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.”
Scroll through for the biggest Bachelor bombshells from God Bless This Mess:
When Brown was auditioning for The Bachelor, she told producers that she would only go on the show if Underwood was the lead. She subsequently took a “total leap of faith” with $70 in her bank account and borrowed Sherri Hill dresses, a connection from her pageant days, to film the season. While spending time with Underwood, Brown wrote that she “kept getting the feeling that something was off. … Like he didn’t even want to be kissing me.” However, she ignored her gut because he was perfect for her on paper and kept reassuring her when she would question their connection. In April, Underwood came out as gay on Good Morning America, which “helped” Brown “better understand why things just felt a little off between us — because he felt off with himself. He wasn’t living the truth.” Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
When Underwood’s season started airing, Brown recalled being embarrassed by how she looked on the show. “I looked like a crazy person. And I am a little crazy! I’ll admit it. That’s what makes me fun!” she wrote. “But when I watched the fight between me and Caelynn on TV, it looked way uglier than it actually felt to me when it happened. At one point I growled, like some kind of a lioness or something, and I remember doing that in the context of just joking around about how angry I was.” Brown recalls social media labeling her “the Crazy Girl on TV.” She ultimately started to grow on people as the season progressed. While she was still surprised when ABC wanted to make her the lead, Brown wrote that she trusted God to take her on the journey. ABC/Craig Sjodin
Brown wrote about how “exhausting” and “demanding” it was to film The Bachelorette. “The lack of sleep and loss of contact with the outside world made me feel like I was losing my mind at times,” she wrote. “There were days when I honestly couldn’t see straight, or think straight, but I kept going because I didn’t want to let anyone down. Especially myself.” ABC/Mark Bourdillon
Brown wrote that she went into filming The Bachelorette with no intention to have sex, but as fans know, she was intimate with two of three of the finalists — Weber and Wyatt. “I slept with more men in one week than I’d slept with in my entire life,” she wrote. Weber’s overnight date was first. Three days later, it was time for her fantasy suite with Wyatt. While she wrote that her emotional connection with Wyatt was deeper, “the sex wasn’t as good as it was with Peter.” Still, she felt “safe” with the singer and knew she wanted to pick him, which was one of the reasons she didn’t sleep with Cameron during the last overnight date. Fast-forward to Wyatt and Brown spending the night together after their engagement and she had to break the news to her new fiancé that she slept with Weber on the show — something Wyatt didn’t see coming. “He wanted to know if he was better in bed than Peter, and I lied and said ‘Yes.’ I didn’t want to bruise his ego any more than it was already bruised,” she wrote. “He also asked me if his thing was bigger than Peter’s. Why do guys always ask that? ‘I don’t even remember.’ I told him." ABC (2)
Brown admitted that she saw leaked photos of her contestants online before she handed her phone over to producers. As a result, she was waiting for Cameron to arrive on night one. “When I finally got to gaze into his eyes, I felt a little connection. I felt a little spark,” she wrote of Cameron. “I felt a little connection with Jed, and with Luke [Parker], too, who I had met before this season even started.” As time went on, Parker became jealous, and they got into a heated confrontation when he started to question what she was going to do in the fantasy suite with the other guys. “He refused to get into the car, so I got even more explicit: I used the F-word to describe what Peter and I had done in the windmill,” she recalled. “I had no intention of breaking my promise to Peter [not to reveal we slept together]. I wanted to keep what we’d done a secret — but my emotions and temper got the best of me. And it was all captured on camera.” ABC/Ed Herrera
Following the overnight dates, Brown didn’t know what to do. She didn’t feel like she could send Weber home because they slept together. After being “completely open” with Cameron and making out “like crazy” on his date, she woke up thinking, “I cannot lose him.” Wyatt, meanwhile, “was the only one who didn’t feel so confusing," she wrote. She compared trying to make her final decisions to a game of MASH. Courtesy of Jed Wyatt/Instagram; Shutterstock (2)
At the beginning of the book, Brown wrote that she knew her husband wasn’t in the room from day one as the Bachelorette. When Wyatt proposed on the final day of filming, she wasn't sure she wanted to accept. “I was caught up in the magic and the fantasy of it all when all of a sudden he got down on one knee and pulled out a ring, and I thought … No. I can’t. This isn’t what it is supposed to be like,” she wrote. “I said yes anyway. It’s hard to explain how conflicted I felt. Jed hadn’t done anything wrong. I cared about him. And the engagement itself was dreamy — but it wasn’t necessarily my dream.” When they left to go home, Brown learned she didn’t know Wyatt’s real name — Jared — until she saw his plane ticket. “It freaked me out. How could I not know my fiancé’s full name? Who was this person? I asked Jed, ‘Why didn’t I know your name?’” she wrote. “‘I never went by that,’ he said. He didn’t think it was a big deal. But alongside everything else, it just made me question whether any of this was real. How could I be engaged to a man when I didn’t even know his name? And his name was … Jared?” ABC/Mark Bourdillon
