I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough. Not since The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls has a true story gripped me, challenged my thinking, and changed my perspective like Tara Westover's first book. Raised in a strict Mormon family in the mountains of Idaho, Tara and most of her siblings were kept out of school, not to be educated at home, but to work in their father's scrap yard and their mother's homeopathic and unlicensed midwifery business. Luckily for all of us readers, Tara kept untold number of journals that detail her life: the abuse by her brother, the unending brainwashing of what world history entailed, the attempts by other brothers to break free, the utter lack of safety in her life, the horrific accidents that devastated her family, the total reliance on naturopathic curatives by her mother, and the impact on her family of her father's mental illness. And just when you think life cannot get crazier, Tara's college and graduate work takes us down another insane rabbit hole. It is a profound look at what happens when one doesn't educate a child on things we think are basic. What if a child has never heard of the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King? How does this skew their view of the world? How does the world look on this child, when as an adult their questions and comments show not only ignorance, but whiffs of racism and hatred? Whose fault is it? Parent, society, the individual herself? Can a lack of education, or conversely a formal education, fundamentally change society? This is a powerful book that will completely engross you, fascinate you, and in the end, Educate you. Do not miss this book!

I love memoirs for the simple reason that I can step into someone else's life and live in their world for a short time.. That being said this memoir is one of the best that I have read in a long time. You sympathize with the young Tara trying to find her way and then you sympathize with the adult Tara being torn in two different directions as her education opens her eyes and introduces her to different ideas other than what her father has told her, her entire life. My heart broke at certain parts because you so wanted to help her. To cheer her on and tell her yes you are going in the right direction but these are life lessons that she had to learn for herself. Pick up this book on release day or pre order it. I can promise and guarantee that this book will stay with you long after you have read the last word. Happy reading!

It is gripping, terrifying, uncomfortable, and strange (an understatement). And I suppose inspiring, in that you cheer seeing someone overcome oppression. I completely celebrate her success, and the strength it took for her to break free of those poisonous family bonds.

Now I feel funny about this next thought, and I hope I am not setting myself up for ridicule…but that has never stopped me before, so here goes.

It is just that I can’t help thinking about similar families where the child is not quite so bright, and isn’t able to make that ACT score that gets them out of the abuse. Oh, to think of all the children that eventually buy into the paranoia and submit their souls to such a tortured unhappy life. And it comes across that while there may be petty victories, ultimately this is a very unhappy family. And how could they not be unhappy.

She does an incredible job pulling you into her world, and maybe she does her job so well I started feeling it to well. It was too personally. It is so, so real. So really you want to scream through the pages to her (I see other reviews say things along that line)….

[Toward the end around kindle location 4738]… I had retreated, fled across an ocean and allowed my father to tell my story for me, to define me to everyone I had ever known. I had conceded too much ground - not just the mountains, but the entire province of our shared history
It was time to go home.

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like yelling at the stupid kids in a horror movie you scream “Don’t GO THERE”!! But she does.
Well, she gets out unscathed on her last visit home…Barely.

She shows us the terror of the family, and our understanding grows with hers as she comes to recognize the absurdity of that world.

Why are you like this? Why did you terrify us like that? Why did you fight so hard against made-up monsters, but do nothing about the monsters in your own house? 3207

Damn straight!

Yeah, VERY effective writing. And they only reason I am going with 4 stars rather than 5 is because even though it is a powerful book, I feel there is some more to her story. Maybe she hasn’t lived it and that is why it isn’t there. I guess I am hoping for some insight or wisdom that takes her tale from a personal triumph to a revelation on the nature of mankind. Maybe I am asking too much.

I too wondered where the survivalist, end times / religious apocalypse, of the father came from and appreciated here observations…

[ …on the speculation that the Ruby Rindge encounter might be linked with bipolar disorder of the Weavers, and not because the government was attacking for home schooling their children as her father had said] …For one bitter moment, I thought Dad had lied. Then I remembered the fear on his face, the heavy rattling of his breath, and I felt certain that he’d really believed were in danger. I reached for some explanation and strange words came to mind, words I’d learned only minutes before: paranoia, mania, delusions of grandeur and persecution. And finally the story made sense. 3184

Some of us were more disciplined than others. I was one of the least disciplined, so by the time I was ten, the only subject I had studied systematically was Morse code, because Dad insisted that I learn it. “If the lines are cut, we’ll be the only people in the valley who can communicate,” he said, though I was never quite sure, if we were the only people learning it, who we’d be communicating with. 777

By the end of it I was just burnt out. It takes so much energy to read about the paranoia and anger... I was just so tired and depressed. All that energy and the only joy they have is in “knowing” everybody else will die, and those that don’t will be kept away by the family arsenal. Uggh, how depressing.

