With that being said, frankly this book bored me. I wanted to like it. I wanted to cheer for the woman who felt trapped by tradition and was barred from getting a 'real' education. I thought based on the title that maybe something crazy happened that caused her to make the break and obtain her freedom, but nothing really happens. She is married off at age seventeen and the marriage has problems and she leaves. I'm oversimplifying it, but that's because prior to age seventeen absolutely nothing of interest happens in this book. She goes to school, but sneaks secular books like Pride & Prejudice and Little Women home to read. Honestly, even after she gets married, not much happens. She and her husband argue a lot and have some sexual problems, but nothing glaring that hasn't happened in other bad marriages. If the author wasn't Jewish the book would just be about a woman who vaguely divorces her husband. She doesn't offer many details about how exactly she escaped this Hasidic world.
After finishing the book, I started to read the reviews and found out that there was controversy about the book. There were some reports that parts of the book were fabricated and she only wrote the book so she could fund her escape from the Hasidic community. I read these claims and since I didn't like the book, I simply didn't care if the story was true or not. I feel like the book is so boring it has to be true because if you're going to make something up, wouldn't you make it interesting? You can definitely skip this one.
