I think this book is worth every bit of hype and praise it has gotten. It's great and fascinating. I love memoirs because they're essentially just a character study, one person exploring their life and the experiences that they found important. This book is such a great memoir.

I really loved the way she handled memory. Her home situation was incredibly abusive growing up and even as an adult her parents were gaslighting her, and you can really see the influence on how she experiences the world. There was almost a distrust of herself and a reliance on the way other family members remembered events. She's constantly adding notes to make this clear and while it's definitely sad to read, I enjoyed it from a literary perspective.

I don't have any real negatives on this. I'm trying to word this next thought carefully because I really don't want it to come across as too negative (I did so very much love this book). I think for me it lacked a little depth. Like I wish she had explored her beliefs and the change in them more. She does this a little with racism, but I wish she had opened that up to her whole world view. I know that wasn't exactly the point, but it was something that felt like it was talked around, or like she was trying to keep from being too political.

Which brings me to my last point, which is less about the book itself than an observation I had because of what else I was reading at the time. Westover grew up in a very sheltered, very fundamentalist household and to her, BYU felt like a liberal paradise. She never once brings up what I think (maybe) is referred to as the morality clause, or how conservative BYU is compared to much of America. It was particularly interesting to me just because I happened to be reading another book at the same time written by a transwoman who had gone to BYU and very obviously did not see it as a liberal paradise. I think that was something that may have influenced my prior point about how I wanted more in depth discussion. In that way it did feel a little like something was missing. But that's just one of those things you get because of the subjectivity of memoirs, and I do like that aspect. It was just something on my mind as I was reading this.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this if you like memoirs. It was a solid one and definitely one that made me think quite a bit. I'm glad I finally got around to picking this up. I devoured it in like three days, despite how slow my reading has been lately.