The first third of this book was enjoyable, but then it began a downward spiral in terms of writing quality... There were some elements that felt a bit implausible and it didn't help that I felt fairly disconnected from the narrator - this becomes problematic when reading a memoir. I guess this just wasn't the book for me and I'm not sure that I understand all of the hype surrounding it.

A fascinating and unforgettable memoir by an author who writes very well and knows how to tell her truth the way she remembers it. The very idea that Ms. Westover could have survived this type of upbringing to then take the world of academia by storm is incredible, and she deserves much respect for her bravery and achievements. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my review copy. This is my honest opinion.

Wow. Tara Westover’s “Educated” was phenomenal. Not only was it beautifully, and skillfully written, but the cadence and flow kept me coming back, chapter after chapter, even when I was only going to read one before bed.

Westover’s questions about identity, memory, and history are some of the most through provoking of any I have read in 2018 (or in a far longer time, to be frank).

“Educated” takes the read on a very personal and intimate journey as a young girl struggles to reconcile her thoughts and memories and fears for her personal safety with loyalty to her family, her faith, and the education her life on the mountain has provided.

Beautiful. I will read anything Westover publishes.

Educated by Tara Westover is a powerful book that is emotionally difficult to read and impossible to put down. I only read memoirs by authors who have extraordinary stories to tell and ‘Educated’ is one of the stories.

When I say it is difficult to read, I mean that the story itself reaches into your soul. Your emotions run the gamut. There is awe, doubt, compassion, empathy, frustration, anger, disbelief, hesitation, vexation, sorrow, heartbreak, and bewilderment. There is no sugar-coating in this story. Be prepared for that. Ms. Westover tells her story straight out through her own reflections and horrible experiences of growing up in a hugely dysfunctional family some of whose members suffer from mental illness and some of whom are just complicit to the whims of those in the family with mental illness and violence.

Unfortunately as readers, we watch the painful attempts of Ms. Westover trying to break free from her family’s toxic environment. I mourned her inability to stop returning to the ‘scene of the crime’. Until the end of the book she still is seeking approval and acceptance. Seeking to be re-engaged with this dysfunctional family. I suppose along with her education it would take many, many years of therapy to overcome her childhood or lack thereof. As a reader you find yourself cheering her on as she achieves educational degree after educational degree. However, there is a part of me that believes she will always be broken and I am heartbroken over that

Thank you to Random House, Tara Westover and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Educated by Tara Westover

This book is incredible - it’s wild and almost unbelievable. I had to stop and remind myself this was a true story multiple times.

Tara wraps the reader in her perspective of her entire childhood so neutrally that it takes a while to realize whether or not she agrees with how she was raised.

Her fractured relationship with her family has its ups and downs and I’ll leave it at that.

The title is more than about her formal education, in fact, it almost takes a back seat to all she learned from her life in the mountains.

Highly recommend!!

This is a profoundly moving memoir that is a testament to the human spirit to rise above adversity. Tara Westover shares her experience of growing up in family where the parents cast a distrustful eye towards government. All of the normal events and activities we do (driver's licenses, birth certificates, attending school, etc.) are not part of Tara's life. Her and her siblings are raised by a mother who's the local midwife and a father who is obsessed with prepping for the End of the World.
Does Tara succeed at climbing out of this totally dysfunctional family?
What price is paid when warning signs are ignored?
When does a person cross that thin line between fanaticism and mental illness?
A heartwrenching, frustrating and, at times, angering read, this sobering book is a must-read.
I received an Advance Review Copy. All opinions are my own.

A well-written and engaging narrative of an amazing woman and her “education.” This was an enjoyable and interesting read.

As an educator, this book caught my attention right away. While it didn't fit the definition of formal education, I was nonetheless interested in the way the family was "homeschooled." Without traditional books, the family relied on religious beliefs of the father and herbal remedies of their mother to see them through their childhood. It was at moments disturbing to read about injuries incurred because of a father's disinterest in their welfare. The topic of mental illness also caught my attention, it was laid out in raw honesty, never apologizing for the gritty reality, never caring how it made someone look. This book was an education. We don't always get perfect grades and pass every test, but in life, every arena we enter has the potential to be a classroom. It's what we do with our education in the classroom that matters.

