On one hand, if you've never encountered people like this, you'd have a hard time believing this woman's life story, especially people healing from brain injury and third-degree burns without medical assistance. I've known people like this (from a safe distance, thankfully), but even so, this woman's life story is something to behold, a page-turner I could not put down despite the fact that I felt it could have used more depth.

So much of me was URGING her to seek therapy - SERIOUS therapy - the entire time. And while I understood the reasons she didn't, I cringed every single time she wavered in her dealings with her sociopathic brother or her messed up family. I must admit - we are a minimally-vaxxing, part-time homeschooling, herbal-remedy-using, family (though not fundamentalist Mormon preppers, lol) - so I mostly viewed her "I need my vaccinations" response to be rebellion, not "education" - but again, I understood where she was coming from in that regard.
What was made clear, so clear, was the value in ACTUAL education. All three of the children who left the family not only went to college but saw themselves all the way through PhDs. Huge.

On the other hand - I felt this was a mere clip of the journey - the author very clearly avoided discussing personal relationships outside of her family in any sort of depth, which made me wonder how she was learning to move through that aspect of the modern world as well and (spoiler, a little) - a part of me was a little heartbroken when, in reading the author notes at the end, she referred to Drew as merely a "friend".

Regardless of that - Tara Westover is a beautiful writer, and although I unfortunately can't sync them to Goodreads since I read a NetGalley copy, lots of passages were highlighted. I hope this isn't the only thing we'll see from her. She is a writer I will continue to follow.

I appear in the minority of reviewers as I found this book slightly disappointing due to the high ratings.

One positive overall theme is the importance of education. This shapes her understanding of life, relationships, and her beliefs as she moves from lack of formal education to Harvard & eventually her PhD at Cambridge.

There are difficult portions to read about family abuse and neglect. The family does not believe in western medicine, relies on oils or natural medicine.

Thanks to #NetGalley for a copy for review

I will read anything—absolutely anything—about fundamentalist/survivalists and I absolutely loved this. I found Westover’s story really compelling. My only complaint is that I wanted more of her “after” life and maybe a little bit less of the “before.” She does a fantastic job with the difficult task of making her family members, even the ones she has many reasons to resent, fully three-dimensional.

4.5 stars EDUCATED is the story of Tara Westover a woman who was born into the Mormon faith in Idaho – her domineering father wanted to live off the grid and her mild and meek mother was a midwife/healer. Westover was the youngest of seven and, by the time, she came along, her parents didn’t see the need to send their children to school. One of her brothers encouraged her to study for the SAT and at age 17, she found herself in a classroom for the first time at Brigham Young University. She was woefully unprepared – she’d never heard of Napoleon, the Holocaust, or the Civil Rights Movement, just to name a few – but that didn’t stop this determined young woman. I’m in awe of her and all she achieved and recommend this book to anyone who enjoys memoirs or stories of strong women. The audio version is narrated by Julia Whelan – at first I didn’t think she was the best choice but once I settled into the story, it seemed like she was telling me her own story.

Educated is an incredible, vivid, and at times heart wrenching look into the life of Tara Westover. Her family lives off the grid in Idaho and Tara doesn’t enter a classroom until her freshman year of college. Her story is one of struggle, strength, and perseverance. It’s not for the faint of heart.

This is a spectacular memoir. I tore through it quickly, despite the sometimes harrowing material. I will definitely be recommending this title to patrons.

This book is about a girl who, despite her parents’ lack of support and encouragement for formal education, manages to start her academic journey at the age of seventeen. With perseverance, dedication and help from people outside her tight knit, dysfunctional family, she is rewarded years later with her PhD.

Raised by her fundamentalist parents on a secluded mountain in Buck Peak, Idaho, her childhood was not a typical one. Her family situation was dire, brutal and heartbreaking. Her parents, especially her father, were suspicious of the government and determined to keep their children away from its influence, which included attending school. Their days were spent working in their family's metal scrapyard with shockingly little concern for their safety, but it was the mental abuse and control that her parents wielded over the children, that was the scariest and had the longest lasting effects.

Much of the book focuses on this dysfunctional bond with her family and how it conflicted with her deep-seated desire to educate herself. I'll admit that I found the first third of the book slow, but after that point I had a hard time putting it down. For a book where you already know the outcome going in, I was amazed at how riveted I was by Westover's life, her decisions and her repeated struggles to find out who she is, despite her childhood and family's pressure to conform.

