Recommended this book to my book club. It was pointed out to me that it is on the New York Times Bestseller List.
The story and background were told so vividly, I felt as though I was right there with her. Initially, I couldn't believe any parents could behave this way. As the story unfolds, I really got to know these 2 people and I came to appreciate why they were the way they were.
The different directions the siblings chose, and how each one got there, could have been better developed. I felt that I knew some of her siblings better than others. But, perhaps that accurately reflects the author's relationships.
Book bears a resemblance to "The Glass Castle".

Wow! Incredible story. What a reminding eye-opener to the way some people live/think in the not distant past. Hallelujah to Ms. Westover for breaking out and rising above her upbringing so beautifully and successfully. This is a must read for anyone who has self-doubt, loses faith in the world or people and inspires us to keep dreaming, keep doing and always believe in better.

Tara Westover, you're a courageous lady to not only write(and re-live) the struggles of your life, but to publish it for the wide world- that takes real guts. My hats off to you because that cannot be easy for you or any other memoir writer. I felt it hard to read your story, often having to take breaks over the last two days to digest the contents, to connect with you was difficult, but I had to ultimately remind myself that this was your story, your truth, and if it provides you with some understanding or acceptance of what happened then I hope this book is only the start of a healing process. One that I know is a long road.

This memoir is so many things. It's horrifying and disturbing and haunting, but it's also moving and unforgettable and so very brave. Tara Westover was raised by dangerous and delusional religious fanatics who refused to let her attend school or access medical care, prepared constantly for the end of the world, and built a home rife with physical and emotional abuse. Despite it all, Westover managed to escape the tyranny of her father and receive a PhD from Cambridge. This book is painful to read, but the story she tells about questioning her own upbringing and finding her own truth is breathtaking. She shows a level of reflection and self-awareness that is remarkable given the trauma of her past, and her present relationships with her family. You may need to read this book with caution, but it's definitely worth it.

*I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review: Tara Westover endured abuse all of her life. Extreme manipulation. Her family thrived off of it. At times, Educated was unbearable to read and hard to comprehend that someone out there, is living the way she did. So many times I wanted to jump into this story, and help her, mold her, encourage her to realize her potential, realize that this fight was not hers to battle. I wanted to tell her to walk away and never return.

Family ties and mental health awareness is prevalent in this story and we get a glimpse of how destructive individuals who are unable or unwilling to see their behavior can be. Seeking help, while always the answer, is not always easy and we see that through Tara’s relationships as she builds up the courage, not without resistance and challenge, to venture out from her homeland.

While not an easy book to get through, I highly recommend it and the message it carries with it.

The following quote from the book sums up Educated in my opinion: “Our parents are held down by chains of abuse, manipulation and control...They see change as dangerous and will exile anyone who asks for it. This is a perverted idea of family loyalty...They claim faith, but they worship a God I do not know”. -EDUCATED

Educated, grab a copy and experience this family dysfunction and story of redemption for yourself.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. There are many memoirs out lately on the "I survived my crazy parents" theme, but this one's kinda awesome because it shows a protagonist fighting to learn. Painful at times but you knew that if you picked this up . Good read for a dark stormy day.

This book is characterised by the word resilience.

Tara is brought up in a strict Mormon household with a father who is preparing for the Apocalypse (especially around the year 1999 when the computers were all supposed to shut down) Her mother develops a career as a midwife /herbalist.
Tara herself is supposed to be home educated and works on her Dad's scrapyard. However she is keen to learn and gradually gets educated outside the family environment.

When she goes to college she has next to no knowledge of historical events or recent history. She comes to learning about the Holocaust, Civil Rights etc. in a way someone who has lived in a remote indigenous community might.
She also has to learn about societal "norms" because her father is very critical of American "values". Later she realises that he is in fact bipolar as well as "extreme" in his views. His reaction to a traumatic accident I find beyond comprehensible.

This is as much a book about Tara's escape from an abusive home, as it is a book about her education. Not only is her father controlling in an emotional way but she suffers physical abuse from one of her brothers. When she decides to confront her Mother about this with her sister's support, this is quickly turned around in a destructive and toxic way.

Although Tara travels to Cambridge, Harvard and later around the world I feel that she is unable to break free of this abuse fully because she fears the loss of her family.
Which brings us back to her resilience in the face of everything she suffers.

This transcends a "misery memoir" in many ways. It reflects the worst of humanity but also the resilience of the human spirit.

What an amazing story of a birth family and the way dysfunction can affect anyone. Tara Westover can be an inspiration to any child feeling like she doesn't fit into her birth family. She's an inspiration to anyone who can't break the bonds of poverty, lack of education, neglect, abuse, or feeling like an outsider.

