Educated - Tara Westover

Alright, let's get this out of the way first.  I don't generally like non-fiction books.  I find them to lean heavily on the 'this is true, isn't that crazy?!' factor and so the actual writing usually lands flat for me.  I even have tried reading a few true-crime books to see if I could ease into non-fiction by leaning heavily on my love for thrillers and crime dramas.  I know there are a lot of great non-fiction books out there, but I really think I'm just not the reader for them.  My mom, however, loves non-fiction.  In fact, when I first heard about Educated, my first thought was "that sounds like a book mom would read" and I put it away in my mind to get her for Mother's Day/birthday/Christmas.  However, the more I heard about it and just how incredible of a story it was, I was increasingly intrigued.  Getting an Audible subscription really pushed me over the edge to finally give it a try because if I didn't like it, as I was somewhat expecting not to, then I could just return the book and get my credit back to use for a fiction book.

I loved this book.

I listen to my audio books in the car driving my dog to and from doggie daycare twice a week, so I normally go a few days between 'reading' the audio books.  For this one, however, I was listening to it on my phone in my house.  I would put it on when I made dinner, would play it outside when I was gardening, I would try to get it in any time I had a decent chunk of time to listen.  The story, combined with Westover's writing style was the perfect match for me.

Educated is Tara Westover's journey from rural Idaho and her parents who didn't believe in doctors or the school system to Harvard and Cambridge.  What I thought was going to be a story of someone who grew up in a sheltered and religious homeschooling environment expanding her horizons turned into one of the best stories of survival, personal growth, and basically cult deprogramming.  The aspect I loved the most about the book was how Westover just lays out her story as simple facts about how she grew up.  She doesn't often pass judgement on her parents for their beliefs or their actions.  As the reader, there were times when I was in pure disbelief about how her parents could do (or not do) certain things.  A gruesome injury was treated with natural remedies at home instead of the emergency room, for example.  But since Westover grew up in that culture from the time she was born, she presents it as that is how things were done.  We do get some tension from outside point of view such as Westover's grandparents disagreeing with how they were being raised, but nothing too drastic. 

What I think made this book different from other memoirs that I've attempted to read over the years is that Westover goes about her story telling in a very deliberate manner.  She tells the story chronologically from when she was young all the way through her college career.  The first half of the book is her recounting tales from her childhood - many of which were funny and charming and really gave a sense that she loved growing up the way she did.  She seems to have fond memories of playing with her siblings on their farm and exploring the mountains and woods on their property.  As Westover grows up, the stories gradually become darker and worrisome.  It feels like not only does she remember or understand more as she grows older, but also that her parents (father, specifically) start really ramping up the survivalist panic of preparing for the end of the world or the government to come knocking.  The tension is slowly but continually cranked up, injuries or repercussions of actions get increasingly severe, and the family starts to fracture as the children grow up and start making their own choices. This increasing tension was great at encouraging the reader to keep going we think on one hand that there isn't any way it could get worse than what just happened but we know it will probably get worse.  And it does.  My goodness, it gets so much worse than I would have imagined. 

Another aspect in which Educated really raised the bar for memoirs is the emotion that Westover shows throughout the book.  In other memoirs I've started, they almost feel clinical.  Like the author is just relaying a string of facts about what happened.  Seeing Westover start to challenge her belief system, at first internally, but then also externally later was extremely compelling.  The struggles with mental health and trying to find her place between these two worlds - her family home and academia - was fantastic yet heartbreaking to read.  While in college, she slowly started to realize the extent to which her education growing up was unorthodox and she works hard to reconcile her childhood with what she's learning. She wants to have both - have her family and her education - and for a while, she does manage it.  However, the two become increasingly at odds and Westover is often forced to choose between them. 

One aspect I would have liked more of is her adjusting initially to her time in University.  I felt like the front side of the book where we got her childhood and growing up, which is absolutely necessary.  But once she got to college, I would have liked more of a sense on what that culture shock was like.  We do get some examples, but they felt a bit too glazed over for my liking. Growing up, she wasn't completely cut off from society or anything.  They still went into town for certain things, but any college student leaving home for the first time is going to have some growing pains trying to figure out the dining hall, laundry machines, or library system. 

