Jinger Duggar Vuolo, the sixth child of Northwest Arkansas reality TV royalty and ultra-fundamentalist parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, published “Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear” in early 2023, making her the first of the Duggar kids to publicly speak out against their extremely religious upbringing under the thumb of the Institute in Basic Life Principles group and its founder Bill Gothard.
Arkansas Times contributor Guy Lancaster reviewed it alongside a separate Duggar reflection — “Counting the Cost” by older sister Jill Duggar Dillard — that came out the same year, concluding that the book “doesn’t make it quite as far as readers might hope. ‘Becoming Free Indeed’ focuses upon the damage wrought by Gothard’s theology but stops short of any real recognition that her parents were responsible for this, as if she’s working hard to avoid any potential violation of the commandment ‘Honor thy father and mother.’”
Now, Vuolo, 31, is back with another book, “People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations,” which was released yesterday.
Like Vuolo’s “Becoming Free Indeed,” the new book features a co-writer. Unlike the last book, however, “People Pleaser” seems as much self-help as it as it memoir, at least based on a description from the publisher that promises readers the opportunity to learn how to “discover the beauty of community and how we were made to enjoy others, identify sin and how it can hinder your ability to be in community with one another, diagnose yourself with ruthless honesty but without judgement, and understand who you are in God’s eyes.”
Side note: The last time I wrote about Vuolo, I failed to give sufficient attention to the strangeness of her name. What an oddly-spelled mouthful.
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