This is a well-written and impressive memoir that doesn't hold back. It has its touching moments but often it's a heartbreaking story about a girl who struggles to find her way in the world despite her family's hold on her. Many scenes were hard to read, and I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't a work of fiction. Westover's childhood was appalling but her story becomes one of perseverance, healing and strength.

Disclaimer: This Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) was generously provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

This book made my jaw drop numerous times! What a memoir Tara Westover has written! She is a remarkable woman who has had much success despite what happened during her childhood. It was shocking to read how she was treated by her family and the obstacles that she encountered on her journey through adolescence, on to college, and coping with her family's alienation of her as an adult. It is a profound book that I highly recommend.

An honest and courageous recollection of growing up in the suppression of religious fundamentalism and living to tell the tale.

I think that Westover's writing was mellifluous at times, and stilted in others, but that it didn't often take away from her depiction of what it looks like to be gas-lighted in her most pivotal development stages as a child. Throughout the narrative, you can sense the dissonance percolating from her recollections. And whenever I hear stories of subcultures that are wildly different from what is mainstream, I always wonder about how it would be told from the other perspective. Because of course, extreme bias can often be both traumatizer and traumatized. Westover's story is not only vividly recalled, but it is also measured with fairness.

The backdrop reminded me a lot of The Hillbilly Elegy -- a personal account of rising from the haystack to succeed despite obvious cultural hindrances. And even though it seemed that supporting reflections were tossed in casually and tangentially in multiple occasions, I appreciated that this was more conclusive [than The Hillbilly Elegy] even while knowing that this journey is not over.

The book makes a statement on the role of education in a child's life, no matter what context you are nurtured in, but is underwhelming in the statement itself. The story certainly speaks for itself, but to attach an overarching resolution throughout the course of the novel should warrant a clearer exposition on what exactly education does overall in comparison to the role it played in her life - otherwise the title itself becomes misleading.

A remarkable story, and I'm still blown away that it's TRUE. Growing up Mormon in Idaho, Tara tells incident after incident about what she considered a "normal" upbringing. She didn't know any different. Eventually, Tara created opportunities for herself to see the outside world, and then tells readers about her experiences forging her way through entirely different lifestyles. I suspect we'll be hearing about this book for a while.

This book grabbed me from the get go and I read it fast. But wow, is it a tough read! I can’t believe the obstacles Tara overcame but it was tough reading about her home life.

I enjoyed this narrative nonfiction. The story was extraordinarily compelling and very inspiring. I would recommend this to anyone

One of the best books I have read this year—very introspective and inspirational. I will recommend it to my book club.

I was really impressed with this debut memoir by Tara Westover. The description of the memoir really caught my attention- I was very interested in the homeopathy and essential oils her family used. I found it hard to read and at times I had a pit in my stomach as I read what Tara endured, especially at the hands of her family. I think it's an incredible story of resilience and determination. It's a miracle she was able to "get out" and start the life she lives today. As a teacher, I think it really helps to strengthen what we tell students all the time- your home life does not define you and education can bring you out of some of the most dire situations.

Educated has affected my life. I agree, maybe we will see some things that are not good in our own life. All that we can feel after reading Educated. This memoir was written in a very good way and I was amazed by the way Tara Westover wrote a very personal story.

Tara Westover’s family is described as a family living in a valley in Buck Peak, Idaho. The natural landscape of this place is very beautiful and makes us want to come to this place again. But not as Tara Westover felt. Little Tara lives happily and very critically. Her father was described as the most influential in the family. No doctor, no education and no birth certificate for Tara. There was one thing that hurt when her grandmother and mother argued about Tara’s birth date.

This is just the beginning. On the other hand, the fatal accident incident that caused the injury. Strangely there is no hospital, no doctor. There are only herbal remedies and tincture. Her mother had a concussion and absolutely no doctor’s care. The older she was, Tara realized she had to get out of the family. Education is one way that can get Tara out of the area.

Tara educated herself to study math in order to pass the ACT. When she succeeds, her father says that home education is better than public schools. The Holocaust incident at Brigham Young University left Tara feeling deeply cornered. When friends and teachers think it is inappropriate. But Tara really does not know. Since then Tara has been immersed in a pile of books, studying and pursuing university life.