There is a lot more, but I need a break. I am plum wore out.


NOTE: I got this early edition from NetGalley and I am well pleased.

Educated by Tara Westover is an unforgettable memoir, joining the ranks of Glass Castle, Liar’s Club, and Wild. I couldn’t put it down and, days later, am still thinking about it. Westover has a novelist’s eye for detail and description, especially about her childhood. There’s no excessive storytelling here. Every anecdote has a purpose and leads to a powerful ending. The push and pull she feels with her family is visceral, and my heart aches for what she went through to get her diplomas.

As a child, Westover doesn’t go to school because her survivalist father believes it’s government propaganda. Instead, she’s educated in her father’s junkyard scrapping metal and in her mother’s kitchen concocting herbal remedies that substitute for healthcare. Everything she knows of the world is filtered through their paranoid, misogynistic religious beliefs. It’s a tough childhood made worse by her brother Shawn’s physical and emotional abuse. Her parents refuse to believe the abuse and make Tara question her own memories and beliefs.

Despite the hardships, Tara maintains a spark of independence. When another brother, Tyler, returns home from college, he tells her, “There’s a world out there, Tara. And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.” Inspired, she teaches herself enough math and grammar to do well on the ACT and gets into BYU.

Tara’s extreme childhood leaves her ill prepared for the world beyond the mountain. Her fish-out-of-water experiences in college are both humorous and heartbreaking. She gains confidence over time, works really hard, and graduates from BYU, then goes on to earn a Ph.D. from Cambridge.

She tries to maintain family ties throughout her education, but the further she gets, the harder it becomes. Her parents accept Tara going to school, but they can’t handle her gaining a different perspective on their lives and questioning what they hold as true. Ultimately, they make her choose: repent and return to the mountain or be cast out of the family.

Despite her unusual story, Westover hits on universal experiences: feeling like an imposter, being torn between family and one’s own desires, the frustration of dealing with gaslighting, and learning to see the world with new eyes. Her path teaches us a lot about resilience and tenacity, and finding your truth in a confusing, sometimes hostile, world.

No matter what Westover does in the future, I’m glad she’s told her coming-of-age story. The memoir genre is richer for it.

I received an ARC of Educated, by Tara Westover, via NetGalley.

This is a book that is difficult to rate because I hated everything about the path Westover took to get where she currently resides in her journey. No one in her family is likable, and there were points where I didn't much like Tara either.

Even now I struggle to consider a rating. But, after much thought, I rated the book on the courage it must have taken to reveal the level of sludge she had to dig herself out of to write it at all.

Having said that, while her ability to survive the crazy is commendable, it was still difficult for me to reconcile her ability to finally (and I do mean 'finally' in the most exasperated sense of the word) overcome the suffocating nature of her family's gross misuse of the terms 'love' and 'loyalty', with the trifling pace she chose to do so.

In so many ways, Westover continually sabotaged her personal growth by blindly following ideals that were never based in reality or love of any kind.

Sure, her parents may have loved her, in some twisted way, but their execution of that love came with so many nasty strings, and frightening terms and conditions, until it was disgraceful to even see those words used in connection to her.

Her father clearly suffered from a severe mental illness, but instead of anyone making sure he was treated, they anointed him a "prophet" because, eh, why not, right? Every action that came to pass in a positive (or negative) way was 'Gods Will'--as opposed to being the result of the dumb decisions he continued to make.

As for her mother, she won't win any awards for parenting; she failed on so many levels--if this memoir is any indication--and she did so without one ounce of regret. Her complicity was disgusting.

And don't even get me started on her abusive, narcissistic, brother, 'Shawn'. A man so deluded about his place in the world, he felt he could play god.

Not only was he able to run roughshod over his siblings, without fear of repercussion, he did so with the blessing of his parents.

