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Homeschooled: A Memoir
A heartbreaking and empowering debut memoir about a mother’s all-consuming love, a son’s perilous quest to discover the world beyond the front door and the unregulated homeschool system that impacts millions like him
Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” With no background in education and no formal training, she began to instruct Stefan in the family’s living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother’s erratic whims. She forced him to bleach his hair and to crawl like a baby in a strange and regressive attempt to recapture his early years.
Long before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother’s increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.
At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son’s battle for a life of his own choosing, and the wages of a mother’s all-consuming love.
Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” With no background in education and no formal training, she began to instruct Stefan in the family’s living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother’s erratic whims. She forced him to bleach his hair and to crawl like a baby in a strange and regressive attempt to recapture his early years.
Long before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother’s increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.
At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son’s battle for a life of his own choosing, and the wages of a mother’s all-consuming love.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 6, 2026
1698 people are currently reading
25887 people want to read
About the author
Stefan Merrill Block
6 books216 followersStefan grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting, was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature, The Ovid Prize from the Romanian Writer's Union, the 2008 Merck Serono Literature Prize and the 2009 Fiction Award from The Writers’ League of Texas. The Story of Forgetting was also a finalist for the debut fiction awards from IndieBound, Salon du Livre and The Center for Fiction. Following the publication of his second novel, The Storm at the Door, Stefan was awarded The University of Texas Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, as well as residencies at The Santa Maddalena Foundation and Castello Malaspina di Fosdinovo in Italy. Stefan's novels have been translated into ten languages, and his stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker Page-Turner, The Guardian, NPR’s Radiolab, GRANTA, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Stefan's third novel, Oliver Loving, is forthcoming from Macmillan/Flatiron Books. He lives in Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,247 reviews
January 16, 2026
I feel a bit like the people who give an Amazon product two stars because it was damaged in shipping. It really isn’t fair. It’s not the author’s story or how he told it that is causing me to give it two stars, but rather the name he chose to give his book. This book is in a similar vein as Educated or I’m Glad My Mom Died. A story of a life filled with codependency, mental health issues, familial dysfunction, and yes, a son who was forcibly “homeschooled”. But to call what the author’s mother did “homeschooling” does a disservice to all the parents who choose to give their child an education at home, and prepare them for life.
I feel badly for the issues in the author’s family, and the trap that his own mother put him in. I hope he has gotten some professional therapy to work through it all.
I feel badly for the issues in the author’s family, and the trap that his own mother put him in. I hope he has gotten some professional therapy to work through it all.
December 23, 2025
Based on the description of this book, I was expecting a personal account of homeschooling, for better and worse. Instead, this memoir about the author’s experience of being “homeschooled” (there were very few actual lessons) by his narcissistic mother, who simply couldn’t cope with being alone and having her youngest child grow up, was devastating. Her emotional abuse and manipulation hit me very hard, yet the author presents her with respect and even affection. Despite my personal reaction to the content, this is a powerful and revealing memoir that provides much to think about.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for allowing me to read an ARC of this title.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for allowing me to read an ARC of this title.
December 20, 2025
A fascinating memoir about growing up with a very controlling and manipulative mother.
While homeschooling was a large part of his need for control that ultimately had a great impact on the authors life, I was hoping for more extrapolation on how homeschooling as a whole gives these sorts of parents a cover. While homeschooling in and of itself isn’t always a bad thing, or doesn’t mean parents will ultimately neglect and abuse their children in this way, there is often some confusion in the community where abusive families can hide, while also sharing their tips and tricks with other families who wouldn’t otherwise seek this sort of distrust of their larger community or “others”.
As someone who was homeschooled myself (in what for me was a very positive experience that prepared me for college and beyond, different from the author), I cringed as I heard the names of the popular champions of homeschooling from the 90s. Along with the common phrases and excuses for needing to abandon the public school system and those supportive of it. That mindset is STRONG among many homeschooling communities and easily leads to an even more controlling environment under the guise of more “freedom”.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
While homeschooling was a large part of his need for control that ultimately had a great impact on the authors life, I was hoping for more extrapolation on how homeschooling as a whole gives these sorts of parents a cover. While homeschooling in and of itself isn’t always a bad thing, or doesn’t mean parents will ultimately neglect and abuse their children in this way, there is often some confusion in the community where abusive families can hide, while also sharing their tips and tricks with other families who wouldn’t otherwise seek this sort of distrust of their larger community or “others”.