Trigger warning: abuse.  
The physical and emotional abuse Westover suffers throughout the book by different people in her life is hard to read but reading her rationale of it and having her explain it away so many times is heartbreaking. As someone who grew up being taught that domestic violence was not okay, reading the extent to what Westover went through combined with the reactions by her family members was infuriating.  It is easy to look at Westover's situation and judge.  Judge her parents, her family, or even her religion as being the cause of trauma or problems in her life.  However, Westover presents her story in a way that doesn't pass judgement or blame entirely on one side.  Instead, she tries to deal with the abuse in her own ways that evolve over the course of the book.  The abuse become the catalyst to Westover making the most dramatic change to her life at the end of the book.

Overall, a compelling read of one girl's incredible journey away from everything she knows in order to learn more about the outside world.  The structure of the memoir really enhances the reading experience by slowly increasing tension, expanding the world, and giving depth to the eventual hard decisions that need to be made at the end.

For a non-reader of non-fiction, this memoir hooked me from the beginning right through to the end and I'm still in awe at a few stories Westover shares in the book.

Also, for the record, my mom loved it as well.

334 pages

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn is quickly becoming one of those authors (along with Stephen King and Michael Crichton) who I will read every book she writes no matter what the plot is.  I read Gone Girl when it was just starting to gain popularity, watched the HBO limited series of Sharp Objects (the book is on my list to read down the line), and when I found out about Dark Places, I immediately jumped in. Dark Places centers around Libby Day who, 25 years prior, saw her mother and sisters be murdered and testified that her brother, Ben, was the murderer.  In the present day, Libby becomes involved with a local true crime group that is convinced her brother is innocent. Libby slowly begins to question her memory of the night her family died and starts unraveling the truth of what happened.

My favorite thing about this novel, and all of Gillian Flynn's novels, is the unlikable and unreliable narrator. More specifically, the unlikable and complicated female protagonist that, I feel, is much needed.  Unlikable female characters, in my experience, are few and far between and I find them so much more interesting to read than the standard, bland female narrator.  This sort of narrator has been trendy since Gone Girl really blew up in popularity and an offshoot of this - what I like to call 'troubled girl on transportation' books - have been making the rounds in recent years.  In Dark Places, Libby is introduced to us as a girl with a very dark and troubled past.  However, she doesn't come across as struggling to get by with any sort of PTSD or other ramifications of the murders.  She just comes across as a b*tch.  She is callous, dismissive of those who are trying to help, condescending, and overall just a jerk.  She even forgets to feed her cat and doesn't really feel that bad about it!  But Flynn manages to show us the cracks just beneath the surface where we can see the broken human that Libby is.  These cracks, this potential for character growth and development, are what kept me reading.  If Libby was just a jerk without any depth or other characteristics, then I don't think I would have finished this book.  And by the end, while she does change, she doesn't change much.  Instead, I feel like it was a much more realistic look at how, after decades of acting and feeling one way, changing those habits can be hard.

Another thing about this novel that I really liked, but I know is a turn-off for some people is that this story is told not only from different points of view, but from two different time lines.  The story jumps between Libby today, her brother Ben 25 years ago, and their mother 25 years ago. I think Flynn pulls this off fantastically.  She ends each section on enough of a cliff hanger so I couldn't wait to get back to this story line, but not so much of a cliff hanger that I was skipping ahead.  Each thread of the story was interesting and provided depth and context for the other threads.  We also got to see the same event from different perspectives, which was really interesting and I felt helped develop a depth to the characters that I'm not sure we would have gotten otherwise.  The current time and the timelines in the past are all heading toward that important night, so the tension is slowly cranked up at the end of each chapter as we switch perspectives. 