This was not the book for me. I have heard so many amazing reviews about this book, but once I started it, it was so hard to get interested in. I stopped reading it and then tried to come back and read it again and I still felt the same. This author’s writing style is probably just not one that I can get on board with.

Well this book made me need to talk about it with others that had read it! I wasn’t even 30 percent into the book and couldn’t hold back! I turned to FB and some of my book friends on pages so I could find people who had read it already! I was so angry at so many things that went on in this book, that I felt like maybe I was overreacting! After talking to a bunch of other readers, I felt I was not! I have nothing against Mormons, but the author’s father was a zealot, who put his family in danger so often it was crazy. This book was so good, but about things that were so sad. I couldn’t even imagine that in this day and age, that there are people who not only don’t send their children to school, but don’t home school them either! I’m so happy for the author and some of her siblings, that they were able to get out from under the spell of that house! I was lucky to get this book through Netgalley.

Tara Westover grew up unschooled and only educated in the rudimentary academic basics. How this woman was able to over come the craziness of her family and upbringing is still a mystery to me even after reading the memoir. She explained it well, but her drive and desire to learn was all encompassing. It should be standard reading for high school. Really, if she can overcome all her disadvantages, so can so many others.

5 BIG Stars! Some serious 😮 WOW. I saw this going around among my GoodReads friends, but hesitated to request it from NetGalley. While I like memoirs, I was a bit afraid this story was too upsetting. After quite a few outstanding reviews, I decided to see if I could pick it up. SOOOOOOOOOO very glad I did! I got it after the publish date and then put it off....still kinda afraid of my own emotions while reading it. It is not an easy story I must tell you. But, I am thrilled I read it.

What an amazing survival story. I know no one who had to grow up like Tara did. My childhood was so far from this I can't even relate. I am not sure I would even believe it if I didn't trust some of my GR friends and their 5 stars reviews. It's just so good! Painful, scary, difficult, intense, unbelievable, incredible, good, wonderful, strong, and unstoppable. I highly recommend it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for a digital copy to review. Might be my best read for 2018! I will be thinking on this one for a long time.

Pithy and excruciatingly honest, Tara Westover's memoir was well worth reading, but difficult to fathom. The author's childhood was spent largely working in her father's salvage and construction businesses, AND homeschooling was limited, sporadic, incidental. Extreme views and expectations, endured violence, dominated family life. Following Tara's endeavors to become educated and find a place in the larger society is a memorable journey.

If you didn't know, "Educated" might appear to be fiction, but it is a memoir. Tara Westover was born in Idaho to parents who were survivalists. The family kept themselves so isolated that the children were not allowed to attend school or see doctors. If one of them became ill or was involved in an accident, herbal remedies were used.
The father prepared his family for the end of the world which could come at any moment.
When Tara's brother bravely left his environs, he discovered a world out there, unknown to any of them. That is when Tara embraced such an idea. Unbelievably, Tara escaped from the violent attacks of another brother, ventured out into the unknown, and went on to attain a PhD degree from Cambridge University.
This is an amazing coming-of-age story where determination and persistence won out. Fascinating read!

*Thank you to both the publisher and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy of this book.*

I'll be honest, I wasn't all that interested in this book when I initially heard about it. Then it started showing up everywhere and I learned that the author had been raised in the same religion I too had once been part of. My interest was piqued and I finally picked it up.

All I knew about the book, going in was that the author had somehow made her way through advanced degrees without any formal education in her early life. I assumed that would be the bulk of the book, but I was mistaken. While that plays a part I would say that the bulk of the book is more about the author overcoming her circumstances, her cognitive dissonance, as she educated herself on who she really was and who she wanted to become. This book is riveting. Horrifying and inspirational all at once.

