My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

 My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones-416 pages

Jennifer "Jade" Daniels is seventeen and the half-Indian weird slasher chick in the small town of Proofrock, Idaho. Her childhood was traumatic and she lives with her Blackfoot dad, who contributed to that trauma. Her father is a drunk and lives out his high school days with his old high school buddies. Jade really, really wants a slasher cycle to come to Proofrock (or so she thinks, at least). Jade wrote papers on slasher history for her history teacher, Mr. Holmes, all throughout high school. Jade attempts suicide in Indian Lake, where local legend says Stacey Graves, the Lake Witch, resides. Stacey Graves died decades ago, but supposedly still haunts Indian Lake, where she died as an 8-year-old. When people start turning up dead, Jade thinks a slasher cycle is finally happening in Proofrock. She meets a new girl from Terra Nova, the new rich town on the other side of Indian Lake, named Letha Mondragon. Jade thinks Letha is the final girl of this supposed slasher. However, when more and more bodies start to pile up and Jade and Letha are in the middle of it, Jade realizes real life is starkly different from a slasher film. She realizes maybe she didn't want a slasher in Proofrock, after all. Will Jade survive the slasher and what about Letha? Is she really the final girl as Jade believes? Who is the killer? Is it really the Lake Witch or is it someone like Theo Mondragon (or someone else)? This one starts out slow, but the last 100 or so pages kept me on the edge of my seat. I liked this one, overall, and would recommend it to horror enthusiasts. 

Educated by Tara Westover

Educated by Tara Westover, 334 p. 

CW: family abuse

"Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it."--Goodreads blurb

This was an absolutely engrossing memoir of  a child making her way through to adulthood despite family trying to keep her where they thought she belonged. Some of Westover's story seemed almost fantastical, the way some things just worked out for her, but you also know she deserves it from both her hard work and just from taking so much abuse from family. Psychological and physical abuse make you cringe in this story, and make you want to punch people and wrap her in your arms. Beautifully written. 
 

Educated, A Memoir by Tara Westover

Educated, A Memoir by Tara Westover - 334 pages

Tara Westover was seventeen when she first set foot in a classroom. Instead of traditional lessons, she grew up learning how to stew herbs into medicine, scavenging in the family scrap yard and helping her family prepare for the apocalypse. She had no birth certificate and no medical records and had never been enrolled in school.

Westover’s mother proved a marvel at concocting folk remedies for many ailments. As Tara developed her own coping mechanisms, little by little, she started to realize that what her family was offering didn’t have to be her only education. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University at 16. 

Her first day of university was her first day in school—ever—and she would eventually win an esteemed fellowship from Cambridge and graduate with a PhD in intellectual history and political thought.