My least favorite thing about this novel was the ending.  More specifically, how quickly the ending wrapped up.  *I'm going to do my best here to not have any spoilers, so this might get a bit vague*  The question "what really happened the night of the murders" was answered, so that's always good in a murder mystery.  However, the answer didn't feel earned.  The whole book is about Libby and this group of murder-enthusiasts investigating what really happened that night 25 years ago.  I was expecting the solution to be something that was discovered during research or when interviewing people from the past.  But instead, it felt like pure dumb luck.  They were on the right path, but just cut the line and wrapped the book up real quick.  It honestly felt like there were about 5-7 chapters missing that would have solidified the solution for what happened that night.  It sort of felt like they just threw a dart at list of suspects, went to visit that suspect, and it just so happens that they had all the answers!  How convenient.  I think the actual solution was fine, I just wish the journey there was a bit more developed at the end.

As a final note, as I've been writing up this review a few months after finishing the book, I realized there was an undercurrent through most of the novel.  There were multiple situations that had the reader and characters asking what something being 'the truth' really meant.  Libby testified that her brother was the one who killed their family and for most people, testifying in court would mean that is the truth.  However, the group of amateur murder investigators are sure that Libby's truth isn't correct, that her brother is innocent.  For a long time, Libby holds on to the argument that they weren't there, she was, and she saw what she saw.  But slowly, as more evidence is gathered, she starts to question what she has held on to years as 'the truth'.  A similar thread runs between Ben and their mother.  Ben gets into a situation at school and a rumor is started in the town.  Ben knows the truth of what happened, but his mother is being bombarded with townspeople telling her that the rumor is the truth.  I think this overall theme of what it means when something is 'true' and how those of us who weren't there can either dismiss or hold on to what we believe happened is a really powerful message.

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

Another win from Gillian Flynn.  Damaged, unreliable narrator hunting down the truth to what happened to her family.  Told with flashbacks and alternating points of view. Overall a good murder investigation that really digs into what finding 'the truth' really means. 

Apparently, this was made into a movie in 2015 staring Charlize Theron.

349 pages

The Dark Bones - Loreth Anne White

The Dark Bones - Loreth Anne White

This book had everything I didn't know I wanted in a thriller.  Romance elements?  Yes.  Small town atmosphere?  Yes. Police protagonist who follows the rules and isn't some sort of hotshot savant?  Yes.   The Dark Bones is a story about Detective Rebecca North who returns to her small hometown when her father is found dead of an apparent suicide.  Rebecca isn't so sure and starts her own investigation with the help of her hometown connections who, like any small town, are all interconnected - including Ash Haugen, her high school boyfriend who she left behind in the town but never in her heart.  Who can she trust?  What happened to her father?  Is this connected to darker events of the past?  

This is the second book in the Dark Lure series (which is a fact I didn't realize at the time of my reading).  However, after reading the description of book 1 in the series (A Dark Lure), the books take place in the same universe and characters but not the same plot.  Reading The Dark Bones did spoil the ending of A Dark Lure but I didn't feel like I was missing out on any significant details.  The only part of The Dark Bones that was strange upon reflection and with the knowledge that this was a series was how nonchalantly one character's very dark past was mentioned (I don't want to spoil specifics since that character was the focus of A Dark Lure).  I think reading the series in order would be good for world building, but not strictly necessary from a plot perspective.

My favorite part of this book was the underlying romance elements.  It wasn't overly sappy or romanticized, it felt very realistic and the internal struggle Rebecca had with her feelings vs her job was very well done.  The book is mostly from Rebecca's point of view but does flash back to 20 years prior as well as other characters in the present day.  I felt getting other points of view, mostly Ash's, was integral to building this atmosphere of romantic tension as it showed us the pushing and pulling from both sides.  We understood why Rebecca left all those years ago and also saw directly how Ash was impacted by her decision.  A lot happens in twenty years and it was refreshing to see two adults hashing out their past and not just falling into bed together immediately like nothing happened.  I thought the romance did a nice job of giving the reader a break in the tension and allowed more character development to happen.  Being able to see the other people in the town as well rounded people and not just faceless mannequins for Rebecca to question was key for my immersion in this story.

