Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I believe in hearing people out when they feel they have been misrepresented, but the way this book was written honestly just felt like confirmation of Tara Westover's account in Educated. This book is astonishingly self-aggrandizing. I'm sure the stories each have a grain of truth, but the overblown tales of the author's miraculous healing abilities, religious revelations, and courtroom conquests all depict the author and her husband as flawless, morally perfect geniuses who are tragically misunderstood by their community. It defies belief. When the author does recognize a flaw in herself, it is (suspiciously) usually that she failed to show appropriate "loyalty" or deference to her husband in some situation. One has the strong impression that her husband had a heavy hand in constructing the narrative that's offered in this book. I was disturbed by the author's attempts to undermine and explain away all of Tara's claims of abuse and and mistreatment. The author essentially argues that the abuse Tara reports in Educated must not have really happened because (1) Tara liked spending time with her abuser, and (2) Tara was too spunky to have been abused. A conversation with any mental health expert who specializes in abuse will reveal that both of these lines of argumentation are deeply misguided and both perpetuate damaging myths about abuse. A significant theme in this book is a sense of grievance about not receiving adequate credit. For example, on p. 293, we learn that the Westovers were aggrieved to see Tara receive praise for her scholarly accomplishments in an article that did not attribute those accomplishments to her upbringing. It was striking that the author takes responsibility for all of her children's successes, but not for their struggles. She appeals to these successes as evidence of her excellent parenting, without seeing the struggles as evidence of parental shortcomings. This kind of thing makes it difficult to trust the author's manifold assignments of praise and blame throughout the book. This book, unlike Educated, was self-published. As such, it did not undergo the kind of extensive independent fact-checking that Tara's book did. For this reason, I took all the factual claims in this book with a grain of salt. The book is interesting as an object lesson in manipulation, self-delusion, and self-righteousness. The author denies that the purpose of this book is to refute the claims in Educated, but astute readers can find attempts to do just that on nearly every page. I sort of feel guilty about having paid to receive a copy because I don't want to support the family's business now that I've heard more about it, so maybe this review can encourage someone else not to make my mistake.