19 Kids and Counting personality Jinger Duggar is looking forward to reading her sister Jill Duggar’s memoir, Counting the Cost.
Jinger, 29, admitted in a YouTube video uploaded on Wednesday, September 27, that she has not read the tell-all, which was released on September 12. “But I am eager to,” she said.
The TLC star added that she recently showed her support for Jill, 32, while appearing on the Tamron Hall Show earlier this month. “I was able to talk about how I love and support my sister and I’m so glad that she has found her voice and is sharing her story now,” Jinger said.
Jinger was joined by husband Jeremy Vuolo for the talk show appearance. “Jill’s a brave girl,” she told host Tamron Hall. “And I think her coming out and telling her story … I know that is the hardest thing to do.”
Jinger and Jill, who are two of Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Duggar’s 19 children, have both spoken out about their ultraconservative religious upbringing and their experiences on their family’s reality series 19 Kids and Counting and its spinoff, Counting On.
Prior to Jill’s book release, Jinger penned her own memoir, Becoming Free Indeed: Disentangling Faith From Fear, which hit shelves in January. In the book, she shared that she “never expressed an opinion” during the first year of her marriage to Jeremy, 36, whom she wed in 2016. While her upbringing taught her that she “needed to perform” in order to keep her spouse faithful, Jeremy helped open her eyes to a different kind of partnership.
“He gently encouraged me to speak my mind and let him know if I didn’t agree with something — and to not apologize for that. He didn’t want me to perform or be fake. He wanted me to be myself,” she wrote. “More than once he said, ‘Jing, you’re not a Stepford wife.’ The first time he said that, I asked, ‘What’s a Stepford wife?’ When he explained the concept, I realized … He wanted me to think for myself and figure out what my convictions were and what I liked and disliked.”
Jill, meanwhile, opened up in Counting the Cost about feeling like her parents went to great lengths to protect her brother Josh Duggar from bad press.
“Though I love my parents and it made a lot of sense that they would want to protect and care for their child, I couldn’t help but think about the lengths that Pops had gone to in order to guard Josh’s privacy and keep him from being publicly humiliated,” she wrote of learning that Josh, 35, had admitted in an August 2015 statement that he had watched pornography and been unfaithful to his wife, Anna Duggar.
Jill continued: “The feelings grew stronger within me, and by the time I went to bed I felt sick to my core.”
19 Kids and Counting was canceled after news broke in 2015 that Josh had molested multiple girls, some of whom were his sisters, when he was a teenager. Jill and her sister Jessa Duggar, who were identified as victims, defended their family at the time in an interview with Megyn Kelly. In Counting the Cost, Jill revealed that Josh was in the room when the interview was being filmed. She also shared her feelings about Josh’s 2021 arrest and subsequent trial for receipt and possession of child pornography.
“These charges were way more serious than I’d expected, and I was in shock to hear how terrible the crimes he was accused of were,” she wrote. “I wanted to know the truth. I wanted the evidence to come out. And I wanted Josh to be put away for a very long time.”
Although Jill “burned” with anger toward her brother, she also felt sadness. “Sad that Josh had become such a monster, sad that even with all of the chances Josh had been given to change, he had thrown them all away and he continued down a dark, terrible road,” she penned. “Like the rest of the world, I was finally able to see my eldest brother for what he was — a man unable to control himself, totally detached from the reality of how deeply he was hurting others.”
Josh was convicted in December 2021 and sentenced the following May to 151 months in prison.
In addition to speaking out about their experiences as members of the Duggar clan, Jill and Jinger have both gone on to start families of their own. Jill shares sons Israel, 8, Samuel, 6, and Frederick, 14 months, with husband Derick Dillard while Jinger shares daughters Felicity, 5, and Evangeline, 2, with Jeremy.
