One of the most extraordinary memoirs of recent years. Tara Westover grew up in rural Idaho as the youngest of seven children in a survivalist family who distrusted government, medicine and formal education. She never set foot in a classroom until she was seventeen. No birth certificate, no doctor, no school — just the mountain, her father’s apocalyptic beliefs, and a family that closed ranks around its own version of reality.

Through sheer determination and self-teaching, Westover eventually won a place at Brigham Young University, then a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and ultimately a PhD from Cambridge. But the book is far more than an academic success story. It’s an unflinching account of the cost of leaving — the estrangement, the guilt, the grief of questioning everything you were raised to believe.

What makes it so compelling is Westover’s honesty about her own uncertainty. She never fully demonises her family, and the reader is left genuinely unsure where delusion ends and love begins. Remarkably well-written for a memoir, and a story that stays with you long after the last page.