Educated by Tara Westover is an incredible memoir that takes you on an emotional rollercoaster through her journey from an isolated, survivalist family to earning a PhD from Cambridge. Westover’s story is both heart-wrenching and inspiring, as she struggles to reconcile her desire for knowledge with the intense loyalty she feels toward her family.

The writing is powerful, and her resilience is truly remarkable, though some parts are tough to read because of the family conflicts and the extremity of her upbringing. It’s an eye-opening read that’ll stay with you, even if it’s not exactly a light one. If you love stories of personal transformation, this one’s definitely worth picking up.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. I have attempted it on a number of occasions but unfortunately I haven’t been able to get into it.

This needs all the warnings. I don’t think it’s giving too much to say that there is an incredible amount of violence in this – and whatever injuries you’re imaging went untreated, you are not imagining anything bad enough. I had been warned by my sister and I still wasn’t prepared. So go into this expecting: child abuse, child neglect, sibling violence, bullying and pretty much any behaviour that triggers a mandatory child protection referral if a teacher were to suspect it was going on. But of course Tara wasn’t in school so, yeah. It just goes on.

But if you want to know more about survivalists and some of the extremes of some of the offshoots of Mormonism then this will give you that. And some. Tara Westover has built a fresh life for herself and, spoiler alert, has managed to build healthy relationships – some of which are with some of her family.

I’m glad I read it but it also made me incredibly depressed that there will undoubtedly be many many more girls and women in a similar situation to her out there. I hope Tara Westover continues to survive and thrive in her life and do whatever she wants to do with it.

This book was absolutely fabulous. I will admit not my usual genre but it was a book I was invested in from the beginning and I just wanted to keep turning the pages until the end I was so engrossed.

Absolutely amazing book, but one I had to put down every now and then. Such an incredible story of overcoming childhood abuse and neglect.

Wow what a great memoir. Thought provoking, honest, raw, sad, heartwarming and inspiring. This book is sooooo many things but boring is definitely not one of them. So glad I finally read it, it had been on my tbr for quite a while and now it will stay in my mind and with me forever. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐#educated #tarawestover #tea_sipping_bookworm #bookstagram #bookqueen #greatreads #amazon#kindle #litsy #goodreads

I am not a biography reader, but this book absolutely blew my mind. The life story of a girl who escaped her off-grid survivalist Mormon background to come to Cambridge on a Gates Scholarship to do her PhD is a brutally honest account of her equally brutal and restricted upbringing. Tara, who suffered abuse from various members of her family, is encouraged by her older brother (also an academic) to sit the examinations that will allow her to attend university. Being a girl, this provokes a great outcry from her parents and other brothers, who rely on her to help with the work in her dad's scrap yard. Determined to go, she slowly discovers the ludicrous limitations to her world and the vastness of the world and its history - something that she had been carefully shielded from. She embraces the world of learning and through a series of crises finally realises the depth of the abuse she had been subjected to and seeks help. By doing so, she inadvertently creates a major rift within the family. She goes on to complete her PhD in social history, and with the publication of this memoir she finally draws a line under her past.

A mesmerising account, this book is the ultimate argument for why education is indeed everything and why ignorance and bigotry are so dangerous. It also unequivocally makes the case for why so many people in the US and other countries vote for outdated and backward right-wing policies. It is a compelling eye-opener.

This was a really great read. It's hard to believe anyone could live through all this and still manage to achieve everything Tara has. With an engaging voice and an at times unbelievable story, this is a classic tale of overcoming the odds, and well deserving of the accolades it has received.

This was a book that opened up an unknown area of life to me. I knew little about fundamental Mormonism and this biography was educational to me. The book is insightful and the author was courageous in writing this book.

I recommend it .

I really enjoyed following Tara’s story in this book although I do feel like I was missing something, I just don’t know what it was. Overall it was really good and I would recommend it to people to read. Learning about her life and how it evolved was really interesting.

One of the most powerful, impactful and beautiful memoirs of hardship, struggle and learning I've ever read - all about the power of resilience and, yes, education to change someone's life. Astonishing.

Closer to 4.5/5.
I don't know about you, but I LOVE memoirs. I thought I would only be interested in autobiographies by people I know, people in the public eye whose work I am a fan of. It turns out, what fascinates me about memoirs is the fact that you know what you're reading is real; it has happened. It is truth told by the person experiencing it, thus becoming subjective in its narration, but a truth nonetheless. Somebody's truth. It's not the celebrity part that entralled me, I realised; it was the person behind the story in the flesh- or as close to it as the pages and ink allow it to be (or the audio narration, come to think of it, since that's mostly how I consumed this book).

The thing about Educated is that it reads like fiction- except it's not. That was my acute point of realisation- how I could not even begin to fathom living the life the author had. There were two things that became distinct as I was reading:
A. Tara Westover is, in some ways, an unreliable narrator. She doesn't always trust her memories of her childhood with her survivalist family and when she often checks certain events with other members of her family for verification, their stories differ and clash. That, to me, made the read all the more chilling, pinning me down to a reality that was not mine, but did not cease to be any less real.
B. Westover's recounting of her young life is told through her adult self- whether she passes judgement, adds belated emotions to situations she could not identify then or simply narrates her past was hard to distinguish. However, I was not reading the story in order to judge how she decided to tell her truth. I was there to listen. And in the process, I learned so much about what I take for granted and how judgement is the result of lack of exposure to experiences different to yours.

