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You Thought You Knew

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Kevin dancer, father, accidental pop culture icon. His star rose electrifying stages alongside Pink, Destiny’s Child, Aaliyah, and more. But it was his turbulent marriage to pop superstar Britney Spears that made him a household name and triggered a relentless media storm, reducing him to a caricature in a world that barely knew him.
Behind the tabloid headlines was a devoted father fighting for his children and his sanity, navigating the fallout of fame and a fractured family, as everything around him spun out of control.
From the heights of global stardom to the pain of public ridicule, this memoir peels back the layers of celebrity, fatherhood, and survival to reveal the man behind the mythology. A man shaped not by spectacle or spotlight, but by love, resilience, and the steadfast resolve to give his kids a normal life.
What you thought you knew was only half the story.

227 pages, Hardcover

Published October 20, 2025

213 people are currently reading
730 people want to read

About the author

Kevin Federline

3 books9 followers

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5 stars
268 (15%)
4 stars
452 (26%)
3 stars
567 (32%)
2 stars
248 (14%)
1 star
190 (11%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 309 reviews
1 review
October 3, 2025
He abandoned her with a newborn, while she had PPD, then did it again when the second was born. All you need to know.
Profile Image for Sarah Brown.
33 reviews3 followers
October 30, 2025
If you’re interested in his side of the story, it’s a good book. I don’t agree with all his choices, but it offers a different perspective, and he doesn’t turn it into a bash-feast.
Profile Image for Elvin.
18 reviews
October 29, 2025
Shame on this man and his sons. They claim to “care” about Britney, but somebody explain me please how does this book would “help” her in any shape or form ?

Nobody gives a damn about Kevin or Jamie Lynn… they are only “known” a cause of Britney so they keep exploiting her name to gain some relevance on their pathetic lives.

And Sean Preston and Jayden James are old enough to know that it’s not okay to throw your own mother under the bus like that. When Britney was their age, she was already the #1 pop star in the world. She started since a very young age and they, Kevin and his wife, Jamie Lynn are living a comfortable life is thanks to Britney.

You’re not “helping” Britney, you’re just exploiting her for money and pushing her over the edge.

Nobody’s saying that Britney is perfect, but she doesn’t deserve this kind of explanation and unnecessary exposure even more as if she’s so “untestable” and “sick”. If the claims in this “book” are true, addictions and mental health problems are DISEASES no personal traits. If anything they should show more compassion.
Profile Image for Felicia.
86 reviews1 follower
October 30, 2025
I listened to his full book on Spotify Premium and boy is it juicy! Thoughtful, calm, transparent, heroic and empathic, Kevin finally lets the world know the truth that has been concealed and denied for 20 years. I never thought I would be a K-Fed supporter but after what he and his boys had to endure and all he did to provide safety and security for them, he’s shown what a good father he is. I know the majority of negative reviews will be from Britney’s crazy fans who didn’t read the book and hate Kevin. I’m glad he is finally telling his side of things and exposing Britney after all this time. This book was better written than hers and he actually narrated it himself, unlike her.
Profile Image for Sue Sawy.
1 review6 followers
October 31, 2025
Trailer trash will do anything but work when it comes to money. Kevin here is the perfect example- once more using the mother of his children because he is no longer getting 40k a month. Some people are just pathetic and Kevin is a great example.
Profile Image for Brittany E..
500 reviews6 followers
October 30, 2025
I was surprised to see this have such a low rating. I read a few reviews and a lot of them seem to be mostly about his character, not the actual book. I can't really speak on his character because I'm not super up to date on the drama that is Britney and Kevin (and let's be real, I don't know him) but I enjoyed the book. I thought it was interesting and worth the read. A few people said it was narcissistic and a money grab but aren't most memoirs?
Profile Image for Mel.
10 reviews
October 30, 2025
Waste of time. He paints Britney as the issue while he’s the “innocent” and caring partner and father despite going on benders the days he didn’t have his sons with Britney. Didn’t mention how he was being a father to his kids from a previous relationship.

0 stars if possible.
Profile Image for Karen  .
26 reviews
November 2, 2025
I went into reading this book with an opinion about Kevin already formed but wanted to see what he had to say. I thought it was a cash grab. But that doesn’t make sense because he didn’t get paid much to write the book. I also thought he was a dirt ball for writing this book, but I do not feel that way now. I have a surprising change in opinion about him. I understand a lot more than I previously did. I recognize not all of it may be truth across the board but it is his view point and his truth. What he says tracks. He is his children’s voice while explaining the origin of his relationship with Britney. I also enjoyed reading about his years as a dancer.

