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.

A unique read which was simultaneously thought-provoking and heart-wrenching.

This is one of those books I'll be talking about until the end of days.
The thing that gripped me the most in this book is the infinite difference between Tara's life and mine. At one points she talks about driving 50 miles to a bookstore to get an algebra book. My first thought was that in Belgium (the really small country I live in), there probably isn't a place were you can be 50 miles from the nearest bookstore, even if you tried.

The differences between me and Tara is what made this book such an interesting read for me. I heard about doomsday preppers, but I have never met one and probably will never meet one (at least not in Belgium, I think). It really made me think how different my  life would have been. I can't even begin to imagine how a life like hers would feel like.

I kept being amazed by the amazing writing style Tara Westover has.
My mind couldn't handle how smart this woman is to have accomplished so much with so little help. I know she has a doctorate now and she has had to write many texts in the mean time, but I just can't believe how incredibly smart she has to be to accomplish something like that with almost no help.

The story kept surprising me
Every time something completely crazy happened I thought it couldn't get any extremer, I was wrong every time. Those people got extremely lucky! Some parts were rather gruesome and I had to skip small parts because my imagination was a bit too good for my stomach to handle it.

It's also an extremely emotional story. I really felt for her and I really think she is my new role model and I was in a dire need for one to be honest.

I never met a person that knows herself (or himself) so well as Tara
This woman is such an example. I'm in my last year of my engineering studies and this was such a wake up call. Sometimes it's hard for me to find the motivation to keep going these last months. Her story really made me remember that it's such a privilege to get a good education without having to beg for one.



I recommend this book to everyone who has had the privilege of a decent education. It's a real eyeopener that makes you remember how lucky we all are. It really helped me put all my own school problems into perspective.

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.

Gripping memoir about a young woman's escape from her abusive, doomsday-prepper family who allowed her no formal education, to a Cambridge PhD and life on her own terms. Told in a manner that is accessible to a wide variety of teen and adult readers.

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.

Belonging to a conservative Mormon family of several brothers and sisters, Educated is a coming of age story of a young girl’s struggle to want to attain education in the face of several odds. Tara is a young girl who is a part of the Mormon family whose father is a devout Mormon and strictly adheres to the scriptures. They know that they’re to prepare for Y2K and other apocalyptic End of the World happenings. Her mother has to work as a midwife not just for the practical reasons of making ends meet for the family but also as her father believes that midwifery is a way to serve God and is a duty that is to be fulfilled by every woman. Tara knows from a very young age that what sets her and her siblings apart from other kids their age is that they do not go to school. It is her father’s innate belief that home schooling is the only way to learn, as public school and other government systems or constructs are all channels of the Devil and serve satanic means.

Amidst this cocooned life is a young girl wanting to be set free. But freedom comes at an expense. Sometimes at several unaffordable expenses. Following suit of her elder brother Tyler, she dreams of  going to school. Working as an assistant to her mother, she helps in delivering children by the day and the income allows her to buy books by the night. She has rebelled on the outside but sustaining the same conviction on the inside is not an easy task. Her acceptance into a university of her choice floods her with emotions of guilt and fear. She immediately regrets her disobedience to her family which in turn is a disobedience to God. She feels sinful and worthy of punishment.

Though the book is largely about human reasoning and how far it can take a person to seek understanding of themselves, their society and the world on the whole, it doesn’t miss out on the ill effects of over conservatism or extreme critical mindedness that hampers affective logic and thinking. However, it is not a book about patriarchy working under the garb of religious conservatism. Tara’s father is a person who merely keeps reiterating the things he’s known to be right. For him things are either true or false. There is only truth and lies and nothing in between or otherwise. Yet it is his misunderstood idea that what he’s wishing and commanding them to do is a mere reminder of the path that should be followed for the great things that it has in store. He only wants the best for the family no matter how oppressive or narrow minded that may seem. Yet, it is only much later when Tara attends a class of psychology in University does she realise that her father suffers from bipolar disorder which her mother is well aware of but has hidden from an already muddled up family all along.

University not only challenges Tara’s academic abilities but also her understanding of the world and the people in it. Her mind that receives first impressions about the world wherein people can live other realities very different from her own. It doesn’t seem normal to her. It is quite unimaginable to the reader as well, that individuals like Tara and her family can be living such a detached and isolated life in such a fast tracked world. But what seems strange is that despite landing scholarship after scholarship and getting into top notch schools she is unable to overcome the sense of guilt that she feels in terms of having betrayed her family and God. She all along remains a victim of family feuds that rattle her emotionally. Despite becoming well educated by sheer means of her own merit, the story is inspiring but not awe inspiring. She gets her degrees, gets herself educated and builds a position for herself in the society but she feels the need to reconstruct and hide her past and family backgrounds which shows that she hasn’t recovered at all. Educated is the story of every emotionally deprived child wanting to belong and feel loved. Westover uses simple language and the book is fairly easy to read though largely episodic and repetitive. The repetition is mainly due to the similarity of occurrences with the same kinds of things happening between her and her mother, schizophrenic father and abusive brother. It is also an eye opener about the importance of family as a moral support and backbone to any person’s growth. It is about the hollowness one feels upon the loss of familial affection.

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.

Westover tells the story of her isolated childhood and subsequent exploration into the world through education in beautiful, measured prose. Her compelling memoir is thrilling, but compassionate towards her family.

Distressing, depressing and hard to read at times, but definitely worth sticking with. Tara is raised in a fundamentalist Mormon household where she is taught that modesty and religion are placed above all else. She is "homeschooled" but her education doesn't go much further than Bible teachings. Her father, who she later recognizes as bipolar, is mentally and emotionally abusive and her brother is physically abusive to both Tara and other members of the family. Tara finally starts to pull away from the family after getting away to BYU for college, and then furthering her education at Cambridge and Harvard and realizes that her unhealthy family is causing her panic and crushing anxiety. But even as she pulls away from unhealthy relationships with her family in Idaho, she misses them and struggles with being estranged with them. 

Very good read. And I'm so happy for Tara and her perseverance that came from nowhere but within herself for finding her strength to become educated and stand on her own.

Fascinating, captivating, spellbinding-and any other way to say that this book was hard to put down! I was immediately sucked in and read it in one sitting. Even for a kid from a "normal" family, Westover has accomplished a lot at a young age. When you factor in her unusual upbringing, those accomplishments become even more extraordinary. A must read.