I took off a star, because at a certain point towards the last third of the book I thought that the author chose to tell these particular stories, in order to lead the reader to specific messages. What I previously loved most about her narration was the fact that she wrote about her life regardless of how the reader might perceive it, in almost a deapdan style, because that was the only way of life she had known. As she was turning into the educated woman that wrote this memoir, there seemed to be a shift that uplifted the message of womanhood above anything and everything else and, while I appreciated that (after all, to be her is to be a woman and one goes hand-in-hand with the other) I felt like her viewpoint lost its original lack of awareness of her surroundings and innocence bordering on ignorance, which was the element that drew my attention in the first place.
I also noticed certain slight changes between the ARC and the finished version of the book, which momentarily made me doubt about the amount of fictionalised detail in the book.

Such a range of emotions coursed through me as I was reading Educated- shock, incredulity, disgust, fear, pity and pain. So much pain. But also wonder and hope. And that is why I would heartily recommend this book.

Both fascinating and horrifying memoir by Tara Westover. A fascinating tale of a young woman who manages to get an education despite her family and who struggles to become part of the 21st century while desperate to remain part of her Mormon family. Informative and sad but the triumph of education over the attempt of her father and elder brother to retain control of the women in the family by bullying and physical and emotional control.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Tara Westover/Random House UK for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

Tara is brought up in a strong Mormon household dominated by her overpowering father. The children are brought up without education and comply with male wishes. Tara eventually rails against this and sets off on a.quest for learning but how difficult it proves to break the ties and enter a different world.
I found the book harrowing and feel that readers will either live it or hate it.

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

I'm certain I gave feedback on this one before but it's still on my list.

I found this book really fascinating and I really couldn't put it down. I'm startled by the negative reviews querying the authors back story. Anyone who survives the circumstances of Tara's childhood deserves to describe their own tale in their own manner. Truly fascinating tale of life in the forgotten edges of society.

I absolutely loved this book. I was interested to read it after hearing Westover interviewed on a podcast and I was not disappointed.

'Educated' covers Westover's upbringing in rural Idaho by strict Mormon parents. She approaches it in a very neutral and measured way which, given some of the events, is surprising. I'm not sure how many other people could review such an upbringing without including more judgement.

This is a strength to a book with so many strengths. It is a thoroughly engaging book which really spoke to me of how important our upbringings are but how we can still shape our own lives.

I'm sure each reader will find different things from this book. All I can really do is to tell you to get hold of a copy and put it to the top of your reading list.

I have so many thoughts and feelings about this book that I don’t know where to start. I was approved for a NetGalley copy of this book a while ago but was quite reluctant to read it after mention of abuse and assault in various reviews. I then discovered that the audiobook was available through my library’s Libby app and so added it to my wishlist, but I was still too afraid to listen. I enjoy memoirs but I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen especially if it’s going to be a harrowing account.

I finally plucked up the courage to listen to this although at times I felt like stopping as I had trouble believing some of what I was hearing! I couldn’t believe that the author was brought up in such a chaotic family situation and where there was no-one, neither family or neighbours to rescue her and her siblings. That they didn’t use soap to wash their hands after using the toilet, something that the author mentions was still happening when she went to college!! The fact that she doesn’t mention any illnesses in the family is incredible to me. I also found it really hard to believe that she got into a university without having any formal education at home. Unsurprisingly though she then struggled to use a particular text book when she was there. Oh yes and the fact that her mother became an unlicensed midwife was terrifying, as was the way Tara and her siblings worked in her father’s scrapyard, mutilating themselves on numerous occasions. I could go on about other family situations but I don’t want to turn this review into a rant.

Clearly the author is incredibly intelligent and was able to study in such a way that she passed her diploma to get onto a summer school at Cambridge University, and then a degree course and finally a masters there too. Then to go on to Harvard is monumental when you think about her background. What an amazing lady!

The abuse from her brother Shawn and subsequent trauma was hard to listen to, making me shout at the audiobook when the author and her family kept making excuses for him.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this memoir as it’s not that type of book, but I’m glad I’ve finally listened to it, especially with Julia Whelan’s narration. It’s the first book I’ve listened to with her narrating and I can totally understand why she is an award winning narrator. She brought the Tara’s Westover’s memories so vividly to life in her portrayal of the family. I definitely wouldn’t hesitate to listen to more audiobooks with her narrating.

This is a book I chose to read with my real life book club (BBC) as I had heard so many positive things and needed to be taken outside my comfort zone.

I don’t often read True Stories/Memoirs but having read EDUCATED, I shall be rectifying that very quickly! They say that truth is often stranger than fiction and boy, oh boy that is certainly true in this book.

Tara Westover was brought up in a large strict Mormon family living off the grid on a farm in Idaho. At the hands of an aggressive and tyrannical father who forbade his family to go to school, visit a doctor or hospital and work in the family junkyard with no regard for health or safety, Tara and her siblings grew up relying on natural remedies and prayer and cowering from the violence of their father and older brother.

Tara is an incredibly strong and often stubborn young woman who was determined at whatever cost to get herself educated even if it meant being disowned by her family and in EDUCATED she tells us of her journey from the depths of a junkyard to the halls of Cambridge and Harvard Universities.

There were moments in this book that made my heart break and moments that my heart soared. This is a raw and often brutal memoir of one headstrong, determined individual on a mission to educate herself and breakaway from the constraints of her childhood. An truly inspirational story which will remain in my thoughts for a long time.

A truly memorable memoir. An absorbing tale of a spirit not broken by a dysfunctional family, and the effects that mental illness has on family dynamics. Westover's quest to go further, to learn, and to grow is inspiring. Well worth a read.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance ARC copy of this book.