Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Sep 23 2025 | Archive Date Sep 23 2025/NETGALLEY READ NOW/ AWAKE BY JEN HATMAKER

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Description

From Jen Hatmaker—beloved New York Times bestselling author and host of the For the Love podcast—a brutally honest, funny, and revealing memoir about the traumatic end of her twenty-six-year-long marriage, and the beginning of a different kind of love story.

At 2:30 a.m. on July 11th, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years whispering in his phone to another woman from their bed. It was the end of life as she knew it. In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader, to a divorced wreck on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds parenting five kids alone with no clue about her own bank accounts. Having led millions of women for over a decade—urging them to embrace authenticity, find radical agency, and create healthy relationships—this seemed nothing less than total failure.

In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea—and how she made it to shore. In candid, surprisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife—the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn’t ask for. And, drawing on all her resources—from without and from within—Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point.

More than one woman’s story, Awake is a critical analysis of the story given to all of us: the story of gender limitations, religious subservience, body shame, self-erasure. With refreshing candor, Jen explores a Midlife Renaissance—grieving what’s lost, cherishing possibility, and entering the second half of life wide awake.

Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781668083680
PRICE $30.00 (USD)
PAGES 320

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Avid Reader Press | Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

My 5 Star Review notes    Titled:  Is her life over or just beginning?

 Their story starts out sweet although they are Baptist and being a teenage bride didn't seem weird in their circle. So, her parents say okay because she would have done what she wanted anyway.  Her dad is something else, in defense of his daughter.  Her mother also is just kind of a go along kind of Christian woman.We also get introduced to her kids and our first scripture.   Her story is painful, there is honest grief, its also some hope and revealings. Steve gave her really good advice when she was in "the Middle" of being divorced. Thank God, she had some really good girl friendships. There are some really good points made by Jen in a book, "Codependent No more by Melody Beattie. It's shameful what her and her family had to go through because of a self-righteous Christian woman outing their personal lives on the Internet !!!   I liked her dive into the hypocrisy of some Christian leaders who make women villainous and give men a free pass in situations. She faced some brutal retaliation for some of her honest thoughts and words.  Chase Wonder was a great conclusion because as she says, she is Awake at last. 

I had the opportunity to read this book through Netgalley and these are my honest feelings about it.  

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--Additional note for me: A white Toyota Avalon is the exact same car as a blue Subaru Outback. Ben Rector on Pandora? Or play David Gray on Pandora? Her married name was King.

 

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