A review by miniliterarium
Educated by Tara Westover

challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

5.0

One of those books where I'm left wanting for more.  Not because the story was beautiful but because it gave me so much hope and strength. It showed me that you are not your family, you're not how you were brought up, you are definitely not what others, even your parents see you are. You are, but your efforts to literally educate yourself. Had Tara not taken that step to educate herself tho her family discouraged her not to, she wouldn't be here. She wouldn't have had anything to truly call her own. This one was hard, very emotional to see a young girl being so isolated from the world that she doesn't know what Holocaust is, doesn't know where loyalty ends and manipulation begins, that even her own family will believe she's being possessed and on the path of evil for going to college. It's hard to believe that people can be so delusional, that religion indeed has patriarchal notions and how some men take advantage of it to abuse women. Tara is phenomenal, she's put a full stop to these deranged beliefs and did the best thing she could for herself, get an education.