"Educated" is the story of a girl born in Idaho, raised as a Mormon, living through physical abuse and rampant dysfunction. It's the story of how a woman intelligent enough to get a PhD can still have doubts about her worth. It's the story of chain breaking and overcoming and belief and doubt.

Tara Westover is to be cherished as an inspiring woman, author, sister, and daughter. Buy this book for any young woman suffering from self-doubt, lacking confidence, or in need of breaking the chains of familial bondage.

Homeschooling has fascinated me ever since I spent a year living with an Evangelical homeschooling family in California as a foreign exchange student more than ten years ago. So when I first heard about this book I was very eager to read it. I found it to be less about the topic of homeschooling itself than I expected, but no less fascinating. I found the parts about the Westovers' rejection of modern medicine - and especially their "treatment" of the many accidents that several family members suffered - quite horrifying. But Taras language is beautiful and the story of how she fought her way through all the abuse and gaslighting - and earned her PhD into the bargain - is heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. All in all, a great memoir that I found quite unputdownable.

This read like fiction, me flipping pages, trying to squeeze out reading in every possible moment. I thought of Kristen Hannah’s recent book, The Great Alone. What happens to the children of a mentally ill father and a meek cowed mother? Hannah’s book was fiction, this was not.

Normally parents protect their children, but when the tables are turned, children are left without advocates and have to fend for themselves against parents who leave them unsafe and vulnerable. Three of the seven siblings left home and earned PhDs, while the other four stayed to be enmeshed in the web of paranoia, lies and twisted religion.

Westover’s story is remarkable in that she never received a formal education, didn’t understand rules of standard hygiene and was clueless to social protocols, yet she climbed over all the hurdles to earn her PhD from Cambridge, while battling the disapproval of her parents.

When Tara Westover sat down to take her ACT's she had never stepped foot in a classroom or taken a formalized school test. The bubble form answer sheet confounded her. And she got a 22. She went back home to her family's home in rural Idaho to keep studying in between helping at her family's junkyard. Tara's family didn't care how she did on any test, all they cared about was whether or not she could carry her own weight. Coming from a survivalist family that did not value a traditional education it was Tara's brother, the black sheep of the family, who planted the seed that college was attainable for her. Tara was seventeen when she took her first class at BYU. It was there that she heard the word "Holacaust" for the first time. It was there that she learned about textbooks and homework. It was there that she went to the doctor for the first time. It was at college that Tara first realized that the abuse she suffered at the hand of her older brother was not normal. It was there that Tara realized the way her family lived was not normal. It was there that she realized her father and brother, Shawn, may be mentally ill. And finally, it was at BYU that Tara realized that she had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Tara went on to get her doctorate from Cambridge University, but will her relationship with her family survive her desire to become educated?

Educated is one of those memoirs that reads like a fiction novel. Tara is a fantastic narrator whose naivete made her so lovable in a family full of nutjobs. And make no mistake, her family is full of nutjobs. In graphic detail, Tara recounts the physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her brother, Shawn. I grew up in a large family where we siblings sometimes got rough with each other, but never did we exhibit the kind of violence Tara experienced. And her parents not only let it happen but denied that it even happened. Also, Tara graphically describes the brutal injuries her family suffered and they never sought medical care because of her father's distrust of the government. The fact that any of them survived was a freaking miracle. I think that Tara is a gifted storyteller who told some ugly truths about her family and herself in such an honest way that you cannot help but have respect for her.

Bottom Line - Educated is such a well-written memoir exploring a way of life that very few of us can never even begin to understand. In a manner that can only be described as brave, Tara Westover shares the details of what it was like for her to grow up in a survivalist family. It is a worthy read if you are looking for something different to read.

Details:
Educated by Tara Westover
On Facebook
Pages: 352
Publisher: Random House Publishing
Publication Date: 2/20/2018
Buy it Here!

While Westover's narrative is extraordinary, human commonality causes the story to remain relate-able. Especially to readers who grew up in conservative "black and white" religious families/churches and were educated to understand what gaping holes they may have missed. Finally, the debate about how identity is built in agreement verses opposition of family traditions will ring true to many readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sharing an Arc of this gripping memoir with me. In exchange I am providing my unbiased opinion.

Wow! Tara Westover's upbringing makes Jeanette Walls parents look like Wally & June Cleaver. It is hard to comprehend that Educated is a work of non fiction. Born to survivalists parents who believed the government was evil, medicine was harmful and formal education was a form of brainwashing, Tara and her siblings were raised to distrust authority and only accept her parents word as truth.