Ugh. Just reading about her experience took patience, because the ignorance was so overwhelmingly despicable, I didn't even wish to be a partial witness to it having took place.

I didn't want to be reminded how inhumane people are willing to be in the name of religion, and their own perverted sense of what is, and is not, 'righteous'.

I wanted to abandon ship on Westover's story so many times--mostly because I kept wondering what rational human being is as stupid as she kept deciding to be, in the name of her family's acceptance and love?

I mean, when your parents basically tell you to adhere to a set of false memories, as a condition of not being exiled from your entire bloodline, then it's time to leave on your own accord. But, no, Westover continually struggled with making that decision, and that made me beyond irate. I didn't even want to see how she finally emancipated herself from the trifling idiocy that was her family because I was beginning to think she was a glutton for punishment.

However, this one passage--related to her discovery of the history behind the "N word" gave me just enough faith to continue reading:
I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others--because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.

Of course, by this point, I was skeptical she would ever wake up from the ignorance instilled by her father. But, it was a start.

It's nice to know Westover eventually got her act together, but the path she took was muddled as much by her need to stay connected to an abusive situation, as it was the result of her needing an anchor of familiarity to assist her through a world she was only just beginning to understand--the world in which most people live.

One thing is certain, she endured plenty and had a lot of growing to do--likely still does.

That said, her story further confirms two things: 1) the misuse and abuse of religious doctrine, in any way, is dangerous when placed in the hands of the ignorant, and 2) some people are so broken, it takes years to put them back together...and even then, you can't be sure they'll ever be completely healed.

This book was a whirlwind of emotions. I had so many feelings while reading this book, and I could not put it down. I needed to know what happened to Tara next. I keep wanting to say that I loved this book, but this book was someone's real life and I can't say I loved this book because of that. Because someone went through every awful thing that happened during this book, and I can't love that. I cannot love another person's pain. I can; however, love that Tara was brave enough to put out her story. I can love that Tara persevered through all the pain and trials she's been through so far in her life. I can love Tara's courage and endurance. I can love the strength Tara has. So I love this book for it's ending, for Tara's personality and future. For Tara's courage. Thank you for sharing your story with all of us, and opening my eyes even more to the world around me.

With 'Educated', Westover gives us a glimpse into her life growing up in a Mormon fundamentalist family in rural Idaho. Her parents don't believe in public schooling, or doctors, and are extremely mistrustful of the government. As a child, Tara lives a very sheltered life, rarely leaving her small town or interacting with outsiders. She and her siblings narrowly escape serious injury or death a number of times, but they are treated at home by their mother. She suffers abuse from her brother and neglect from her parents, although she blames herself whenever something happens.

Somehow, without any formal schooling and with a staggering amount of willpower and grit, she works hard and is accepted to BYU. This starts her on a path to a new life, and slowly she realizes just how sheltered she has been. She struggles to reconcile what she is learning in school with the realities of her life back home, and slowly begins to break from her family.

Westover has written a powerful memoir. There is a lot to think about in this book, about the power that parents have over children, the way that religion shapes families, and how difficult it can be to break away from expectations. Highly recommended.

For anyone who is even an occasional memoir reader, Educated should immediately be on your radar. For anyone who has considered reading memoirs, Educated would be an excellent place to start. For anyone who just likes really fascinating stories about difficult circumstances and eventual triumphs, Educated has you covered, too.
Before starting Educated, I'd read several comparisons between it and another much revered memoir, The Glass Castle, and to some extent the comparison is fair (and to be clear, both of these memoirs are and remain five star reads for me). Both Tara Westover and Jeannette Walls came from hardscrabble beginnings, with parents who had their own demons and were devoted first and foremost to each other. They both experienced and witnessed terrible things as a child due to their family's circumstances and their parents' choices. However, their individual stories diverge greatly besides those similarities, and their experiences both deserve attention. Perhaps it is because of the fact that Tara Westover is much closer to my own age that makes her story resonate more with me personally as it doesn't have the remove of time. Tara's experiences were happening at virtually the same time as I experienced a very normal (by U.S. standards) childhood. Additionally, while there are certainly flaws to the educational system in this country, and while Tara's experience with homeschooling (or lack thereof) is obviously not typical, reading about her experience when she enters formal education for the first time in college was enlightening, to say the least. I realized while reading this that there are so many things that I took for granted and don't remember actually being taught, but realistically, at some point I learned these things either through formal or informal instruction in school.
Tara's story is at times infuriating, at times horrifying, at times inspiring, and at times heartbreaking. It's engaging from beginning to end, and inspires a lot of thought about family, religion, and education.

