Reviews

Educated by Tara Westover

sowerberry's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring

5.0

minaamane's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

jemsku's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

linda_kinda's review against another edition

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hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

pronkbaggins's review against another edition

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5.0

5.0/5.0 stars

Brutal and gripping. I tore through this book. It reads more like fiction than real life, but perhaps that is just my way of trying to cope with what Tara went through and continues to go through. Her writing is marvelous. There were passages that hit home and were written in ways I did not know how to articulate before. It is a tough read emotionally, but a very captivating one.

enoeht's review against another edition

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dark hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

raisavibes's review against another edition

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5.0

“If you were a woman,” I asked, “would you still study law?” Josh didn’t look up. “If I were a woman,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to study it.” “But you’ve talked about nothing except law school for as long as I’ve known you,” I said. “It’s your dream, isn’t it?” “It is,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t be if I were a woman. Women are made differently. They don’t have this ambition. Their ambition is for children.”

Then: “But what if you were a woman, and somehow you felt exactly as you do now?” Josh’s eyes fixed on the wall for a moment. He was really thinking about it. Then he said, “I’d know something was wrong with me.”

This memoir was beautifully written. Tara Westover grew up on a mountain in rural Idaho in a very patriarchal, fundamentalist Mormon family. She grew up working in her father’s scrapeyard with her 6 other siblings (which was a very unsafe environment to work in) and helping her herbalist mother stew herbs and flowers into tinctures. Tara’s father believed the world was going to end so they always had a head-for-the-hills bag prepared. He kept his family off the radar by not filing for birth certificates, keeping the children out of school, he did not believe in the medical profession and thought doctors were agents of Satan. No matter how severely anyone was injured (which happened very often), he refused to seek medical attention. He thought herbalism was the only true treatment for the ill. And he was extremely paranoid about the government being after them so he avoided them. Tara’s mother was more caring but turned a blind eye towards the children due to her loyalty and duty towards her husband. It didn’t help to have an abusive brother with major anger issues who constantly bullied her and made her question her identity and character. It broke my heart as I read about the physical and mental abuse that Tara went through as a child and even after she grew up and moved away from her toxic family.

Despite her struggles in finding her true self, she grew up to become a strong and independent woman. She even made it to Cambridge and was able to get a PhD. This is truly an inspiring story and I highly recommend it. Very powerful read!

catpanda1's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

absolem1865's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense medium-paced

5.0

recyclops229's review against another edition

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4.0

Initially, I struggled to understand the appeal of this book. Maybe because everyone had such overwhelmingly positive feedback about it, my expectations were so high that, when I found it difficult to get into, I thought it was undeserved hype and almost quit reading it. I decided to stick with it since I’m reading it for book club and I’m happy I did. Even though I hated almost everyone in Tara’s family and even though I was beyond frustrated at countless points of the book (seriously, why didn’t she cut her family - especially Shawn - out of her life the second she left?), I grew to really appreciate this book. It was brutal at times, with its stories of her violent brother or of the plethora of horrific accidents working for her dad, but I found Tara’s honesty refreshing. The hype around this book is definitely deserved.