During their three-night stay at the resort after their engagement, Wyatt revealed a producer told him “that there was a girl spreading a story online, about the two of them hanging out together just before he came on the show.” Brown said Wyatt initially claimed they “hung out” for a month before downplaying it to a week. During their other “Happy Couple Retreat,” she felt better about their relationship, writing that they “had fun” while reconnecting. In her journal at the time, Brown wrote that Wyatt “is safe,” but admitted she still had feelings for Cameron and Weber — which caused “all kinds of arguments” between her and Wyatt. Still, she tried to remind herself it was more realistic to build a life with Wyatt because they had more in common. Before the end of the weekend, another outlet ran a story with Stevens going on the record as Wyatt’s “girlfriend.” "She claimed that Jed had spoken with her mother. (Which only proved how serious the relationship was. You don’t speak to the mother of someone you’ve only ‘hung out’ with.) And the last thing Jed said to her before the producers took his phone away was ‘I love you,’” she wrote. “Jed and I had talked about this girl a few times in between, and every time, his story changed a little bit. He knew this girl. They were friends. They had been to the Bahamas together, but just as friends. He had told her he loved her, but he was drunk at the time.” Brown accused Wyatt of gaslighting her by changing his story. ”Hiding something in order to ‘not hurt my feelings’ is still untruthful. It’s trying to have your cake and eat it too, and while it might benefit you in the short term, this is exactly the kind of behavior that ruins relationships. Forever,” she wrote. “When I broke up with Jed, the cameras captured it all. But he seemed to walk away from that conversation with the hope that we might still get back together. I called him later to make it clear: that wasn’t going to happen.” Mark Bourdillon/ABC
In the book, Brown revealed that she “talking and texting” Cameron before After the Final Rose. “Nothing super romantic, really. Just saying hi, and talking about what was happening on the show as we watched it unfold on TV,” she wrote. “But the more I watched, the more I’d thought, ‘Okay, that’s the guy I’m supposed to be with.’” On July 19, 2019, Brown texted Cameron and told him that she still cared about him and he said the same. When they finally saw each other at AFR, she asked him to get a drink on-air and they got “in touch right after the show.” She admitted that it was a little awkward between them at first, but their chemistry was still strong. After ordering takeout and catching up, they got “hot and heavy” — but he stopped them from going all the way. They also made plans to travel together and explore what was still there between them. Cameron subsequently left for NYC, but they texted regularly until he called her on August 4, 2019, and made it clear they weren’t exclusive. “Tyler met up with a supermodel after getting off the phone with me. This wasn’t a TV show. This wasn’t some game. My time with Tyler at my apartment wasn’t some meaningless hookup, the way it was portrayed in the press,” she wrote. “My heart was on the line. And he broke it. With a supermodel. … And what’s crazy is, I loved Gigi Hadid! I thought she was the coolest. I still do. I get it. I would even go on a date with her. I wanna be her friend! But never did I expect to be in a love triangle with her.” The next time they spoke, Brown wrote that they “basically hung up on each other” after she confronted him about disrespecting her. She recalled the conversation: “’You got to date thirty guys, so I’m gonna date around and see if I still want to be with you,’ he said. ‘But this isn’t a TV show,’ I said. ‘You just told me you weren’t seeing anybody else. And then you said you wanted to talk about it, but we never talked about it, and like an hour later you went out with her!’” Sara Jaye Weiss/Shutterstock; John Salangsang/January Images/Shutterstock
While Brown was competing on Dancing With the Stars in September 2019, Bachelor producers approached her to make an appearance on Weber’s premiere to give back the pilot’s wings he gave her on her night one. While it was “the last thing [she] wanted to do,” Brown agreed because she was under contract with the network. She also felt like she messed up after feeling like Wyatt didn’t care about her and Cameron moved on so quickly. Brown described her first appearance on Weber’s season as a form of PTSD, noting she sat in the limo for over an hour and was a mess, but ultimately got through it. On September 24, 2019 — Brown’s birthday — producers called again to host one of Weber’s group dates. “I got the impression the girls didn’t want me there. I didn’t want to be there. I’m pretty sure Peter felt awkward, too,” she recalled about the “intimate stories” date. After she walked off upset, Weber followed. “While they showed some of our discussion on TV, a lot of it wasn’t