As someone who was homeschooled myself (in what for me was a very positive experience that prepared me for college and beyond, different from the author), I cringed as I heard the names of the popular champions of homeschooling from the 90s. Along with the common phrases and excuses for needing to abandon the public school system and those supportive of it. That mindset is STRONG among many homeschooling communities and easily leads to an even more controlling environment under the guise of more “freedom”.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
December 5, 2025
I LOVE a messy, intimate family memoir and this one delivered. A mother's love turned narcissistic and dangerous, an introspective, bookish son, struggling to spread his wings...so good.
January 15, 2026
Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block is a misleading title. It should have been called “Toxic Mom.”
Readers are subjected to a claustrophobic account of emotional manipulation and isolation under the guise of "homeschooling," where the narcissistic mother emerges as the toxic centerpiece - volatile, controlling, and suffocating in her need to keep her son from growing or connecting with the outside world.
Her erratic demands like forcing him to bleach his hair or crawl like a baby, and the complete lack of structured education reveal homeschooling not as a thoughtful alternative but as a tool for her own psychological grip, leaving her son abandoned to her unraveling presence with no peers, no oversight, and no real learning.
The memoir's focus on this dysfunctional dynamic makes the title feel like false advertising, turning what could have been a discussion of unregulated homeschooling into an exhausting portrait of maternal toxicity. Disappointing!
Readers are subjected to a claustrophobic account of emotional manipulation and isolation under the guise of "homeschooling," where the narcissistic mother emerges as the toxic centerpiece - volatile, controlling, and suffocating in her need to keep her son from growing or connecting with the outside world.
Her erratic demands like forcing him to bleach his hair or crawl like a baby, and the complete lack of structured education reveal homeschooling not as a thoughtful alternative but as a tool for her own psychological grip, leaving her son abandoned to her unraveling presence with no peers, no oversight, and no real learning.
The memoir's focus on this dysfunctional dynamic makes the title feel like false advertising, turning what could have been a discussion of unregulated homeschooling into an exhausting portrait of maternal toxicity. Disappointing!
January 14, 2026
I had to DNF @ 30%. It just felt like the author was rambling. It’s really not even about being homeschooled. It’s about his narcissistic, controlling mother denying him education because of her fringe beliefs despite the fact his sibling goes to regular school.
December 4, 2025
3 stars - honestly, I was a bit let down by this book. As a parent who is debating homeschooling my 2026 kindergartener, I was hoping to have a lot of insight into homeschooling from the child's perspective. Homeschooled is more focused on the author's experiences with a "toxic mom" (she clearly was dealing with major mental health issues) and less on homeschooling. The last 40 pages are very strong and emotional, however, I didn't find what I was looking for in this book.
Homeschooled would be a good read for those who enjoyed I'm Glad My Mom Died and Hillbilly Elegy.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the advanced copy. Homeschooled hits shelves on January 6, 2026.
Homeschooled would be a good read for those who enjoyed I'm Glad My Mom Died and Hillbilly Elegy.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the advanced copy. Homeschooled hits shelves on January 6, 2026.
January 15, 2026
I'm not sure how I feel about this one. This book is marketed as a book about one man's negative experiences as a homeschooler, which then asks larger questions about homeschool regulation and parent's/children's rights. It is sort of about that but it also isn't. The homeschooling Block writes about is really just a symptom of a larger problem, namely his mother's declining mental health and alcoholism as part of overall family dysfunction. The book morphs into a book about Plano, TX, at one point in the recent past, being labeled the suicide capital of America with the author knowing several students and a teacher who commit suicide. So, it ends up reading like homeschooling as a symptom of mental health problems rather than homeschooling as it's own practice. I'm absolutely not saying this right or making much sense. If you read this as a memoir of one man's experiences, then great. However, the marketing as a broader case study into homeschooling isn't accurate. I think this is worth reading, although the author brings up several important life points that get dropped but never get picked back up, but I'm not sure it is worth reading for the reasons it's being presented as worth reading.
