I enjoyed reading this book. She is an intelligent woman who overcame many obstacles to become the woman she is now. I was amazed at all she went through. Thank you Tara for sharing your heartache and triumph with us. What an inspiration.

I received an ARC of "EDUCATED" from NetGalley for an honest review. I wish to thank NetGalley, Random House, and Tara Westover for the opportunity to read this book.

I'll just cut to the chase and say that this has been the BEST book of 2018 for me. That is saying a lot as it is ONLY March 2018!!

The book hooked me from the start and reeled me in more and more as the book progressed. This debut autobiographical book is an AMAZING story of a young woman who was trapped by a dysfunctional, fundamentalist Mormon family who changes her life through education. Honestly, this is the way that we can save children especially girls, young women, and mothers throughout the world - EDUCATION!!

This author writes so beautifully and vividly that I felt that I was seeing each scene through her eyes and that I could use all of my five senses to FEEL how the entire atmosphere was. This book SO needs to be a MOVIE!!

Please READ this book - it is beyond sensational!! HIGHLY recommend!!

I have been going back and forth with my star rating. I finished the book early this morning and have been trying to get my thoughts together. I’m still waffling on my actual star rating. I think it’s more of a 3.5 but I will tell you why I’m rounding up later.

This book is being praised in the same vein as The Glass Castle and I’m not sure I agree. I loved The Glass Castle and while similar, they are very different. The abuse, and lets be very honest here it’s abuse, is quite hard to read. I cannot imagine my brother purposefully breaking my wrist or putting my head in a toilet. And my parents just idly watching it happen and saying it must be evil possessing me, oh hell no.

Even if the things that happened aren’t 100% accurate, these are her memories, this is Tara’s memoir. And who gets to tell her story??? She does, it’s hers to tell, it was hers to live through, it’s her memories in her head. As a parent myself, I cannot imagine letting that kind of world exist for my children.

The writing is fantastic. She has a PhD for a reason. She attended Cambridge for a reason. Tara writes with a passion in her words that I’m not sure even she realizes.

So why the 3 stars? I liked it but it was not enjoyable to read. It was rough, the abuse, the religious extremism, the danger, the “education”, the lack of care, and the lack of familial love, was really draining on me. It sucked every bit of happiness out of me. I kept reading because I needed to make sure that Tara wound up ok in the end. I knew she must have since she wrote a book but dang, to live through that life and not have more emotional and physical scars as she does, is lucky. Clearly she is very well educated now and that’s why the bump in stars happened. Story was a solid 3 because it was just hard to read but the writing was a 4.5.

One of the most poignant moments in the book for me was when she was in the western civ course in her first semester and she didn’t know the word Holocoust. Tara didn’t know that word. The class thought she was making a bad joke. But she truly didn’t know what it meant. She went from zero education to a PhD at a monumental speed. To me, that alone was worthy of admiration.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for allowing me to read this. Thank you Tara for sharing what I’m sure was one crazy upbringing with the world. You have gumption in spades my dear and I tip my hat to you.

Tara Westover grew up on Buck Peak, isolated from the "mainstream" world that her dad didn't trust. She and her older siblings didn't attend school and the youngest four didn't even have birth certificates until years after their birth. Both government and the medical field were shunned and considered an abomination of God's perfect plan for true believers.
The Westover clan considered themselves survivalists, storing thousands of gallons of fuel and canning thousands of jars of food for the impending end of days.
We read intense descriptions of reckless behavior fueled by paranoia and suspicion that led to countless car accidents, burns, head injuries, and various other near death experiences in the family. There was also a lot of physical and mental abuse that was ignored and eventually denied by most of the family.
Tara is accepted to BYU at 17 and realizes how sheltered she has been from the world when she learns about events like the Holocaust and Civil Rights Movement for the first time. While learning history, she begins to question her own.
On the road to her PHd, Tara finds herself in a battle to prove devotion to her family while trying to understand the underlying mental illness at play and step outside a long played game of manipulation.
A raw and powerful story of coming of age and family bonds, about owning our personal history but refusing to let it define us.
Thanks to Netgalley for providing an uncorrected proof for review after publication.