I know most people have also had long standing opinions about Kevin and I hope some are curious like I was and take the time to read this book. Britney Spears has somewhat been my own Roman Empire, especially with her instagram postings. We are the same age so I lived thru the tabloid and pap mess times as a fan. It’s been clear there has been a deeper issue within her and I hope she can admit that one day so she can get the help she so very much needs.
Profile Image for IngramSpark.
270 reviews48 followers
September 18, 2025
This title was selected for IngramSpark's Indie Title Discovery Spotlight 2025!

A surprising and vulnerable reclamation of his narrative and a never-before-seen look behind the curtain of fame and celebrity. A must-read for pop culture fanatics and raw memoirs!
Profile Image for Lauren.
25 reviews
October 31, 2025
What I thought I knew was better than what I know now…
Profile Image for Jessica.
2 reviews
November 1, 2025
As someone who did actually read this book- it’s not worth it. He tells stories of being robbed twice in trap houses, taking marijuana plants from his mom across state lines, growing his own weed… not star parent material but California let him be 50/50 with no drug tests, meanwhile Britney was tested almost weekly.. I digress- save your time and money. His timeline is all over the place. His stories also all over the place. Also- he only talked about his in laws the last ten minutes if you want to read that trash of how bad James spears actually was- I bet there’s more left out but that’s my opinion. A tiger doesn’t just show their terrible stripes once.

If you need to read it- it’s on library apps (how I got to listen.) one star. Awful.
Profile Image for Jen.
2 reviews1 follower
October 30, 2025
I tried to go into this with an open mind. I listened to this on audible and I probably would have enjoyed it more if it wasn’t himself narrating the book. I cannot stand his voice whatsoever. He gets 1 Star for taking care of the boys.
Profile Image for Tiffany Neuman.
98 reviews1 follower
October 30, 2025
1.5 ⭐️

This whole thing is just so sad to me. I wish he had been there for Britney more. I wish he had not just called her behaviour crazy, selfish or narcissistic (I know it was) but actually acknowledge her mental illness(es), and ppd. Idk, I didn’t like this. It didn’t sit right with me. I don’t want to say it’s a cash grab like I’ve been hearing, I think maybe he waited until the boys were of age to be able to deal with this book being out, which also happens to be of age to stop receiving child support.

I will say, he does come across as a well meaning dad. It’s clear that he puts his boys first, even if I wish he would’ve have been there in any capacity for Britney. In the end, isn’t that what matters? Still not a fan of this.
Profile Image for Alexandria.
13 reviews
October 31, 2025
Absolutely disgusting way for this man to continue to ride on the piggyback of his ex all while continuing his narcissistic rant of him being a victim. Dude is a clown, he's full of himself and he's a downright liar. The only reason why this book came out is because child support ended and he actually has to work
Profile Image for kodeereads.
295 reviews
October 30, 2025
It finally is letting me review this book! Idk why they had it so you couldn't rate this book...probably because of all the low ratings...tbh though they are deserved! This book was clearly a cash grab because he isn't getting child support anymore. The writing was mediocre and jumped around so much. I really didn't like how much he was bad mouthing his ex wife and had how he underplayed how horrible it was that he cheated on Shar with Britney. He seems like a slime ball from what I have read in this book and even called himself "infamous"....yucky. Absolutely hated it. zero stars!
Profile Image for Joanne Eglon.
492 reviews6 followers
November 17, 2025
4 ⭐

I will always be for Britney (in her younger days) but wanted to read this to gain another perspective on the whole drama surrounding these two and their tumultuous relationship.

I believe the low reviews come from big die hard Britney fans as this wasn't a badly written book.

Easy to read and fast paced.

Would recommend 💕
Profile Image for Jessica.
187 reviews1 follower
Read
November 19, 2025
You Thought You Knew by K-Fed (I will never not call him K-Fed.)
Not rating.

Ok, so I had to read it. You know I had to. BUT, I want you to know that I read an illegal download so that this freeloader earned no money from me.