Honorable mention to a favorite part goes to the small town setting.  As someone who grew up in a small town and then moved to a city for college and remained, I could empathize with Rebecca's feelings of both being at home and being an outsider.  A lot can change in a small town in twenty years and it can be jarring to realize somewhere that always felt the same growing up actually changes so much while you're gone.  I'm not sure how this part would come across to someone who doesn't have first hand experience with small towns, but I found it very realistic and really heightened the story for me.

The part of the book I liked the least was one character - Ricky Simon.  Ricky is a 13 year old kid who ends up being a key piece in Rebecca's investigation.  To me, it felt like Ricky was the most amazing 13 year old to ever exist - there were many times when everything seemed to be at a standstill and then Ricky would remember something or do something that would jolt the plot forward. There's another 13 year old kid in the story who truly felt to me as being 13 so Ricky, in comparison, was even more unrealistic. It felt, at times, that White tried to make Ricky vulnerable and childish, but more times that not he was basically just a small adult who had all the answers.  White did a good job integrating him into multiple character's story lines to try and make him not seem so coincidental and I really liked his relationship with Ash, in particular.  However, I just felt, overall, that he ended up being the key to figuring out a lot of the big plot points in the story and I think the overall story would have been more interesting if some of those plot points were spread out a bit more to other characters.

The Dark Bones - Loreth Anne White
A great thriller with added romance and small town intrigue.
440 pages

The Sex Lives of Cannibals - J Maarten Troost

I can't remember the last time I read a non-fiction book that wasn't some sort of textbook.  I, by nature, am not a non-fiction person.  I live for fiction.  I believe that fiction is worth so much more than people give it credit for.  I even have a tattoo that says "Fiction is the truth inside the lie."  I am seriously all about the fiction.   Now I did not choose to read this out of the want to build character or expand my reading comfort zone.  I actually read this by accident.  I brought this with me to read at my office a few months ago when we had some downtime and on my breaks and lunch.  My mom sent this book to me after she read it and she really liked it.  I didn't look at the book in too much detail before selecting it.  It was a relatively small book, only 272 pages and was a paperback.  Easily transportable I figured.  However, once I started reading it, and discovered that it was a non fiction account of some guy and his wife living on a tropical island, I became quickly uninterested. 

The book stayed at work for no real reason other than I kept forgetting to put it back in my bag to bring home.  It sat on a shelf at my desk for a few months until one day last week when I had some time between meetings and I needed something that would help me kill time.  It was more out of necessity and boredom than anything else, but I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.  It was enjoyable enough that I'm considering putting the sequel (of sorts) on my to-read list.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals is the account of the two years J Maarten Troost and his girlfriend, Sylvia, spent living on a remote island in the South Pacific.  Sylvia was placed there for a job and Troost seemed to just tag along.  There isn't any real plot that carries the novel, just the chronological order of events that took place over the 2 years they spent on the island.  Where this book shines is the humor with which these scenarios play out. 

I have never been a fan of the tropical climes and after reading this book, I'm 500% sure I have no desire to be anywhere near the equator.  Troost is an excellent storyteller and I found myself flipping pages quite quickly to see what the next situation would bring.  As the book progresses, the reader can definately sense how Troost adjusts to island living.  My favorite part of this book was the matter of fact way that Troost recounts the events that happened.  I never got the sense that Troost thought he was better than the native people.  The chapters seemed to go:

1: this is a thing that happened

2: I was a bit confused

3: someone explained it to me

4: ah, i get it now

There were, of course, some comparisons to life back in America, but they became few and far between as the book progressed.

The only part I didn’t like about the book was when Troost went into the history of the island.  Now, I completely understand that this is 100% my personal preference.  I understand why the history was there.  I thought it did enhance the story and deepen the narrative, but I just didn't want to get away from the action of the story to delve into the history.  I would have preferred a bit less historical background, but I think that I wouldn't have this opinion if non-fiction was my go-to genre.  In any case, I skimmed most of the historical parts of the book and then continued on my way.