It took me a little while to get into this book, but around the time Tara went to college, I was COMPLETELY hooked and finished it in less than a day. This story was absolutely incredible and read like fiction. The writing was phenomenal, the story was part shocking, part horrifying, part inspiring, part sad, and part hopeful. I highly encourage everyone to read this book because it will change your perspective on life in a way you might not be expecting.

I rarely can't decide between 4 and 5 stars, so I'd call this a solid 4.5, even though I keep going back and forth. Tara Westover has had an amazing, unbelievable life full of pain and heartbreak and delusions and abuse. yet, she manages to break away from her fundamentalist/crazy Mormon family and make her own way in the world, against all odds. This memoir reads less like history and more like a novelization of a terrible childhood shot through with hope, which makes it all the more compelling every time you remember that she lived this life along with her six older siblings. Highly recommended for fans of Glass Castle, Sound of Gravel, or my fellow homeschool moms who need a "you're doing okay" reminder, because, whatever you're teaching them, it's more than Tara learned at home, and she turned out!

When hearing a book described as a memoir, the thought that follows usually includes some semblance of “a personal reflection of a life over time.” Tara Westover, at a mere 31 years old, makes her book debut with a quite superlative memoir. Educated follows Westover’s upbringing as part of a survivalist family, through her questioning and outgrowth of her fundamentalist origin, and to her breakaway to self-confidence through higher learning.

Tara Westover was raised as one of seven siblings in a tiny Idaho town at the base of a mountain. Her father was paranoid about crossing paths with the government, and actively prepared for the “Days of Abomination” believing that the world would end at the turn of the century. Westover’s mother was a midwife and herbalist who was raised in a “normally functioning” home, but now largely supported her husband in silence for the best of her children. Westover received no formal education as a child, was never vaccinated, and to this day, doesn’t know her exact birth date – she wasn’t issued a birth certificate until she was nine years old.

As Westover grew up, she and her family saw head injuries, falls from the tops of mechanical equipment, motorcycle accidents and burns from explosions, and perceived all as God’s will. Westover had strained relationships with her parents and with one of her older brothers because of tempers, pride, and even mental sickness; it’s her broken family system with which Westover eventually struggles to reconcile. When Westover begins to see the possibility of a different life from her upbringing, she takes it upon herself to self-teach, and gains acceptance to Brigham Young University. Ten years later, she completes her doctorate in history at Cambridge University.

In addition to expertly writing a clear and fluid narrative, Westover effectively crafts noticeably strong chapter beginnings and endings. At a chapter’s end, the reader is continuously compelled to read into the next chapter, if even just a few lines of the first paragraph, before closing the book until the next opportunity to sit and read. Westover fully immerses her readers with vivid descriptions of not only her physical environment, but also her emotional environment.

Through Educated, Tara Westover communicates an important truth that is allowance for self-accomplishment through selfhood. “You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.”

How very daunting it can be to overcome a false image of yourself that you have been taught since childhood. Thankfully, I have no experience with the level of family disfunction Dr. Westbrook grew up with, so I struggled to understand her description of her inability to communicate her experiences or thoughts to other people. I grew impatient with her emotional dependence on her family. But that was exactly the point. She was dependent and had no words because she had only ever been taught to be dependent and responsive. Education and encouragement from key people in her life finally helped her find her voice. I hope her life will continue to heal and grow stronger.
I was provided an electronic version from Net Galley.