February 16, 2026
DNF at page 100 of 288. This book is not at all what it purports to be, but rather a memoir of a child separated from the world by a disengaged father, a severely mentally ill mother (all signs point to Borderline Personality Disorder and alcoholism), and a system that made the abuse possible by sanctioning homeschooling without monitoring by the state. It is sad, and I am sorry for what Block endured, but it gives me nothing other than the opportunity to feel icky about being a voyuer feasting on the sad story of another. I hope Block found writing this to be cathartic. I don't think it speaks to issues with homeschooling in a way that applies to anyone but him.
This was not helped by the audio, which was read by the author. His reading is not terrible, but also not compelling.
This was not helped by the audio, which was read by the author. His reading is not terrible, but also not compelling.
August 15, 2025
This memoir pulls you in quickly and keep you there. The author, Stefan Merrill Block, is not the first to speak out about the damage homeschooling caused him, and he won't be the last. In fact, I suspect we will continue to see an increase in stories of this type as a new wave of homeschoolers enter adulthood. However, this memoir is particularly special. Block recounts his childhood openly and honestly, with a hindsight that truly illuminates some of the real horrific experiences he had as a preteen living in isolation. However, he narrates this without judgment. He doesn't try to pass his mom off as "bad" or "good". He simply recounts his
childhood, and hers, with a voice that is
compelling and sympathetic. This book is a great starting point for the important conversations that need to be had regarding homeschooling.
childhood, and hers, with a voice that is
compelling and sympathetic. This book is a great starting point for the important conversations that need to be had regarding homeschooling.
March 10, 2026
Such an excellent, nuanced memoir. It evoked so many feelings all at once. A tragic but tenderly told bird’s eye view of a childhood filled with complicated love, isolation, and confusing abuse that resembled parental care.
As a mom of two little boys, this was a tough read for me, but it was so well-done and the author overcame so much. Stefan was a child who was home schooled for nearly five years by a mother who seemed to be suffering from an escalating, unnamed mental illness. A mother who clearly loved her child deeply, often too much, but also misused him and abused him at times. He was parentified on one hand, his mother’s closest confidant and keeper of her ‘peace.’ But on the other hand, he was infantilized, given the impossible, cruel burden of never growing up and remaining his mother’s (blonde) baby boy.
This was a heavy read, but the author managed to infuse so much light along the way with his incredible humor and loving nature that withstood the trials and tribulations of his time with his mother (as he put it) in their ‘cult of two.’
January 20, 2026
I was initially put off by that horrid cover art, but you know the saying—so I read it all over the snowy holiday weekend. The book is a mixed bag. It's not truly about homeschooling. It's more of an autobiography of a boy's relationship with a narcissistic mother.
The first half had me hooked. It's a visceral account of what it's like to be 'unschooled' by a lunatic and learn essentially nothing for five years while enduring terrible psychological and physical abuse. The mother was a real piece of work: the school day was her bringing her son on grocery store and shopping errands so she wouldn't have to be alone, then he'd color a picture and watch TV and that was it. She drove him to his former school and made him scream insults at his old classmates to further alienate him. I could feel the boy's loneliness. I know what it's like (I was a product of homeschooling too. It's a bit like being kidnapped, but because it's your own mother, no one is coming to rescue you).
The second half starts strong, detailing his agonizing transition into high school. There are some wild moments, like his mother forcing him to bring a typewriter and a filing cabinet (with "where's the beef" inexplicably written on it) to his first day. But then, the mother gets sick, and the narrative shifts into a long, overly sentimental account of her illness. Ugh.
It was frustrating to read this sudden reversal in tone. After pages and pages of her insanity and abuse, the author tries to humanize her in a way that was forced. It made me think of the much superior I'm Glad My Mom Died, which never pressured the reader to sympathize with an abuser.
It read like the author hadn't fully processed his trauma; the account of her illness seems more like an apology for having written about her abuse in the first place. I felt more pity for the author's lingering enmeshment than I did for the mother, especially given her refusal to seek medical care for ten years.
Sometimes, even after the kidnapping ends, the captive is still left making excuses. "There was love! It was fun!" It's just...sad.
The first half had me hooked. It's a visceral account of what it's like to be 'unschooled' by a lunatic and learn essentially nothing for five years while enduring terrible psychological and physical abuse. The mother was a real piece of work: the school day was her bringing her son on grocery store and shopping errands so she wouldn't have to be alone, then he'd color a picture and watch TV and that was it. She drove him to his former school and made him scream insults at his old classmates to further alienate him. I could feel the boy's loneliness. I know what it's like (I was a product of homeschooling too. It's a bit like being kidnapped, but because it's your own mother, no one is coming to rescue you).