What you maybe don’t expect to hear me say is that I don’t think he is a lying POS. I believe that much of what he says is true. Truth of course, is subjective. But for the most part, I think he’s honest about Brittany’s mental health and addiction. I don’t think she is well, and as much as she is our shining pop princess, she is a mother and woman and her fame does not make her immune to the impacts of mental health and/or addictions. I think he is also honest about his experiences with her family…at least from where he was standing.

While he may not be a lying POS, he is still a first class POS. His hypocrisy is suffocating. He blatantly criticizes her for her drug use, while stating, “On one side, I was a father fighting to give my kids stability, navigating a custody battle, and trying to make sure they had everything they needed. On the other side, I was young, newly single, and living a lifestyle that pulled me into a whirlwind of partying. Balancing those two worlds was challenging to say the least.”

To be more explicit, he tells us, “When I didn’t have the kids, I was out. Not “a few drinks with the boys” kind of out. This was a full-blown bacchanal bender of a “first-rate Hollywood order, a journey through the underbelly of L.A.: strippers blowing cocaine in each other’s asses, guys tag-teaming chicks in my hot tub, a bordello masquerading as a porn studio masquerading as a dental office…don’t even get me started. I was young. Freshly single. Flashing my fame a bit.”

Yet, when Britney left the kids at home, safe in her mother’s care, to attend his album release party, he says, “Before she walked out, I asked who was watching the kids. She told me her mom was watching them, and I’m thinking: Alright, cool. But deep down, something felt off.” He goes on for 3 pages about how it was wrong that she was there. Not the drugs - just that she was there. So he can leave the kids with a sitter, engage in all the debauchery his heart desires - but she can’t.
And I think that’s the problem. She was expected to change, even as he admits, “I never lied. Never changed. She married me knowing exactly who I was.”

I think he proved to her and the world who he was when he met her, left his pregnant wife for her, and then did it again to Britney when she was at home, postpartum, and, yes, potentially in a mental health and/or addiction crisis. And what did he do - he called a lawyer.

Bottom line, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, til death do them part, he is riding her coat tales to the bank. And he was one more person in her life who proved to her that her only value in their life was monetary.
124 reviews
November 12, 2025
I love a good D-list celebrity book. He really told a lot of things in less than 200 pages. His friends’ names make me so happy: Ya Boy (YB), Purple, Big Mike, and many more delightful humans.
Profile Image for Rekha.
92 reviews
November 18, 2025
Horrible book written by a horrible person who is an abuser and still two decades later trying to leach off his victim. Dude just wrote this to cash a check now that the child support ran out. It literally says nothing new. And no, I did not pay to read this or even audiobook it or rent it from a library. I found a copy of a pdf that someone linked on Reddit and read that. If you have to read this, get it from Pirate Bay or something.

Profile Image for Ben Small.
9 reviews
November 3, 2025
Never liked this guy

Still don't. I just hope the kids are stable. He claims so, but who knows if the tragedies that surround Britney are over.
Profile Image for Brittany.
77 reviews
January 5, 2026
Well... this was a book, I guess.

I had every intention of giving this book a solid 2 stars until the last 10-ish or so chapters, but K-Fed came through and redeemed this seemingly unnecessary book. (Sorry, my guy. You will always be K-Fed to me lol.) Weirdly enough, this book suffered from a lot of the same problems that Britney's book did. A lot of it felt like it could've been pared down (and this book is short anyway!!), and the editing was atrocious. Wonder if they used the same ghostwriter?? 🤪 Also, whoever did the mixing for the audiobook version should be fired immediately and blacklisted from the industry. There were parts that were so obviously spliced together, Kevin's voice would change pitch from one sentence to the next, and some parts were scrambled so badly and whole sections of sentences omitted that I though my AirPods were malfunctioning (I would rewind multiple times and check; they weren't).

I'm going to piggyback the review of You Thought You Knew off my review of The Woman in Me, so if you need to refamiliarize yourself, pop over there now and reread it real quick. K-Fed dropped his book while I was in the middle of reading Britney's, and after weeks of waiting, I finally got my turn with it. So I'm approaching this book as a sequel of sorts. And after finishing it, I still feel sorry for Britney, but maybe in a different way. She is clearly a troubled individual, no matter how you view the past two decades. After finishing her book, going down the internet rabbit hole about her, and now finishing this book which, of course, contains conflicting reports on the same events... I don't know what to believe. I don't know how to feel about any of it. The only thing I can say with 100% certainty after coming out the other side of both of these books is this: Britney IS NOT well, and her two kids deserved better from her. And I'm glad they at least had their dad, despite how the media has portrayed him over the years.