aired,” she wrote. “And a lot of it made my heart hurt all over again. The biggest thing, the one that took my breath away, is that Peter offered to quit the show if I’d take him back. ‘If you can say without a doubt that you want to be with me, I’ll quit the show,’ he said. … Looking in his eyes, seeing that passion and fight he had for me, I wanted to kiss him. But I couldn’t kiss him. The cameras were there. What a mess that would’ve been!” After telling Weber he couldn’t leave the show for her — and she won't join his journey because she was on DWTS — they went their separate ways. Brown also told him that if The Bachelor didn’t work out for him, she’d likely be single and open to exploring things after he wrapped. “I went back to my apartment, ate pizza on the floor with my friends who had flown all the way from Alabama to see me, and cried all over again,” she wrote. ABC/John Fleenor
Weber saw Wyatt (and his girlfriend, Ellen Decker) for the first time since AFR at Hannah Godwin and Dylan Barbour’s engagement party in late February 2020. “We avoided each other at first, until I got up the courage to walk right up to him and say hello. I didn’t want it to be awkward,” she wrote. “He said he was doing good, and I said, ‘Good. Good for you.’ And that was about it.” Shutterstock (2)
It wasn’t too long before Brown saw Weber again. Lonelier than ever, she got a call from the pilot in January 2020 and he informed her that he was engaged to Hannah Ann Sluss — and “already having doubts.” The twosome stayed in touch and bonded over the pressure of being the lead, but Weber also admitted he still had feelings for runner-up Madison Prewett. “This show was meant to be focused on romance and love, but so many of us who went on it found ourselves caught up in emotional disasters,” Brown wrote. After Weber and Sluss split, Brown saw him at Godwin and Barbour’s engagement party too. After the bash, he texted her to come outside and informed her that his engagement was over and he failed to make amends with Prewett. When they got to her apartment, she invited him in, but he had to get back to his parents’ house for a flight in the morning. As a result, she agreed to go to the Weber house in Agoura, California. His mother, Barbara, invited Brown to stay in her other son’s room. Weber subsequently texted her to come cuddle. “I didn’t go there expecting us to have sex. But we did,” she wrote. “I’m not sure what to say about it, except that it wasn’t good. I thought we were reconnecting. I was lonely. But it wasn’t right. … The sex didn’t last very long, and afterward, we both rolled over and fell asleep.” After an awkward run-in with his dad in the morning, Weber gave Brown $100 to Uber home. While the twosome exchanged casual text messages in the following days, the next time they spoke on the phone, Weber told her he still had feelings for Prewett. Brown wrote that she felt ashamed of her behavior and described bawling while watching Weber’s season of The Bachelor. ABC/Stewart Cook; AFF-USA/Shutterstock
In March 2020, Brown reached out to Cameron when she saw him asking for prayers for his mother on Twitter. Andrea Cameron had a brain aneurysm and subsequently died at 55. The next day, she got a call that her brother, Patrick, had overdosed. Hannah and Tyler bonded over what they were both going through and after a trip to Alabama to see her brother, Hannah headed to Florida for a memorial for Andrea. While she planned to stay at a hotel for a few days, Tyler invited her to stay with his friends at a house he rented in the area. “He cried with me about his mom. ‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘I really really care about this person,’” she wrote. Hannah went to Texas to get her brother settled in rehab while Tyler went to NYC for work. After the coronavirus quarantine was announced, he invited her to stay with him and his friends in Jupiter, Florida. They figured the shutdown would only be a few weeks and would give them time to figure things out. While they both clearly still had feelings for each other — and Hannah was daydreaming about their future as the next Chip and Joanna Gaines — she wrote, “two unhealthy people do not make for a healthy relationship.” The twosome slept in the same bed for 20 days but didn’t even kiss. Hannah wrote that she was “miserable” for a lot of the experience because Tyler not making a move made her feel self-conscious. She subsequently started bonding with Matt James, future Bachelor and Tyler’s college bestie. Hannah and Tyler would go days without talking but end up cuddling on other nights, she recalled. “When I finally figured out a way to get back to Alabama, Tyler gave me a side hug, and then we didn’t talk the rest of the day,” she wrote. The pair saw each other again in Los Angeles in October 2020 and she hoped they would finally be friends. In the end, she felt like he wasn’t prioritizing seeing her on the trip. “No matter how much we talked, and connected, I always felt like his bench girl. Like I was the backup player who never got to play in the game,” she wrote, noting that she eventually told Tyler that it hurt too much to be friends with him. “His last poetic words to me were, ‘Well … if you rock with me, you rock with me. If you don’t, you don’t.’ I wish I was making that up.” The pair haven’t spoken since. Shutterstock (2)
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