Tara Westover took herself from being “home schooled” (and by that, I mean really not at all) to Cambridge and Harvard! How amazing is that?! And through all of this, she struggled with her family and how she was raised. Her father thought the end was coming soon and prepared accordingly. He was Mormon but his take on religion was his very own. He was bipolar and the way he raised his family was extremely hard to read at times. The torture he let one son put upon his daughters was so sad. I was in tears through so much of this book. For Tara to take herself away and get as far as she has in life is one of the most inspiring, amazing stories I have read in a long time.

There were times you just want to wake her up to what’s going on but when you are raised a certain way, it is hard to believe anything different. She pays a price for trying to find herself and it is heartbreaking at times. But to find the courage and the boldness to finally pick herself up and live her life for her, left me in tears. The end left me with a happy heart.

This is such a great book. We tend to take our education for granted and this book will make you think twice about that. It is truly a blessing for our minds and our souls.

I have a hard time reviewing memoirs because they are so incredibly personal and it's hard for me to judge and lay stars on someone's personal story. However, I can say without a doubt...I loved this book! Not only is it a powerful story but it is extremely well written, so well written in fact that it's easy to forget that it's a memoir. This is the amazing story of Tara Westover and her incredible rise from an isolated, unschooled child in the mountains of Idaho to earning a PhD from Cambridge University. Through interesting stories and harrowing tales of growing up in a family of mental illness, Tara lets us inside her childhood and the madness that ensued. Her father is fearful of the government and refuses to send his children to school. He has the family preparing for the end of the world and Tara lives in a state of fear. Until she's older and she starts to see her family from an outsiders perspective, thinking maybe there is more to this world than the mountain. She begins to educate herself and in the process starts to extricate herself from what she's always known and begins a journey of discovery- discovering the world beyond the mountain and who she is without her family. At times this was hard to read, but this is a powerful story. Thank you @randomhouse for this advance reader in exchange for my honest review.

This is a beautiful memoir about the power of education. It should be read by everyone.

It’s hard to put my feelings into words that are adequate. Even that statement is an understatement. If this story is told over dinner or drinks with close friends, I can imagine the reactions, rounded eyes, shock, then the protests. As a reader, I don’t feel it’s appropriate to respond in such a way because this book is a revelation about someone’s life - I’m not one to judge. All I can say over and over again when reading the childhood phase of this memoir is “That shouldn’t have happened...no..these kids shouldn’t have gone through that...” but then I bite my lip because it’s not my place. Numerous sections of this book make it hard to read because of the level of abuse and it made me think more than once “This seems exaggerated” but then again I hold myself in check. This book isn’t about validating the facts. I wasn’t there by her side while she had to go through everything so I am far from one that wants to pass judgement, all I can do is sit tight and read what the author wants to say.

Educated: A Memoir details the struggle of walking away from what the author has known, loved, and been taught all her life to something that had been kept out of her reach, unknown, and yet undeniably good for her. It’s a test of her loyalty against her right. It's even a fight to realise that education is her right. It’s a journey of growing up, finding yourself, and understanding the repercussions of being a family headed by a parent who has BPD and at the same time cut-off from the world. She was raised to be unquestioning of her father’s words, and there are times when Dad seem to twist and stretch his religion to fit his goals and own views. And it is education that has finally freed her.

Halfway through the book it struck me how far Tara’s come, and it dawned on me how far she has to go still... it made my throat thick thinking about it.

It seems like I may be the only one out there who isn't raving about Educated by Tara Westover. It took me a month to get through the book and, as intrigued as I was by the cover copy with its description of a young woman growing up in a survivalist family, I had a hard time getting into the book itself. There are so many horrific injuries that go untreated. There is so much abuse among the siblings. At one point, Tara's mother tells her its time to move out of the house because the woman believes her daughter is four years older than she actually is. It was all too much for me to take in and, after Tara rejected several offers of help, I started to lose patience with her. (And then I felt bad about that, because this is a woman's actual life and not a work of fiction.)



