Bethany Joy Lenz Gets Daily Messages from Women in Abusive Relationships Because of Her Cult Memoir (Exclusive)

Bethany Joy Lenz is a queen!

The former One Tree Hill star, 44, and author of memoir Dinner With Vampires was just crowned this year's Queen Azalea at the 78th annual Azalea Festival in Wilmington, North Carolina (where One Tree Hill was filmed).

"It's just so beautiful here in springtime," Lenz says of returning to Wilmington for the honors. "Having lived there for 10 years, I really look forward to spring every year because it is a spectacular show of wildflowers. It's all so pretty and lush, and the azalea fest is just a rich tradition to celebrate the people of North Carolina, the community spirit, the arts community and a chance for North Carolina to show off."

Lenz, herself, is also being given her flowers — women in abusive relationships have been thanking her daily for sharing her story of living in a cult.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Related: How One Tree Hill Star Bethany Joy Lenz Got Lured into a Cult for a Decade— and How She Got Out of It (Exclusive)

"What's really been amazing is the messages I'm getting from women who have been in abusive relationships, or in abusive church environments or toxic family dynamics," she tells PEOPLE. "I get messages every single day from women who've read the book and are helped by it. And that's really like, wow, that's why I wrote it. Okay? That's the stuff that's going to last."

She says the response to the memoir was more positive than she could have dreamed of.

"It's been amazing," she says. "I'm astonished at the response and how it's just taken off. I think I've been in this industry so long that when I see success and think things like that happen, I always take it a little bit with a grain of salt. Like, okay, this is my 15 minutes, it's going to go away. But still, I'm enjoying it."

In Dinner For Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Series (While Also in an Actual Cult!), Lenz tells the story of how she led a double life, starring as Haley James Scott on One Tree Hill, while also being devoted to a small, ultra-Christian group led by a shady pastor in Idaho, who controlled her career, life choices and, eventually, her bank account.

By the time she got out a decade later, she had to start over with hardly anything to show for the nearly ten years she spent on the series — and a feeling of shame for not realizing she was in a cult.

The Drama Queens podcast co-host — a title she shares with former costars Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan — says the book helped some of her colleagues understand more about why she was the way she was during their time on the show.

"I've gotten several messages from cast members who were just like, 'I'm so sorry, I didn't know that's really what you were going through.' And it's been nice to have those kind of honest conversations, even all these years later. Isn't it funny how things that we live with, we just kind of store away somewhere in our body, and even 20 years later, it still feels good to make amends and release them?"

She adds that returning to North Carolina after the release of her book made the voyage all the more sweet.

"To be able to come back, not just come back to visit and say hi to friends, but coming back as a representative for this week of celebrating the beauty of the place that really felt like such a safe haven to me... It's a very poetic sort of emotional thing for me."

Read the original article on People