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.

This memoir is inspiring and horrifying g at the same time. Tara's story is a testament to the human spirit and it's ability to overcome while also being a lesson on the lasting damage abuse and neglect can cause. Her intellect and drive to learn are amazing.

First, let me say that Tara Westover is a brilliant storyteller. I was engrossed in this book by the third sentence. It's a memoir of her life growing up in a secluded part of Idaho with her large family as they prepare for the end of days. Specifically, her strictly religious father believes the world will implode on Y2K and they spend their days stockpiling weapons, food, silver (instead of cash) and herbal remedies. He insists that the family lives off the grid, not allowing the children to attend school or go to the doctor, the younger of the children don't even have birth certificates since they were born at home. Where this book fell short for me, was when Tara grows up attends BYU. I find it a bit difficult to believe that someone who never had any formal education could get admitted to a college or university, but she did. This last quarter of this book just felt disjointed and things didn't add up for me. *ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

tara westover has written a haunting memoir that i could barely put down. her experiences growing up in her father’s house was unbelievable. her spirit and determination to survive and thrive despite the circumstances.

I have put off reviewing this book because I couldn't quite decide how I felt about it. I found it to be a quick, engrossing read and that seems to be the popular opinion both here and on goodreads. What has me struggling to write this review is that I felt myself questioning a lot of things in the book and wondering if details were exaggerated or made up. This is not meant to take away from Tara Westover's experience or story because I did truly find her story compelling but there were some elements that I just found hard to wrap my mind around. I will say that this book is a good but hard read. The images and descriptions of emotional and physical abuse were hard to read and a lot to process. I found myself putting the book down to process and then coming back. I think this is worth the read and would recommend it to others.

A heartbreaking, yet uplifting memoir. A young Mormon girl who is deprived of education and a safe home is able to eventually get a doctorate at Harvard. The story is hard to read, but mezmerizing. The abuse she endures at the hands of family members is unbelievable.

Some reviewers have criticized this memoir for not being believable, but I think that is an unfair accusation. Some people just do live extraordinary lives - Westover is one of them. She tells the story of her life as she remembers it. She recalls events in a vivid way, describing her feelings at the time as well as reflecting on it as an adult, with a newfound distance from the cult she was raised in.

Westover does an amazing and honest job of describing the abuse and neglect she suffered as a child - but in an understanding and forgiving way. This is the part that feels real to me - how she gradually pieces together why her parents acted the way they did and making sense of her upbringing. She is a true survivor who has gone on to live a wonderful life.

Thank you to Westover for sharing her story and to Netgalley and the publisher for the galley in return for an honest review.

A fantastic memoir from beginning to end. Tough to read at parts, but man, what a story. To think that someone could make it through life without even knowing what the Holocaust was? It just goes to show that you never know someone's story.

This is the most gripping, emotionally engaging memoir I have ever read. The writing was so good and word choices so precise that I had to remind myself that this was nonfiction. I loved it! I will be recommending this to my book club for discussion.

WOW, this book was amazing. I still have trouble believing this was a true story. Tara Westover's family lives in a hidden world and there story will amaze you!

Wow! What a powerful book! Tara’s gut wrenching story was certainly a page turner from beginning to end.