Educated is a fascinating, spellbinding memoir about the author’s life with her extreme Mormon,survivalist family in Idaho. Tara tells her story factually which makes the abnormal of her family life even more chilling. In spite of all the abuse from her father and even violence from her unbalanced brother Shawn it is not a depressing account. The resilience and struggle of Tara to slowly get out of this alternative , religion induced, reality is testament to great resilience of the human nature and spirit. I definitely would recommend this book for everyone.

My first five-star read of 2018. This book is beautifully written and is both heart-breaking and inspiring. Tara boldly shares her story of abuse at the hands of her family and the strength of spirit that allowed her to break free. It is an eye-opener to read the story of people who kind of fly under the radar to society at large. It is a world that I can not understand but this book taught me so much. I am thankful for Tara's honesty, as she explores the hurt she faced by the people who were meant to protect her, how she shows that breaking free from your abusers is not an easy thing to do and in some cases takes multiple attempts. I also loved reading her time of discovery in educational institutions, I can remember vividly through her words what it was like reading at university, I can only imagine how much more amazing it was for her. I think this book is a must-read for all in 2018.

Tara Westover overcame obstacles that are hard to imagine. An abusive, brilliant, bi-polar father. A beautiful, submissive, brilliant mother. A large Morman family swarming with brothers and sisters that were not formally educated, fight to stay, fight to leave, and fight with each other on the side of a breathtaking mountain. Her father is a zealot, a freedom fighter, and a prepper, full of love, anger, patience, violence and enough jars of peaches to last ten years. As Tara grows up she is content working dangerously in their junkyard with the boys, reading her bible and helping mother with her holistic remedies. As she matures, her intelligence and curiosity cannot be suppressed any longer. She finds herself at a young age (no one knows for sure, because she has no birth certificate) at BYU formally learning for the first time in her life. How she manages with no experience or social skills, no money and no idea what to expect makes her the bravest, smartest and most independent woman imaginable. But even after success at Cambridge, Harvard and a PhD, it takes years and years to conform to mainstream living and Tara never shakes the longing for her father’s acceptance. Bizarre or not, she craves his approval and does not want to be estranged from her boisterous, often abusive clan. Tara Westover beautifully describes her very personal journey exploring family relationships and both parental and personal responsibilities to ones future. To analyze the nature and nature of yourself with honesty is not an easy task. Highly recommend this magnificent memoir, I could not put this one down.

Absolutely phenomenal read. I could not put this down! Ms. Westover's incredible story is captivating and inspiring.

Wow, what a powerful book. The world Tara grew up in is so removed from any normalcy and yet it is her normal. It is amazing that inside her was such strength to push back and strive for her own truth. This story of abuse in the home, from those you love, makes you want to reach into the book and shake people, Tara included. At the same time the root of the abuse, the lack of education, religious extremism, and mental illness fills you with compassion. I so applaud all the people with whom she encountered who helped to set her compass in the right direction, who could have rightly walked away thinking what a nut case, and still persisted. I am so impressed with her ability to self evaluate, and really think deeply on how she was feeling and how that was impacting her life, and the will to change. Such a strong family that she grew up in. I wonder if they all could have somehow been transported into a family who embraced medicine, schooling, rational thought, what they all would have aspired to.
This book is written in a more factual accounting of what happened, with some lyrical moments thrown in. I look forward to more books coming from Tara Westover, a very talented and strong writer.

This is a memoir about Westover's childhood, growing up in Utah, the youngest of seven siblings. The author's parents didn't believe in anything connected to the government, including modern medicine. The children were homeschooled, but actually didn't receive much of an education. Any sickness or injury was treated with herbal medicines, even severe injuries caused by car accidents and explosions. When she was seventeen, Westover went to school for the first time and spent the next decade pursuing an education.
This was a difficult book to read, both because of the graphic incidents of violence and abuse described and because it is hard to believe that parents could behave the way the author's parents did. Throughout the book Westover wrestles with the idea of her own worth and whether or not she can disagree with her family's beliefs and still be a good person. This is a fascinating look at how education can be the solution to isolation and misinformation.