Over the past couple of years, I've read a lot of what I just learned is called "misery lit." Sometimes it's the writing that makes me keep turning pages. Sometimes, the writing isn't great but the story is so fascinating that I want to read it anyway. This book fell somewhere in the middle.

An intimate sharing of the author's survivor story from a childhood of radical upbringing. Some of the events narrated are shocking, yet believable. I imagine her vulnerability in putting these events down in her memoir, and rejoice in her step towards healing and empowerment.

I really enjoyed this book and found it to be very interesting from beginning to end! I loved the setting of the mountains and The Princess. Tara is caertainly to be admired for going to college and trying to make peace with her mentally disturbed family! It is sad that she never had a close relationship with her family due to their mental illnesses. You can see how the cycle repeats itself from her parents to her siblings. I would recommend this book to my friends.

This almost unbelievable real-life story by Tara shares how she grew up in a survivalist home in Idaho with 6 brothers and sisters. Despite abuse and educational neglect, she somehow broke free and went to college, then graduate school, then received her doctorate.

Her story is very inspiring. It shows how people really can overcome many obstacles. When all the odds were stacked against her, she still somehow kept hope alive.

3 Sad to Say Stars 🌟🌟🌟

Ugh this is hard for me... I really am such a positive reviewer for the most part, but this book I unfortunately found disappointing.... this could be for multiple reasons, I went in with high expectations... I had read so many glowing reviews for this book I was expecting greatness.... also this is absolutely not in my preferred list of genres, but this also could’ve helped the book.... as I have very few books to compare it to.... I finished this book well over a week ago and I have sat on this review, because I just am not sure how to be honest without criticizing a persons life.... for this reason I may never read another memoir that I need to review, it is hard for me to separate the person from the book.... but I will try...

On a very positive note I thought the message of this book was wonderful education is extremely important.... it really is one thing nobody can ever take away from you.... I do admire Tara’s fortitude to acquire an education..... however there was a little luck involved here.... all I’m saying is the average person of average intelligence probably isn’t going to end up at Harvard.... no matter how hard they work.... clearly Tara was blessed with the intelligence to do so, and this was not addressed anywhere in this book... my father grew up with a single mother, his father passed away when he was one-year-old, they didn’t have much, but his mother forced him to go to at least one year of college and he ended up with a PhD in aeronautical engineering.... now I am very proud of my father he has accomplished a lot in his life and he is an amazing person, however he was also blessed with an amazing brain... apparently this skips a generation because my son was blessed with that same amazing brain.... all I’m saying is sometimes you need to give credit where credit is due.... if I had started college without knowing any algebra my freshman year I would have never made it through college much less ended up at Harvard, no matter how hard I worked..... so yes you should work hard, yes education is important, but you also need to be realistic with what your abilities are.... some of the hardest working people might end up at the local community college or not in college at all..... sorry that was a bit of a rant, rant over....
There are also some things in this book I found a little hard to believe.... however I will give Tara the benefit of the doubt on this, sometimes our perception of things isn’t exactly how things happened.... wow a lot of things could have been avoided if they just wore seatbelts....

But really in all honesty none of the things stated above cause me to not love this book, it just did not hold my attention.... I needed some light moments in the midst of all these horrible childhood memories.... even in the worst of childhoods there are some bright spots....

For me this book had a very positive message, however I would’ve preferred it to be delivered in a more positive and realistic manner.... and to all of you who love this book I am so glad you did! really I wish I had as well....
*** thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for a copy of this book ***

What an interesting memoir about a life outside of mainstream society. Tara Westover was born in 1986, but at times, reading her memoir felt as if it was set decades earlier.
Raised by a radical Mormon father and subservient mother, Tara and her siblings were not sent to school or doctors.

As Tara grows up, she begins to become more enlightened to the circumstances of her family life. Not getting a birth certificate until age nine and having no formal education until age seventeen, definitely set Tara apart from her peers.

What is outstanding is that up until she entered college, Tara was more or less self taught. It is impressive that three children out of the family went on to earn a Phd.