The second half starts strong, detailing his agonizing transition into high school. There are some wild moments, like his mother forcing him to bring a typewriter and a filing cabinet (with "where's the beef" inexplicably written on it) to his first day. But then, the mother gets sick, and the narrative shifts into a long, overly sentimental account of her illness. Ugh.
It was frustrating to read this sudden reversal in tone. After pages and pages of her insanity and abuse, the author tries to humanize her in a way that was forced. It made me think of the much superior I'm Glad My Mom Died, which never pressured the reader to sympathize with an abuser.
It read like the author hadn't fully processed his trauma; the account of her illness seems more like an apology for having written about her abuse in the first place. I felt more pity for the author's lingering enmeshment than I did for the mother, especially given her refusal to seek medical care for ten years.
Sometimes, even after the kidnapping ends, the captive is still left making excuses. "There was love! It was fun!" It's just...sad.
March 25, 2026
This is a difficult book to rate. It is tricky to give a star rating on a memoir, ones own account of his life story. I did my best to fairly rate the quality of writing, flow of the story-telling, and relevance of the topics covered in comparison to other similar memoirs.
Stefan Merrill Block is a good son. He withstood the guilt and emotional abuse his mother described as 'love'- laid upon him throughout his life and yet always treated her with kindness (according to the memoir) and speaks of her without malice; where I was enraged by her behaviors every other paragraph.
His largest discussion throughout the book is the loneliness he struggled to overcome due being homeschooled and the lack of homeschool regulation during that time. A lack of regulation he further describes left him without protection against the one person in the world that should protect him the most, his own mother. Block's mother had an all consuming dysfunctional fixation on keeping him her 'small perfect boy'- trying to keep his hair his natural blonde color by forced bleaching with 'sun-in' to replicate the color of his youngest days, having him crawl because he missed crawling when he was a toddler. Not allowing him to go to the doctor because she didn't trust modern medicine. Yet, his brother was never pulled from school, never forced to do these things, never treated with these odd, let's be real here, abusive behaviors. It was an odd fixation she had for Block that gnawed away at him until his adulthood.
I find it a blessing for his ability to break away from her once he married and was able to find his own happiness, standing up to her relentless guilt. I do hope this book serves as a source of healing. The author's note states it was his wife who encouraged the book, I assume this is a project for the purpose of release.
The flow of the book was choppy. The story telling didn't keep me wanting to come back for more. The ending had some closure (and to be honest, I was relieved for how life turned out for the author). I felt this to be more of an editing issue then the writing itself. It's all of his thoughts and ideas and his past written down, but the story isn't set up in a fashion that makes the reader want keep turning the page. That being said, this is the author's life. Possibly this book is his way to find closure- he may not have intended on a Jenna's book club and NYT bestseller. He set out to share his story and close this chapter on what was a painful past and this reader is hoping he was able to do just that.
Stefan Merrill Block is a good son. He withstood the guilt and emotional abuse his mother described as 'love'- laid upon him throughout his life and yet always treated her with kindness (according to the memoir) and speaks of her without malice; where I was enraged by her behaviors every other paragraph.
His largest discussion throughout the book is the loneliness he struggled to overcome due being homeschooled and the lack of homeschool regulation during that time. A lack of regulation he further describes left him without protection against the one person in the world that should protect him the most, his own mother. Block's mother had an all consuming dysfunctional fixation on keeping him her 'small perfect boy'- trying to keep his hair his natural blonde color by forced bleaching with 'sun-in' to replicate the color of his youngest days, having him crawl because he missed crawling when he was a toddler. Not allowing him to go to the doctor because she didn't trust modern medicine. Yet, his brother was never pulled from school, never forced to do these things, never treated with these odd, let's be real here, abusive behaviors. It was an odd fixation she had for Block that gnawed away at him until his adulthood.
I find it a blessing for his ability to break away from her once he married and was able to find his own happiness, standing up to her relentless guilt. I do hope this book serves as a source of healing. The author's note states it was his wife who encouraged the book, I assume this is a project for the purpose of release.