In the end, I thought this was a fun and quick read and it made me think about some of the everyday luxuries that we in the developed world take for granted.  I don't think I could ever do what Troost did, but I'm glad he took the time to write about it. 

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt

You should read this book.  Seriously.  This book is freaking fantastic.  To be completely honest, I finished reading this book about 10 months ago and the only thing I can remember is how much I liked it.  This is the story of two brothers who are hired guns in the Wild West  and it is pretty much exactly what you think.  Lots of gun play, lots of tension, lots of horses.   What makes this story different, however, is that one of the brothers is having an internal conflict and is

My favorite part of this book is the amount of snarky-ness in it.  I grew up watching Clint Eastwood westerns and was really expecting this book to be that kind of dry, serious, very tense read.  However, there were more than a few times that I laughed out loud at a line or situation.  The humor did a good job of breaking the tension that slowly builds as the story progresses.  The relationship between the brothers is crafted tremendously well.  I usually have a fear when a story has two strong lead characters that it will be hard to follow or that I will have a problem being immersed in the story because the characters seem to be trying to one-up each other.  This was not the case in this story.  I found that each brother had a strong, but different personality.  One was definitely the protagonist of the story and I found that wonderfully helpful when it came to following the plot of the novel.  The two characters felt like brothers in the way they bantered and picked on each other and I found this aspect of the novel to be the most well-crafted.

The part of the book I liked the least is a bit difficult to explain without going into spoilers.  But, in general, there's a part in the book that delves into chemical science.  I just didn't find that aspect of the story at all believable.  Now, I didn't bother to do any research and investigate if that sort of technology would have actually been available back then so I can't say if it is factually inaccurate.  But what I can say is that it sort of abruptly appears in the story and I found that it didn't quite fit in the world that deWitt had created.  I feel like it fit in the plot alright.  I understood why it was there and there needed to be some sort of extra stuff revealed toward the end, but I'm not sure if the chemical stuff was the right choice.  

The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt

A fun, a-typical, Western full of adventure, gun play, and snark.

325 pages

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

Why yes, it has been over a year since I last updated this blog.  I did finish two books in that time (only two! My middle school self would be ashamed) but I never got around to updating this with the reviews.  So here’s the first one: Gone Girl.

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

I would like to point out, first, that I finished this book before the movie came out and, second, that I have not seen the movie.  I’ve been horribly disappointed so many times by movie adaptations of books that I have stopped going to see them.  It seems no matter how much I temper my expectations it just never seems to help and I regret wasting 10.00 and two hours of my time. 

                But I digress…

I would characterize Gone Girl as a mystery-thriller.  On the day of Amy and Nick Dunne’s 5^th anniversary, Amy goes missing.  From the state the house was left in, possibly abducted.  And, as all we TV crime drama watchers know, the husband is always the prime suspect.  As the investigation unfolds in the small town in Missouri, the reader sees the happy façade of a young couple slowly crack and crumble.  But, the question remains, where is Amy?

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It was a fast paced read for me and I couldn’t put it down.  It was just the book to get me back into wanting to read when I hadn’t touched a book in months.  The narrative switches point of view between Amy and Nick, which is a style I’ve always been a fan of.  In respect to this novel, I don’t think it would have been nearly as exciting as interesting if it wasn’t for the point of view changing.  The first half of the novel is set in the present in Nick’s chapters but in the past in Amy’s part.  The couple’s history is recounted through Amy’s chapters – from them meeting, falling in love, and their elegant life before moving to the Midwest.  When Amy’s story catches up with Nick’s in the present, about half way through, that’s where the twist in the plot occurs and the second half of the story is filled with tension as the reader follows the two parallel story lines.  The back and forth narrative structure really helps build this tension and keep the reader turning pages until the end.