Education aside, there were many other disturbing aspects about the family. Abuse, suffered at the hands of an older brother, was overlooked. Safety precautions in the family business were nonexistent, resulting in some devastating injuries that the family chose to treat at home, rather than go to a hospital.

Not surprising that today Tara has no contact with at least half of her family. Any of the siblings that are dependent on income from the family business are estranged from Tara. I think it was easy to freeze Tara out of the family both because she was female and because she was self-sufficient.

As I finished the book, I wondered why Tara would ever care to reconnect with her parents and certain siblings at all. There was so much toxic behavior within the family, I would think it would be insane to be in the same room with them ever again.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Random House for providing me with a copy to read and give an honest review.

Tara Westover grew up in rural Idaho, not terribly far from where I grew up. Her writing beautifully evokes the natural landscape of Idaho and the feelings of isolation that can come with growing up in such a sparsely populated state. Though I did not grow up in the LDS church, the town I came from is very much culturally LDS - and Westover's family - primarily her father - takes the beliefs of mainstream Mormonism to an extreme.

Westover's journey from rural Idaho to BYU to a couple of Ivy League schools, struggling to reconcile her 'worldly' education with the teachings of her youth, is beautifully revealed in this book. Anyone who has struggled to leave a deeply ingrained value system will see themselves reflected here - and even if you've never struggled with such a thing, Westover's journey is so compelling it's impossible to put down.

SALT LAKE CITY — Tara Westover's memoir "Educated" hit bookstores Feb. 20 and is already a New York Times best-seller. It tells the story of her childhood in rural Idaho, raised by Mormon parents with extremist views, and the difficult steps she took to learn about life outside her narrow world.

Growing up, Westover didn't attend school and had minimal homeschooling. No one in her family went to the doctor or used contemporary medicine, relying instead on homebrewed herbs and oils. Her father, who Westover wrote was fearful that the government was out to get them, obsessively planned for the apocalypse by hoarding guns, food and gold. The author, the youngest of seven children, didn't get a birth certificate until she was 9 years old.

But limited education didn't stop Westover from wanting to learn. She attended Brigham Young University, thanks to a good ACT score and her older brother (a BYU graduate) who helped her apply. It was while studying there that her world began to expand. As her professors and religious leaders took her under their wings, Westover was able to stay in school despite what she wrote was a lack of encouragement or financial support from home. She eventually did what once might have seemed impossible: She earned a Ph.D from Cambridge University.

Westover wrote that she suffered physical abuse from one of her brothers during her teenage years. When, a few years later, she spoke out about this abuse, it caused a rift in her family that has persisted.

In "Educated," Westover examines what she gained from her unique upbringing and what she continues to learn from the outside world, revealing who she is becoming and what she has come to value most in life. Today, Westover is no longer active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is estranged from most of her immediate family, but she writes of the peace she has found within herself.

Westover spoke with the Deseret News about writing "Educated" and what is at the heart of her memoir.

Note: This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Deseret News: What gave you the idea to write a book about your life?

Tara Westover: When I was going through the experience of losing my own family, I became really sensitive to the stories that I was encountering in film or books or even advertising. I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself. I felt like we had stories about forgiveness, and most of those stories associate reconciliation with forgiveness. They made it seem like reconciliation was the highest form of forgiveness and I just didn't know whether I would ever be able to reconcile with my family, so I wanted to tell a story that would be about forgiveness but wouldn't necessarily be about reconciliation.

DN: Was is emotionally challenging to write this book?

TW: It was challenging, but the bits I thought would be challenging were easier than I thought they would be. Then there were things I thought would be really easy that were actually the hardest things to write about: the more positive things like the way the mountain looked in the spring or memories I had canning with my mother. The things about my childhood that I really loved the most, writing about those things was hard because I knew they would never happen again. The more difficult things I was able to write about because I knew I wasn't there and I didn't have to go back. It was over.