If you have experienced abuse in any way that you may find this read very triggering.

Tara Westover grew up in rural Idaho, the youngest of seven children born to parents who lived their own brand of Mormonism. Her father was a survivalist, sure that the government was out to get them. He considered himself a prophet of sorts, and he ran a junkyard where all of the children were put to work. Her mother became an herbalist and eventually started a business selling essential oils. Their home was a volatile, violent place where physical needs were often unmet.
Tara was “homeschooled” according to her parents, but she actually had very little schooling at all. Wanting more than the life of abuse and neglect she’d grown up with, she decided to teach herself enough to get to college. She took the ACT and enrolled in Brigham Young University when she was 17.
Getting into college was one thing, staying there was another. She was not prepared in any way for entering mainstream culture, even the conservative culture of BYU. Moreover, she had huge gaps in her knowledge of the world and its history.
Her fight to succeed was arduous and emotionally taxing. The strange nature of her family’s relationship to religion left her unable to embrace it at all. She came to see her parents’ failures as a result of her father’s mental illness.
Educated is an ode to the power of education. Her against-all-odds educational success (including a Ph.D. in history), makes for a gripping memoir, somewhat comparable to Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle. (Random House)

Thanks to NetGalley for the ecopy for my Kindle.
This was a hard to read book since it dealt with physical and emotion abuse of children. Religious views and personal views from the father ruled the mother and children. Three of the children escaped from the home and managed to succeed but not without permanent scarring.
A lot of the story was hard to believe, but it is a memoir so it's what the author saw, felt, and lived.

This book was so unbelievable, and so well-written that it read more like a novel than nonfiction. Reading about Ms. Westover's "education" makes it all the more impressive that she can write with such beauty, grace and emotional depth.

Tara Westover's <b>Educated</b> may be the most talked about memoir of the year. After seeing all of the accolades on Goodreads I was thrilled to find this book on Net Galley. As with Jeanette Walls' <b>The Glass Castle</b>, <b>Educated</b> deals with a young woman overcoming what seem like insurmountable odds in the face of abuse to achieve success. It is a tough but intriguing read. Similar to a car wreck, most readers will slow down to gather what happened, yet find that it's difficult to stomach the carnage. The level of injury and emotional abuse that befell the children in this family would seem beyond belief. No one wants to believe that this is anyone's reality. It would be too injurious for our own psyches, our own rosy-colored world. Unfortunately, there are children across America that suffer at the hands of their parents everyday. Whether the root cause is mental illness, drug addiction or religious fundamentalism, cases like these do exist. And while I can't say that <b>Educated</b> is 100% gospel truth or parcel out the fact from the fiction of Tara Westover's book, I can say I do believe her story at it's essence, its core. I hope that others suffering similar plights might come across this book and realize that there is hope.

This book fairly burst onto the scene recently. And I have to be honest and say that I was not originally that interested in reading it. I had seen comparisons to The Glass Castle, which I had read and enjoyed years ago, but just was not in the mood for. I figured I’d hold onto it in the back of my mind and wait til I was ready…and not be too worried if I never got there. But it seriously kept popping up. It seemed like literally everyone was reading it and loving it and every single review talked about how mid-blowing the story was, how no one could put it down. I confess, my curiosity got the better of me. I added myself to the library waitlist for the audiobook (my preferred method of “reading” nonfiction) and had it in my hands a couple weeks later. And seriously, holy mouth hanging open, Batman, this book was everything everyone was saying and more. Even if you are like me, if you aren’t sure you want to read it now (or ever), ignore all that and give it a go.

“The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.”