In 2008, Tara earned her Ph.D. in history from Trinity College, Cambridge. Does it feel easy? No, for Tara who lives with the family to prepare The End of Days. She suffered a PhD exam failure at Harvard. It was very difficult because of family conflict. Her brother’s abuse and acts of violence made things change. It all grows when Tara starts using mascara. Then another violence and sexual abuse began to appear. I feel sick when her parents feel it’s something that does not need to be discussed. Or, do they know and pretend not to see it. Tara has decided to live her way now. She is sincere with what has become part of her life and lives in another way. There is no evidence that her father suffered from a mental illness. All that was only realized by Tara while studying and discussing with the professor. I do not want to get too involved.

Overall, this memoir is really piercing. Every story and event is told in a very good way. I cannot put it back when I started reading it. It’s very decent for everyone. Of course, behind the painful story there is also wisdom. I thank Tara Westover for daring to write this memoir. I appreciate you and be very proud of you. Also

Hard to read yet impossible to put down. A must read memoir. Thanks for the review copy. So inspiring.

Tara Westover's beautifully written memoir deserves all the hype surrounding its debut. The daughter of survivalist parents raised in the mountains of Idaho, she lives her parents' ideals, ignorant of the outside world until she follows in the footsteps of her older, self-taught brother and works her way into Brigham Young University and further. A fascinating look into the closed world of survivalists, the meaning of education, and exposure to the world at large and what it means to be "home."

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview this ARC of Educated.

This book was AMAZING. Kind of blew my mind actually.

A true story of Tara Westover, growing up in small town Idaho (not too far from where I grew up), home schooled, Mormon, and wholly unprepared for the real world, but that's where she's heading.

I don't want to give much away about this book, except to say that it addresses a huge variety of social issues. Fanaticism, mental illness, an aversion to modern medicine, patriarchy, domestic violence, ecclesiastic abuse, misogyny, and forced ignorance. I mean, the list is endless, and heartbreaking, and Tara Westover is my hero, as well as so many people that have overcome difficult home lives and conquered with very little support.

I read the entirety of Tara Westover’s memoir Educated in an anxious fit. My heart twisting and my muscles tensed in response to her own paralysis as she navigates her violent and dysfunctional family dynamics from child to adult. Born into a large fundamentalist Mormon family Westover grew up believing the End of Days doctrine passed down from her zealot (possibly bipolar) father and neglectful or indifferent mother—a pair who chose to keep their seven children out of public schools, away from modern medicine and as much social and government access as they could, hoarding guns and bullets and stocking their bomb shelter. This alone would have made for an interesting life story however add into the mix a deranged and abusive older brother Shawn, a criminally negligent father and a mother who refused to acknowledge the pain under her own roof, and the following is a childhood recollected with such tense fervor at times I felt I might vomit or weep from the sheer perturbation of it all.

Westover details her childhood growing up on a poor farm in Idaho called Buck Peak in the shadow of a mountain where her father scrapped in his junkyard and they lived in relative squalor. She and her brothers are called to work in the junkyard where each is injured to varying degrees, at times, almost purposefully by their father who deems any injury “God’s will” and protective gear interfering to the work. Westover knows she’s different from other children (and other Mormons) but how different she doesn’t realize until she’s a teenager and attempts to educate herself. From there it’s a struggle between her innate curiosity about the world and ability to learn and her obedience and obligation to a family who firmly believes she’s sinning and can only offer love with strings attached.

This memoir was so difficult to read, the injustices beyond frustrating and the overwhelming emotion you feel for this smart spunky girl and the strong woman she’s trying to become is incredibly powerful. It would be easy to attribute most of what happens to Westover to her parents’ strict religious devotion but it’s not Mormonism that fails her family, even when their refusal to see doctors results in terrifying burns and injuries treated only with energy work and homemade tinctures, it’s less a criticism of faith but of parenting. Even when the family seems ready to confront the pain of her brother and his abusive past, instead they turn away and cast her out, leaving Westover in crisis trying to figure out what and who she is without the albatross of her family.

Educated is a demanding memoir, requiring more emotional investment and labour than you might be used to—and worth every single agitated second of it. My first must-read of 2018.

One of the best memoirs I have read to date! Such an inspirational story of a family situation not typical in today’s society. I breezed through this book with few breaks, because I could not put it down. Thank you to Tara Westover for sharing your story with us!