Educated - Review

Educated    🌟🌟🌟1/2
by Tara Westover
Published 20 Feb 2018 by Random House 

I can't  help but admire and respect everything Tara Westover has been through in her difficult life.  I am so grateful to have received a copy of Educated from NetGalley and Random House so I could join my book - loving friends on the bandwagon for this book.  I am there, but sort of on the ledge, one foot on and one foot unsure of where to land.

The book felt repetitive and on the long side; and I know that some things that happened to her happened repeatedly, which is what made her early life so awful, so I should appreciate the many recounts and not be critical.   Also, I should judge memoirs differently than the novels I usually read, where one can wish for a certain outcome, a happy ending or some resolution.   Here I tried to hold a different mindset; but like in most nonfiction, my mind wanted it to wrap up quicker than it did.

What Tara endured and how she overcame it was incredible, unbelievable, although I do not doubt her account. Some of it was hard to read and some hard to fathom.  A psycho brother who wished her dead.  A bipolar father who forced the children to work for him under deplorable, dangerous conditions.  Difficult to understand how she would keep going back to her family for acceptance and validation, even after successfully turning her life around with an education any scholar would aspire to, and after that family spread vicious lies about her.  Even an educated person may need to learn how to permanently say goodbye to people who are bad news.  I fear her story is far from over.