by Mayci Neeley
First published 2025
Mayci Neeley arrived at BYU with a tennis scholarship and strict Mormon upbringing. College brought temptations she had never faced. She drank heavily and fell into an abusive relationship. At nineteen, she became pregnant and lost her boyfriend in a car accident. As a single mother, she returned to school while navigating grief and motherhood. Her journey continued through struggles with IVF and eventually led to her role in the friend group that became MomTok. The Hulu series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives made her famous, but viewers saw only fragments of her real story. Neeley chronicles her path from sheltered teenager to social media personality with unflinching honesty. She examines how Mormon culture shaped her early years and how those rigid expectations crumbled when she encountered real world pressures. Her memoir balances dark humor with genuine vulnerability as she describes finding strength after loss and building a new life from broken pieces.
Genres: addiction, abuse, coming-of-age, autobiography, contemporary, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking, vulnerable
Tropes: found-family, redemption-arc, second-chance
Setting: BYU
Period: 21st-century
288 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: abuse, addiction, domestic-violence, mental-illness