cozylingua 's review for:

Educated by Tara Westover

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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(potential spoilers depending on how you look at it) This book was hard to read, painful at times and filled with so much trauma and abuse. AND YET, it was undoubtedly a 5 star read. I will be thinking about this on for YEARS. I feel like it's given me a more empathetic perspective, and I love that it doesn't make strong moral judgements, but feels like it's just telling the story as facts through the lens of a girl who went through so much. I'm so proud of Tara and others like her who were able to get out and overcome (even if this is a constant, violent and manipulative roots) and hope that they are able to accept the love they deserve.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexism, Violence, Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Racism, Blood, Car accident, Gaslighting

Minor: Animal death, Death

Mormonism + bipolar + extreme gender norms + not sticking up for children/gaslighting/not believing one child hurt the others + religious extremism/hate&distrust of the government + what is "education" + leaving home and going to university/being "radicalized"/turned liberal/a sinner because of this.. etc.