “opportunity to publicly shed the past,” telling Us: “I’m glad that I can just celebrate it being done … and step into the newness and fullness of my life.”
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Scroll through for the biggest Bachelor bombshells from God Bless This Mess: