In the eight years since she competed on The X Factor, Ally Brooke has done just about everything: toured the world with the multiplatinum girl group Fifth Harmony, launched a solo career and made it to the finale of Dancing With the Stars. And now, she has added “author” to her résumé.
In her memoir, Finding Your Harmony: Dream Big, Have Faith and Achieve More Than You Can Imagine (out Tuesday, October 13), the singer, 27, takes readers through her humble beginnings in a Mexican American family in San Antonio, Texas, to the moment her life changed forever when she auditioned for The X Factor in 2012 and was grouped with Camila Cabello, Normani, Lauren Jauregui and Dinah Jane.
“I’d always performed on my own, but suddenly I was in a group with a bunch of strangers. This was a lot to take in,” she writes in the book. “In one day, my plans had changed drastically. I had spent a decade already, since I was 9 years old, working my butt off to become a solo artist. It was what I’d wanted, the goal I’d pursued so passionately, the thing my parents had sacrificed so much of their lives for. Yet at the same time, I was grateful.”
Although Fifth Harmony did not win the Fox competition, they went on to have massive success in the music industry. In 2015, they released their debut album, Reflection, which included the hits “Boss” and “Worth It.” Their sophomore effort, 7/27, came the following year and spawned the biggest song of their career, “Work From Home.” But in December 2016, Cabello abruptly left the group on bad terms (something Brooke goes into little detail about in her memoir).
Fifth Harmony forged on, releasing their self-titled third album in 2017, but Brooke, Normani, Jauregui and Jane announced an indefinite hiatus in March 2018 to pursue solo projects. Soon after, Brooke began working on an album of her own, which is expected to be released in 2021, and competed on DWTS season 28 in 2019. She and her pro partner, Sasha Farber, finished in third place.
“My time on the show was so special,” she writes of the ABC series. “It moved me, it changed me in so many ways and it gave me memories I’ll cherish forever.”
Scroll down to read 10 revelations from Finding Your Harmony!