The Paris Seamstress

By Natasha Lester
Mar23-29, 2019

Wow, I loved, loved, loved this book. So totally unexpected and just what I needed right now. Two separate love stories that were not the least bit schmaltzy, but truly powerful and heart-breaking. What I thought going in was going to be a story mainly focused in Paris during WWII, was instead about a dress designer fleeing Nazi invasion. And so much more.

Something really cool was that some of the characters actually existed. Lester took liberties with their pasts to incorporate them into the story and it worked out beautifully. None of the outcomes were overly-predictable or outrageous, just satisfying resolutions to the endurance of love. The character development was so complete that my feelings for each one was powerful. Overall just great.

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Educated

by Tara Westover
March 10-23, 2019

It somehow seems wrong to judge a person's memoir. But that's just about what I am going to do. I understand that there are definitely people out there that live sheltered, unfathomable lives. But this one was eye-roll inducing. The first issue I had was with the "I think it happened this way; so-and-so thinks it happened that way." None of her memories are truly clear. There were too many footnotes like this that reduced some of the credibility. All of her memories are of horrific accidents and injuries and yet not one person died from these events. Her mother makes tinctures that save lives. Let's get the Cleveland Clinic to knock on their door...it's a miracle! Second, the timeline was disjointed at best. At one point the book jumps from Y2K to September 11. Tsk-tsk for an author with a PhD.

Which leads me to the "Educated" portion. If your delusional, government-fearing father is so anti-education, and you live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, how do you even know you want an education? And once this education begins, Westover somehow becomes like the Forrest Gump of college – being afforded insanely generous opportunities to BYU, Cambridge and Harvard. And somehow there's enough money and scholarships for this to happen.

I understand the someone so cut off from society could truly be ignorant to the ways of the world. But,

"Was I pregnant? I wasn't sure."

This naiveté did not evoke empathy, just annoyance. COME ON. You are at BYU. Google it for goodness sake.

The memoir did start to come together more for me towards the end, but by that point, I just wanted to finish it. I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I'm just tougher to please these days. (A- on the cover design though.)

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