Brazen: My Unorthodox Journey from Long Sleeves to Lingerie

Haart’s narration of her gripping and jaw-dropping memoir is so relaxed and intimate that rather than reading, she sounds like she’s chatting with friends. She not only tells her tale but also patiently explains the customs of the oppressive ultra-Orthodox religious world she escaped. Early on, she explains that her Netflix reality TV series My Unorthodox Life “is about my present defined by my past. Brazen, however, is my whole story as I remember it.” And what a story! The first two-thirds of this 19-hour unabridged audiobook detail Haart’s upbringing in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, New York, where she was raised to follow tznius. “It means ‘modesty, but it doesn’t just mean modest clothes,” Haart says. “It means being totally unseen and never being special or exceptional in any way.” Married at 19 to a man she barely knew, she soon had four children. More than two decades later and after months of contemplating suicide, she escaped the fundamentalist community. She was 42. The audiobook ends before she marries her second husband and became CEO and co-owner of Elite World Group, the talent-management company.