5/5 Stars

When I first started reading The Glass Castle by Jennette Walls, I was a bit apprehensive. While I was reading it, I wondered why this memoir was almost a fairytale. As soon as I finished, the first word that came to mind was WOW.

Wall’s 2005 memoir about growing up in a nomadic style life with abstract, abrasive, and abusive parents was the reason that I couldn’t tell whether I loved or hated the book when I first started reading it. Even though it was about all true events, the magical and vivid style of Walls’s writing made me question if what I was reading was real. However, this technique is what not only drew me in, but kept me entranced in the story.

For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and Unbroken by Laura Hollenbrad, this story depicts a young girl coming of age in a home that was more conceptual than physical. She writes of growing up with an erratic yet genius father and creative yet selfish mother in ways that show so much love, yet so much pain. She flips to-and-from the high-rise Upper-West Side life that she currently lives and tales of growing up, whether that be in a trailer in the desert, or homeless and couch surfing in New York. Walls learns life lessons about the difference between love and trust and how those two do not always go hand-in-hand while navigating a big world as a young girl by herself.

Although The Glass Castle deals with many sensitive topics, its humor, amazing writing, and an overall wisdom made this book such an impressive read for me. No matter what genre you enjoy, or if you even like reading at all, this is a book that I’m sure anyone will delight in. It is 100% deserving of this five-star review. Enjoy and keep reading!