"I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don't go to school."

Tara Westover begins her memoir with this fact. It's typical of the book: not written in soaring prose, but stated factually. We learn much more about her upbringing. Her fundamentalist Mormon family is extreme in the extreme -- the family lives on a mountain, and Dad rules the roost in every way. He fears the government (the kids don't have birth certificates and the family doesn't visit doctors, even when they are horrifically burned or when they are badly hurt in car accidents). He prepares the family for the "end of days" and preaches to them about the evils of the Illuminati: "I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected."

And of course, Dad doesn't believe in the kids attending school. Instead, Mom "home schools" them, although this amounts to little. Tara remembers paging through a math book. She decides to count each page her fingers touch as studied, so when her mom asks her how many pages she has completed, she answers "Fifty." Her mom is proud and exclaims over how she could never make that kind of progress in public schools.

"Normal" to Tara consists of this type of schooling, and of working at her dad's junkyard. It's only later that her "understanding would shift, part of (her) heavy swing into adulthood."

Her older brother, Tyler, decides to buck the family's rules and attend college. His parents are not happy: "College is extra school for people too dumb to learn the first time around," her dad says. However, Tyler tells Tara about how much he enjoys learning: "There's a world out there, Tara, and it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear."

Tara decides to take the ACT and try to get into college herself. First she has to find a math book and do months of study, but she does get a high enough score to get in. She is totally a fish out of water there, not knowing about the Holocaust or many other historical events that pretty much everyone else grew up knowing. She is appalled at the wardrobe of many of the girls (and this is at Brigham Young, a conservative school), having been taught by her dad that a "righteous woman never shows anything above her ankles."

Throughout the book, one thing that puzzled and frustrated me was now supportive Tara's mom was of her dad, at the expense of her children. In some ways, she tries to help Tara escape and go to school. But ultimately, she stays loyal to her husband even when it means writing Tara out of her life. I understand that she has been brainwashed by him (as Tara was as a child, and as many of her siblings still are), but still, it was maddening. To this day, when Tara has contacted her mom to see if she can visit her, Mom refuses, unless Dad can come along as well. "Dad had always been a hard man -- a man who knew the truth on every subject and wasn't interested in what anybody else had to say. We listened to him, never the other way around: when he was not speaking, he required silence."

And Dad is a mess. Tara learns at some point about bipolar disorder, and it opens up a whole new level of understanding to her: this describes her dad's behavior exactly. Of course, given his beliefs, seeing a doctor or taking any type of medication is unthinkable. Heaven help the family when he gets riled up (which is often). "The Lord has called me to testify," he says to Tara at one point. "He is displeased. You have cast aside His blessings to whore after man's knowledge. His wrath is stirred against you. It will not be long in coming."

After a shaky start, Tara goes on to succeed wildly in the academic world, studying at Cambridge and Harvard, and having now earned her PhD (interestingly, she and three of her siblings have all earned PhD's, while the other three still live with the parents and have never attended school). Yet her parents, particularly her dad, still seem oblivious. "It proves one thing at least," her dad says at a graduation. "Our home school is as good as any public education."

Tara is hugely conflicted throughout the book. She loves learning and the "real" world, while being understandably still pulled toward the family that was her entire world as she grew up. Once a friend asks if she is angry that her parents didn't put her in school. "It was an advantage!" she shouts, realizing as she says it that she's speaking from instinct. Her friend answers, "Well, I'm angry, even if you aren't."

And I felt angry as I read this book as well. It's hard to read -- like "Glass Castle" but harsher -- and it always annoys me when a family is abusive under the cover of religion, thereby turning the kids off to God in the process (Tara doesn't mention her faith these days, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't attend church).

Ironically, the family's off-the-grid lifestyle has ended up serving them well. They started an herbal business ("a spiritual alternative to Obamacare") that now earns them hundreds of thousands each year.

This is a book that will stay with you for a long time. It will make you think. Highly recommended.

