This book was incredible. I didn't know there were people living in poverty like this in America. Tara's life is so similar to the Chinese villager girls story I read when I was younger. In both stories, the girls overcame impossible odds to succeed in life by getting into an education institution.

I can't believe men like her father exist in America, with so little love and care to his own children.

Tara Westover, the author is an amazing writer, her writing reminds of John Steinbeck by the way she describes landscapes in America. It makes me want to visit Idaho.

What I liked about

• I can relate to her feeling fish out of water when interacting with the regular people. But compare to her, I have it lucky.
• Her descriptions are so vivid. She can really make the readers feel like they're in the room.

Good Quotes

“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.” (on finally applying / receiveing Govt. Grant for her school)

“This is a magical place,” I said. “Everything shines here.” “You must stop yourself from thinking like that,” Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. “You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some lighting—but that is the illusion. And it always was.” (Tara has just arrived to Cambridge after receiving a Gates Cambridge scholarship to study there).

“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.” (on separating from her family due to religious difference and them not coming to her defence against her older abusive brother)