Written in four parts, Tara Westover introduces us to her early life full of unbelievable mishaps and adventures, then her journey from home to BYU to eventually the road to a PHD and Cambridge. Beautifully written with humor, honesty and shocking disbelief this book will blow your mind. Tara Westover completely won me over and made me feel tremendous gratitude for my dull childhood.

This memoir is about as raw and honest as I’ve ever read. It’s definitely a good thing.

As a former former Mormon who has family on both ends of the spectrum (though not quite as devout as Tara’s family) this book was both hard to read and impossible to put down. There were many moments when I was nodding my head to relatable experiences and so many others when I was aghast at what she survived in her childhood home.

I’m so grateful to Tara for sharing her story and hope it helps others see 1) they are not alone and 2) your upbringing does not have to define your life.

Received an advanced copy in exchange for a fair review.

Educated was fascinating, gripping and all-around page-turning. Westover writes of her childhood with unflinching honesty that left me cringing as she described injuries and abuse that boggles the mind but was normal to her. Despite clearly wrestling with her faith and loyalty to her family, she manages to write about both compassionately and with affection, providing a window into a very unique experience.

Westover's writing style is effective and brutally efficient at communicating complicated ideas. I found my self reading passages over as she reached some conclusion about her family or herself because the writing was just so poignant. She's never a pitiable character even at her lowest and easy to root for even at her most unlikable. It truly is astounding what she has accomplished, and it's astounding to read.

This is Tara Westover's story of being raised in a survivalist family and the path she took away from her family's life style to become an educated member of society.

I found this story to be completely compelling and largely horrifying. I found that many times I had to put the book down and read something else for a while because I was so upset. There were so many moments that I found myself wishing that someone would have stepped in and helped Tara Westover and her siblings. After the fire, after the car accidents, after the incident with the piece of metal and Tara's leg... I just kept wishing that someone would have helped them.

This memoir was incredible. Tara is such a strong human. It would take such incredible personal strength to choose a live so different than the one you were raised in.

I particularly appreciated the disclaimer at the beginning that this book is not about religion. The fact that her family was Mormon was incidental rather than the cause of her struggles. Her father's fanaticism was not due to his religion, he would have had radical beliefs and made radical life choices regardless of what religion he was a part of.

Quite literally my only complaint is the time line. There were a few times that the story was not told in a linear time line, and I got a bit confused about how old shew as when a certain incident was taking place.

Educated has a very striking cover and the title caught my attention as well since I am a teacher. Also, bookstagrammers and the publisher did a good job of getting this book under my nose. Right before I started reading Educated, I read a review or comment that compared it to The Glass Castle. That should have tipped me off that this book would be a little tough to read, at least at times. That turned out to be true. Tough, amazing, worth every minute. What was particularly striking about Westover's writing was the way she managed to present her experience so that I could completely understand and empathize with what she was going through.

It’s a little difficult for me to write objectively about Educated because I related so strongly with a lot of Westover’s experience. My childhood was much more “mainstream” than hers. I did, for example, go to school. I did not have the level of strain with family that she did. My father was and is not mentally ill. However, I am the oldest of eight children, finances tough, we were a strict religion, and I did often feel like I had parts of my life and experience that I needed to hide from other people so that they wouldn’t think differently of me.

So, the bottom line is that I would recommend this book to pretty much anyone. I think guys would be interested in it too. Even though Westover’s experience is likely really different from most, she does a really nice job of getting the reader to understand how and why she made the choices she did. I was yelling at her in my head at times, but at the same time, I got it.

I will be buying this book for my classroom. I know there are students who have little to no parental support at home, and know Westover's story of perseverance would be really inspiring to them.

In this memoir, Tara Westover defends the importance of being educated. By telling her journey from a mountain in Idaho to a PhD in Cambridge, one can learn that in the end being able to learn about things is what makes life so compelling. Although I think the struggles she's been through were really fascinating, I didn't really like the way the book is written. Basically, I wanted to know what happened, even though at times I was having trouble with the writing style. In the end, I'm glad I finished reading it. I was impressed on how the author's life unfolded, and how completely different her childhood and adolescence were from mine - even though me, as the reader, went through a similar journey in terms of year I was born and year I got my PhD.

The story of a brave young girl who went against her upbringing and all of the odds to become educated.

Very, very strong four-and-a-half stars. It took a little bit of time to get into the book, and knowing next to nothing about it when I started, I didn't understand the early disclaimer about the book not being intended to criticize Mormonism.

Having just finished the book two minutes ago, I am still without words to give a sensible review. I am awed by the strength of Ms. Westover - her ability to survive what she's endured, yet not lace her writing with self-pity and excuses - it's amazing.