4.2 - powerful, personal memoir; and intriguing that the author was so interested in philosophy given her upbringing - reminiscent of The Glass Castle

A memoir that would be preposterous fiction -- proof that truth is stranger than fiction. The author was raised in rural Idaho in an extremist Mormon/survivalist family who, despite the lack of an education, grew up to be a Cambridge PhD. Sometimes very difficult to believe, this is a fine example of resilience of the human soul. Although sometimes the narrative drifts into so much introspection that I was a bit bored, most of the time I was glued to the story. For fans of other memoirs like Running with Scissors or fiction like Room.

NOTE: The author is clear that her father's beliefs were a corruption of the teachings of the LDS (Mormon) church, and is not critical of the mainstream religion.

Quite a fascinating memoir about the author's childhood growing up in a family that shuns formal education and modern medicine, only to experience a seismic shift in worldview when she took herself off to college at seventeen.

Really gripping in the first half, the book becomes a more emotional piece about family dynamics towards the end.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this book. When you see the title "Educated," you automatically think "school," but by the end of Tara's memoir, the word holds much more weight. Life experiences, valuable role models and mentors, and constant self-discovery all contribute to a person's education, and no one's path to becoming educated is the same. Tara's unconventional path is a testament to that and should give hope to anyone who feels like taking control of their life is impossible.

Tara's story is a truly remarkable one - until the age of 16, she had no formal education and was living in a house mostly cut off from the modern world due to her strict Mormon upbringing and her controlling father. When she decides to escape her mentally and physically abusing home and go to college, Tara must learn how the world really functions outside of the bubble that was Buck Peak, Idaho and try to reconcile her sheltered and sometimes traumatizing upbringing with what she missed out on growing up.

I really enjoyed Tara's writing style. This is a heavy story that is told with such detail and frankness but avoids being over-the-top. It's clear that events that seem shocking and unbelievable to readers were just life as she knew it for Tara, which left me feeling a mixture of heartbreak and awe. Tara is clearly a strong, intelligent, and resourceful woman from the very beginning, and she shows this without being self-serving in her writing. How she was able to go from never having heard of the Holocaust as a college freshman to getting her PhD from Harvard is mind-boggling just to read, so I can't imagine how Tara felt as she actually navigated through this new way of life.

As far as memoirs go, I thought Educated was one of the most well-crafted ones I've read in a long time.

EDUCATED
Tara Westover

MY RATING ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▫️
PUBLISHER Random House
PUBLISHED February 20, 2018

A gripping, heartbreaking memoir of a woman who, against all odds, overcomes immense family obstacles to gain an education, opening her eyes to a world she never knew existed.

SUMMARY
TARA WESTOVER never went to school, never saw a doctor and did not have a birth certificate. Her parents were Idaho survivalists, and wanted nothing to do with the government, schools or hospitals. She and her six brothers and one sister lived off the land. Her mother was a midwife and healer and treated every family malady—cuts, burns, broken bones, and head trauma— with herbs and oils. At age 10, Tara is put to work savaging scrap metal from her father’s junkyard, a dangerous job with no consideration to safety. When one of Tara’s older brother becomes physical and mentally abusive to her, her parents turn a blind eye. At fifteen, Tara begins educating herself. She learned enough math and grammar to pass the ACT and be admitted to Brigham Young University at the age of 17. There she studied history and learned of events such as the civil right movement and the Holocaust for the first time. From Brigham Young her quest continued at Cambridge and Harvard, ultimately earning a PhD at the age of 27. Throughout her education Tara Westover experiences tremendous conflict between the awareness she gained from her education and her loyalty to her family.

REVIEW
My experience in reading EDUCATED was not without its own conflicts. This hard to forget story is both maddening and heartbreaking. It is both gripping and difficult to read. I wanted to reach out and shake Tara out of her silence of the torment and abuse she suffered. I wanted to put my arm around her and give her the confidence to yell and scream at those holding her down. I wanted to tell her to get out, and not to go back home again. She touched me with this book, and I hope it will be the salve she needs to heal. Perhaps she has finally found her voice. It’s truly amazing what Tara has been able to accomplish. My hat is off to her. I hope that someday she realizes the fault is not and was never with her.

A father is suppose to protect and keep his children out of harms way, Tara’s did not. A mother is supposed to love and educate her children, Tara’s did not. A big brother is suppose to look out for his little sister. Tara’s did not. But now she’s educated and hopefully will break the cycle of abuse, denial and most of all, silence.

Thanks to Netgalley, Random House and Tara Westover for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.