DN: Have you had victims of abuse open up to your about their experiences since the book has come out? How does that make you feel?

TW: I've definitely had some people emailing me about that kind of thing. I definitely didn't want to write a book that says to anybody, "This is how you deal with difficult or even toxic relationships." But I hoped if they could empathize with me and how I made my decisions, maybe they could empathize with themselves and the decisions they had to make. It's hard to make that kind of decision to walk away from your family because I think sometimes we feel like we don't have the right to make that decision. Maybe it's because we're brought up to be so unselfish and to avoid even the appearance of selfishness. I think because we're so busy trying not to be selfish, we never really learn how to practice anything like self-love.

DN: I noticed you were really careful to say in the beginning that this book isn't meant to reflect on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How do you feel about the church today?

TW: One of the reasons I put that note there is I don't feel like my dad is representative of the church. I knew at the time that it was going to get published in a lot of countries where people don't know anything about Mormonism. I think most Americans probably would know (my dad) isn't a typical Mormon, but I'm not sure most British or French people would, so I wanted to make sure that people didn't read it and mistakenly think this is what all Mormons are like. It has been helpful because in a lot of cases when I'm being interviewed, people will ask me about it because it's the first thing they saw (in the book) and then I get a chance to explain. I didn't want any of the more negative aspects of my family relationships to be pinned on the church. That was important to me.

DN: What impact did your upbringing have on how you feel about the church now?

TW: I'm not sure that is has so much, because I don't think of my parents as mainstream LDS. BYU was a really positive place for me. I can't imagine that I could've gone somewhere that would've been a better environment for what I needed. It has a great tradition of pastoral care and community. I had a bishop (who I talked about) in the book who made a huge difference in my life. He really noticed that something wasn't right and put a lot of time into talking to me. I think he was probably the first almost father figure that I felt like I had in my life. The relationship I had with that bishop was the first time I knew what you're supposed to feel like with a parent. So BYU had this amazing effect on me. I've always been really grateful to the church. I'm not a practicing Mormon now, but I have pretty positive feelings overall.

DN: Do you feel like there's a part of yourself that's still effected by how you were raised?

TW: Absolutely. I found myself humming "Book of Mormon Stories" the other day and it was a pleasant memory of singing that in Primary. There's always going to be bits of that. Often when I'm at dinner parties in Cambridge and people are asking questions about Mormonism, I'll find myself saying, "We don't believe that" or "No, we really are like this." It's funny, when I talk to Mormons I tend to have my list of things when they ask what I don't like about the church, I'm like, "OK, I'll tell you." But when I'm with people who aren't LDS, I'm super defensive of the church because what people think in the United Kingdom especially is just so off the mark.

DN: You talked about in the book how it was at Cambridge that you moved away from actually practicing Mormonism. Was it at Cambridge that you felt like you could experiment with other things?

TW: It's something I wanted to do gradually. I've seen friends exit Mormonism in destructive ways and I just didn't want to do that. I wanted it to be slow and careful and thoughtful. I didn't want to suddenly do a bunch of things that I would never have done before. It's a policy I have in my life now whenever I feel like things are changing really quickly — even right now with the book things are changing really quickly — my instinct is to try to stay as grounded as I can and keep as much of the old around as I can, even while new things are coming in, and slowly change, steadily, but not violently. I think my relationship with the church was like that. When I came to Cambridge, I was involved in the ward for a little bit, but I did have a very gradual process of trying to work out what I thought a good life consisted of.

DN: What is the overall message you wanted people to get from your book?

TW: For me the book is about education and family. I was trying to write a story about how complicated family relationships can be and all the conflicted feelings that a person can have. You can really love someone and choose not to have them in your life and miss them every day and still be grateful you don't have to see them again. For me, the book is about education as an idea of how you create yourself, not just education as a way to get a better job or make a living, but as a way to make a person.