For more than a decade, Jill Duggar was the wholesome star of "19 Kids and Counting" and "Counting On," the sweetly obedient daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar who became the first woman in the family to marry and seemed destined to follow in her parents' footsteps.

Instead, she's now calling out her family for exploiting her on reality TV.

In "Counting the Cost," a memoir released last month, Duggar sheds unprecedented light on the inner workings of her sprawling Christian fundamentalist family, who rose to fame on the cable network TLC and later saw their empire crumble when first-born son Josh Duggar was convicted on child pornography charges in 2021.

The book details Duggar's decision to walk away from "Counting On" in 2017 — after spending roughly half her life on camera — and her transformation from the cheerful daughter nicknamed "Sweet Jilly Muffin" into a grown woman who wears pants, uses birth control and drinks the occasional piña colada.

However, Duggar is not here to expose every family secret; she does not elaborate on the sexual abuse she allegedly experienced as a child — she remains adamant that the information should never have become public — and her brother Josh is a marginal figure in the story. But she has plenty to say about her family's finances, the toxic dynamic created by their TV stardom and the role that faith played in it all.

"Counting the Cost" paints a critical — if also loving — portrait of family patriarch Jim Bob Duggar, whose obsession with capitalizing on the family's "window of opportunity" and belief in his God-given authority over his offspring led to their financial exploitation, creating painful rifts that remain unresolved. (The book, published under her maiden name, was written with her husband, Derick Dillard, and author Craig Borlase.) The book details how reality TV made Jim Bob into a wealthy man with an expansive real estate portfolio and a fleet of airplanes at the expense of his children — especially the daughters who juiced TLC's ratings with each marriageand pregnancy.

Even though Duggar was a major moneymaker for TLC — her televised 2014 wedding to Dillard brought in a record 4.4 million viewers — she alleges that she was not paid for starring in the programs until she waged a protracted, painful legal battle with her parents. She also claims she was tricked by Jim Bob into signing a five-year contract that, among other things, required her to notify the network if she found out she was pregnant.

The book is the latest in a growing number of projects that peel back the curtain on one of reality TV's most polarizing families. Earlier this year, Duggar's sister, Jinger Duggar Vuolo, published a memoir, " Becoming Free Indeed," which offered a careful theological critique of the Institute in Basic Life Principles or IBLP, a nondenominational Christian fundamentalist organization the Duggars were aligned with, and its founder, Bob Gothard — but little criticism of TLC or her parents. The Amazon docuseries " Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets," which featured an interview with Jill Duggar and Dillard, was a more forceful exposé of IBLP and the abuse the organization allegedly enabled.

"Counting the Cost" shows how Jim Bob used spiritual beliefs to exert financial and emotional control over his entire family and is likely to be just as devastating. Here's a look at some of the key takeaways.

Producers paid to finish the Duggar family's 7,000-square-foot home

Duggar recalls how, in their pre-fame days, her large family lived in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house and subsisted on canned beans, ramen noodles and frozen burritos. Then they starred in specials for Discovery Health and TLC, which chronicled Michelle's pregnancies, and their lifestyle quickly changed. Not only did producers pay for groceries once deemed luxury items — like Lucky Charms, frozen pizzas and all-beef chimichangas — but when construction of the family's 7,000-square-foot dream house took longer than planned, they chipped in to finish the build.

"A second documentary had shown us starting the work on the house, but the producers wanted the third Duggar TV special to feature us actually completing the work and finally moving in. Thanks to some good negotiating from Pops, the network agreed to get out the checkbook," writes Duggar, the fourth of the family's 19 children. "A crew of workers turned up to the site, and the producers flew in an interior designer from New York. She helped us pick out the kind of bedroom sets and other furniture that we would never have been able to afford."

Privacy was sacrificed for entertainment, including Duggar's relationship with Dillard

Duggar says that her family saw their show, which started as "17 Kids and Counting" and eventually became "19 Kids and Counting," as a televised ministry — a way to share their religious beliefs with an audience of millions.

But for TLC, the network that turned the Duggars into celebrities, it was different. The show was "a vehicle for profit," which meant the family had to be entertaining — always willing to sacrifice their privacy for the sake of fresh storylines.

"Mom giving birth would always give our ratings a spike, but it wasn't the only life event that made for great TV. Whenever our producer, Scott, heard that one of us was going to start courting, his eyes would light up like a Christmas tree." (Duggar doesn't mention Scott's last name, but she seems to be referring to series director and executive producer Scott Enlow.)

This became awkward when Duggar planned a trip to Nepal to meet Dillard for the first time to decide if she wanted to pursue courtship and marriage. TLC cameras were going to follow her, but the network would only pay for a five-day trip. She insisted that she needed two weeks to make such a monumental decision and came up with a solution: She and Dillard would film a fake goodbye for the show in order to give the episode a satisfying conclusion, and the couple would get an extra week to get to know each other without the cameras present. When Dillard proposed months later, he "worked with Scott and the crew to deliver the ingredients of a great episode."

The network also dictated much of their wedding — barring guests from taking pictures and inviting hundreds of people Duggar didn't know to the festivities — but she didn't put up a fight. As far as she and Dillard knew, they were not getting paid for the many hours they spent filming the show, but they also considered themselves "volunteers" with a higher purpose: serving the family's televised ministry.

When it came to her honeymoon, however, she was more resistant, making it clear filming was not an option. In turn, "they made it clear there wasn't any money from them to help with the honeymoon, either," she writes.

Duggar had to tell producers about her pregnancies first

A month after her wedding in 2014, Duggar found out she was pregnant. The happy news was followed by a quick realization that she would have no say in how — or if — the world learned about her growing family.

Because her mother and her sister-in-law, Anna, had given birth many times since the show began, "there was already a clear path that we had to follow — not just involving some media outlet being given exclusive rights to the official announcement, but also how we told those closest to us," she writes. "First, we were supposed to tell producers, then — when they were ready to capture it on film — we were allowed to tell our parents."

TLC's talent management team also had a PR plan in place: People magazine would get rights to the story and a photoshoot. Duggar and Dillard couldn't tell anyone except a few friends and family members before the People story was published.

Duggar didn't want to film the birth of her first child but feared rebelling

Duggar was also reluctant to give birth on the show. Trained as a midwife, she understood the risks inherent to labor and knew that "in that most intimate, vulnerable place of childbirth, I'd value my privacy more than ever," she writes. She told Enlow that she didn't want to film the birth, but he pushed back. They eventually reached a compromise: Her mom and sister Jana would film some of the birth with video cameras provided by production. Duggar's 70-hour labor, which resulted in a C-section and the birth of her first child, Israel, was featured in a two-hour special that garnered 3 million viewers.

Although she didn't realize it at the time, Duggar says IBLP's teachings about the "umbrella of authority" were so deeply ingrained that it clouded her judgment. "My father wanted us to cooperate with the show, therefore deceiving Scott could be seen as an act of sinful rebellion against my father." By the time she gave birth to her second child in 2017 — rupturing her uterus in the process — Duggar had quietly left the show. Her third child was born last year.