Don't worry... ol' K-Fed ain't getting off so easily. Let me be clear: I am so glad and thankful that he stepped up to provide for his two sons when their mother could not. But let's call a spade what it is. He cheated on his first baby mama and abandoned his first two kids to chase Britney across the country when she went on tour. I will forever stand on my soapbox and bitch about how our society sets different standards for mothers and fathers. Fathers can walk away from their kids and it's fine; mothers do it and they're seen as the scum of the Earth. It was fine for him to be "newly single and feeling myself," partying and leaving the kids home with Britney's mom or a nanny, but when she did it, that was grounds for divorce. (I get why you did it K-Fed, but that's not my point.) Society holds mothers to an impossible standard while men are considered "great dads" for doing the bare minimum, and I am absolutely NOT HERE FOR IT. And there was blatant evidence of that in this book. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

So, in conclusion, read it. Or don't read it. It's fine either way.

P.S. - Hot take, apparently: I actually found the tone and texture of K-Fed's voice incredibly soothing.
Profile Image for BAM doesn’t answer to her real name.
2,040 reviews456 followers
November 11, 2025
Oh my lord
SPOTIFY! WHY WONT YOU LET ME SPEED THIS UP??? I think this 5hour book will take me 4 months. He is a disgrace.
Ok I do think he does love his children, all 423 of them. I think his children did assist his growth to responsible adulthood. But do I think he found a way to still leech off of Britney, who has to have broken the sound barrier of her mind (I believe every story he told I really do. Hold on for that). Child support runs out, gotta get something. That’s just a sinful motivation. Sinful part two-he practically grovels at the feet of Jamie Lynn (her sister) in thanks when we all know what she was doing during that conservativeship. (Sorry I can’t spell). Am I glad I read this book? I honestly do not know because listening to him read his own book in the slowest monotone ever invented made me want to stab my ears with my entire colored pencil collection. I don’t think I would have been impressed with any other format. I just think the audio was the worst option. But it was free and automatically available on Spotify. I stand behind my star rating and the shelf I put it on. Luckily I was able to do other things while listening so I didn’t lose any time from my life.
Profile Image for Katie Dennison.
110 reviews
Read
October 31, 2025
0/5 DO NOT RECOMMEND I only read it to see what kind of BS he wrote. I am a fan of Britney. The horrible things that happened to her are despicable and it came from her family. Thanks for getting her help! The conservatorship was not a great thing at the time!

Why has a ton of celebrities came to her defense and not yours?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Charlotte Daniel.
202 reviews4 followers
October 30, 2025
I stuck with it because I wanted to see if it picked up a bit, but sadly it didn't. Most of it we already knew, but it was a bit too much of self promotion.
Profile Image for Anne Hendricks.
Author 11 books43 followers
November 3, 2025
I read the book and got his side of the story. Interesting! So here's a review:

The narrative core of Kevin Federline's memoir, You Thought You Knew, is his fight to reclaim his identity from the one-dimensional, negative caricature the media created of him—the man they famously dubbed "K-Fed." The book is "framed" as an intimate and transparent account, offering the "detailed perspective he intentionally withheld for years" to protect his family. It traces his life from his working-class childhood and his rise as a professional dancer for major stars like Michael Jackson and Pink, before centering on the seismic shift his world underwent after his high-profile marriage to Britney Spears.

The inside story focuses heavily on Federline's experience as a father and the challenges of co-parenting two sons under an unrelenting media microscope. He details the emotional turbulence and public ridicule he endured, presenting his choices—including the years of silence—as sacrifices made to give his children the most normal life possible. The memoir provides his account of Spears's mental health struggles, including allegations about her behavior around their sons and his perspective on the necessity and eventual dissolution of her conservatorship, which he claims complicated their sons' lives.

Ultimately, the book is a personal defense, a detailed story of survival, resilience, and a man's attempt to define himself by his, uh, commitment to his family rather than by the tabloid headlines.

He's a pig. But the book was entertaining!
Profile Image for Lauryn Wasil.
137 reviews1 follower
December 6, 2025
Don’t care for how he talks about Britney. Also couldn’t get over how awful the cover looks.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 309 reviews

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