The one thing I disliked about this novel was the ending.  Without going into too much detail (as this is a spoiler-free space) it felt like a deadline was approaching and Flynn needed to get the story wrapped up as quickly as possible.  In the last 20 pages or so, it felt like Flynn was getting all her little ducks in a row and then slapped a big bow on top and called it done.  I found it unsatisfying and felt like the ending didn’t do justice to the journey the characters had been on since page 1.  I would have preferred a sort of cliff hanger ending.  About 20 pages before the end there’s a huge plot event (this is real hard to describe without going into spoilers) and everything after that is just filler and lining the ducks up.  I would have preferred it if right after the big event, the story ended.  The relationships between all the characters in the novel are so complex and messy, it would have felt right to just leave the future up in the air and let the reader speculate.

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

A fast paced mystery thriller that will have you questioning how much you know about the people around you

415 pages

Divergent - Veronica Roth

First book of 2014 done within the first two weeks, a pretty good start to stay on track for the rest of the year.

This first book is Divergent by Veronica Roth, a dystopian novel about 16 year old Beatrice finding her place in the world.  In this world, society has been split into five different factions, each one with a core value that its people live by.  Each year, the 16 year olds of all factions decide what faction they will live with for their adult lives.  Some choose to stay in their home factions, while others choose a different path. 

One of the things I liked most about this book is the consistent dynamic between the different factions.  The five faction values are honesty, selflessness, bravery, intelligence, and peacefulness.  While the different factions live in different areas of the city, the children all go to school together until they reach 16 years old.  While in school, it seemed like the factions were more like cliques in the school.  However, once the teens chose which factions they would go with and the initiation began, the characters still stayed true, in one way or another, to their faction's belief system.  This made the many characters easier to distinguish from one another as well as give a sort of interpersonal hurdle for Beatrice to overcome.  While this is a dystopian novel and there are bigger problems in the world than just teenage drama, the tension between factions kept the book, for me, from getting too serious and kept it away from feeling like a long training montage portion of an action movie.  Also, it speaks to a deeper theme of the book that, no matter what your reasons are for leaving home, you always carry your past with you.  There were times in the book where Beatrice (who grew up in the selflessness faction) would have a gut reaction to a situation and would often say what she was feeling without thinking first and the other teens would make comments about how that is typical of someone from her faction to think that way.  And Beatrice makes those generalizations as well about other factions.  Overall, I found the faction basis of this world in this story to be interesting and was glad to see that it was, at later points in the book, used to further the plot and wasn't just used to insert clique drama into a dystopian world. 

Over all, I really enjoyed this book and it was a quick read.  However, I had a hard time moving past the point that this book felt extremely similar to the Hunger Games series.  I found myself drawing similarities between the two in the following ways:

1: Both are dystopian teen fiction set in a future United States
2: Both separate what is left of society into divisible sections with a clear explanation as to what each section of society is responsible for
3: Both feature a female protagonist who leaves her home and learns to fight
4: Both see the protagonist go from the underdog to the leader
5: Both have extensive use of technology that the protagonist has to fight against in order to survive

There were other similarities that jumped up in specific scenes, but the above five are the main ones that stuck with me and that I can mention without spoiling much.  This isn't to say that Divergent is just a copy of The Hunger Games, they discuss different themes and explore different aspects of their respective dystopian landscapes, but the similarities are there and they were just a little too distracting for my tastes.  And this could be because I just finished the second Hunger Games book about a month ago and haven't read anything in between.  I also thought maybe these are just the themes of the genre of dystopian fiction and this is a relatively new and trendy genre at the moment so it is getting a lot of attention.  I'm sure the same sort of general parallels could be drawn between two science fiction books or two detective fiction books.  It was just, for me, in this particular reading, the similarities were a bit distracting and took away from my immersion in the story.


Divergent - Veronica Roth

A fast paced, dystopian teen novel that holds your attention throughout the story.

487 pages

Rating: 4/5.  Everything I wanted from a dystopian teen novel with a few extra themes for thought that I didn't expect.