I finished this over a week ago, but it’s taken me that long to work up the gumption to write this review. It’s never taken me that long before. I don’t even think I’ve really pulled it together enough yet, internally, but I’m starting to be nervous that I’ll leave something out if I don’t get my feelings down soon. This is nonfiction. It’s the author’s true story about her life and upbringing. But wow, is it the type of nonfiction that makes you say out loud “that cannot possibly be real” (and proves that sometimes reality is crazier than anything one can make up). Basically, Tara’s parents are Mormons, strict ones. Her father is (we learn as the story unfolds) probably bipolar, causing him to be paranoid, have delusions of conspiracy, and be a sort of doomsday-prepper. Her family lived (lives) on a mountaintop in rural Idaho, fairly removed from community and modernity, and she never attended any sort of organized school. That is, not until an older brother (of which there are many) convinces her to study for the ACT and she gets into BYU. That’s right, college classes at BYU as a 17-year-old are her first time in classroom schooling, and really her first experience with any sort of broad range worldview awareness. As she moves through her education, from BYU to Cambridge to Harvard and beyond, we readers watch both her journey of personal growth and discovery and her struggle to compromise her new knowledge/self with her family and old life. The stress of that separation is visceral as Tara recounts her tale…and the conflict of education versus tradition, in her own life and in a larger sense, becomes the focal point of her development.

I’m not really sure that I have the words to tell you how jaw-droppingly shocking the majority of this book it. Seriously, I must have gasped and clapped my hand over my mouth probably 15 different times, for 15 different reasons, while listening. The story of Tara’s life is, in the literal sense, unbelievable. And, though at times I felt almost guilty about this reaction (because this is seriously her life, her family’s life, this is not a fictional story!), it had that “I cannot look away from this train wreck” page-turning quality. From her family’s insistence on not visiting doctors/using modern medicine (even in some of the most horrifying circumstances) to some of the insanely unsafe junkyard/construction practices her father used to the world events Tara had no idea about when starting college (things like The Holocaust) it was, truly, incredible. Then there were other things, like how big her mother got in the essential oil/chakra healing industry or Tara’s singing/acting “career” as a child or the small things she wasn’t prepared for in the “real world” (like needing a blue book for college exams – though honestly, I didn’t know about that either before my first exam, when do they actually tell you about those?), that were fascinating in completely different ways. Perhaps not as horrible or shocking, but still bordering on the unreal.

And then there is the biggest, most difficult storyline, the one running through the entire memoir, of Tara’s struggle to become who she is today. She dealt with so much shaming, physical and emotional trauma, and more at the hands of her family (primarily her father and one brother in particular) that caused her to completely shut down, to disassociate, to remove herself, a number of times. The psychological strain she was under from these abuses was immense, but she had no choice but to find ways to deal with all that alone…and even after she “left” her family, these claws were still in her and she still felt that she was on her own in dealing with it. Her lack of trust and general embarrassment about her past and her experiences was heartbreaking, but easily understandable and empathize-able. And, though many of her specific situations are individual to her, in this particular sense her story is not unique (and to that end, I do want to include a trigger warning for physical and emotional abuse to anyone reading this).

However, through it all, Tara continues to push at the boundaries of the life she was born and raised in. With support first from a brother, intermittently (and inconsistently) from other family members, and later from various professors and mentors, she takes step after step to become what she calls, in the end, “educated.” Her objectiveness in writing this story, her own story, is amazing. Although she tells things like they were, pulling no punches about either the situations (as she sees it looking back – these evaluations of her own behavior/actions were one of my favorite parts) or her reactions to them, she does it all with a lens of clarity that is beyond admirable. It is so clear from her writing how much her family means to her, how much she loves them, and how much she wants more than anything to give them the benefit of the doubt and portray them in as positive a light as she can (and her guilt when she cannot). And you can clearly see how much harder that gets as her story progresses and she learns more, both as far as general knowledge and self-actualization, but she never stops trying. It’s possibly one of the most real and heartrending aspects of this book.

I know, looking back, that my feelings and reactions while reading are not even close to fully captured in this review. This is just one of those improbable tales of courage, persistence, support that is as inspiring as it is unlikely. But it’s also completely authentic – there were no rose-tinted glasses or preposterous accusations here – this is just a plain old “telling it like it was” story of an anything but plain old story. Seriously, this went beyond my expectations in so many ways and I absolutely recommend it.