The flow of the book was choppy. The story telling didn't keep me wanting to come back for more. The ending had some closure (and to be honest, I was relieved for how life turned out for the author). I felt this to be more of an editing issue then the writing itself. It's all of his thoughts and ideas and his past written down, but the story isn't set up in a fashion that makes the reader want keep turning the page. That being said, this is the author's life. Possibly this book is his way to find closure- he may not have intended on a Jenna's book club and NYT bestseller. He set out to share his story and close this chapter on what was a painful past and this reader is hoping he was able to do just that.
March 10, 2026
This is going to be a rant.
First, background: I was homeschooled for 10 years in the Dark Ages of Homeschooling (aka, the 90s) along with my 5 siblings. I have a degree in French Education. I taught public school French for 4 years. I homeschooled my kids for 11 years. My three kids are in private school, with my oldest graduating and going to college in the fall. My youngest will attend public school for high school. I am the director of an academic homeschool co-op and I teach high school classes to homeschoolers.
This is not a defensive rant. I loved being homeschooled. I got a great education and loved the flexibility. I ALSO think that there are a lot of people who absolutely should not be homeschooling and there should be more accountability for homeschoolers. Homeschoolers will resist that to their dying breath. I have seen 6th graders unable to spell the word “like” and I want to strangle their parents. I have seen kids not do schoolwork for weeks because they needed to “homestead”. I could scream.
THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING.
This is a book about a co-dependent, lonely, probably mentally ill mother who latched on to one of her two kids and used homeschooling as an excuse to keep him close. It is apparently also the story of a very absent, passive father who barely gets a mention or analysis time. And of a brother who somehow saved his own life. I want to know that story, please. There was truly no homeschooling going on. It was barely “unschooling”. I don’t even know how he can say homeschooling made him who he was. It was literally 5 years of his life. Why is this centered around homeschooling? I taught public school and let me tell you…there were odd ducks and poor souls and abused children all over the place. I would never blame that on public school. Parents are perfectly capable of screwing up their kids in any given educational scenario.
The author says in his author’s note that this isn’t an indictment of homeschooling and that he believes homeschooling is a viable option for some families, but by attempting to use homeschooling as a narrative thread to pull this memoir together, it will absolutely be used as an indictment of homeschooling.
I will always, always respect individuals who come through these types of damaging parenting situations. But despite throwing in 5-ish pages of the “history of homeschooling”, there’s not enough here to inform anyone or motivate any change whatsoever within the homeschool community. Maybe that’s not his goal, and that’s fine. But what was the point of highlighting his unschooling if he didn’t want that to take the blame for his struggles?
I don’t even disagree with him that the lack of oversight of homeschoolers can lead to abused children flying under the radar or being educationally neglected. I just think that this is not a story primarily about homeschooling and it is disingenous to claim otherwise.
First, background: I was homeschooled for 10 years in the Dark Ages of Homeschooling (aka, the 90s) along with my 5 siblings. I have a degree in French Education. I taught public school French for 4 years. I homeschooled my kids for 11 years. My three kids are in private school, with my oldest graduating and going to college in the fall. My youngest will attend public school for high school. I am the director of an academic homeschool co-op and I teach high school classes to homeschoolers.
This is not a defensive rant. I loved being homeschooled. I got a great education and loved the flexibility. I ALSO think that there are a lot of people who absolutely should not be homeschooling and there should be more accountability for homeschoolers. Homeschoolers will resist that to their dying breath. I have seen 6th graders unable to spell the word “like” and I want to strangle their parents. I have seen kids not do schoolwork for weeks because they needed to “homestead”. I could scream.
THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING.
This is a book about a co-dependent, lonely, probably mentally ill mother who latched on to one of her two kids and used homeschooling as an excuse to keep him close. It is apparently also the story of a very absent, passive father who barely gets a mention or analysis time. And of a brother who somehow saved his own life. I want to know that story, please. There was truly no homeschooling going on. It was barely “unschooling”. I don’t even know how he can say homeschooling made him who he was. It was literally 5 years of his life. Why is this centered around homeschooling? I taught public school and let me tell you…there were odd ducks and poor souls and abused children all over the place. I would never blame that on public school. Parents are perfectly capable of screwing up their kids in any given educational scenario.
The author says in his author’s note that this isn’t an indictment of homeschooling and that he believes homeschooling is a viable option for some families, but by attempting to use homeschooling as a narrative thread to pull this memoir together, it will absolutely be used as an indictment of homeschooling.
I will always, always respect individuals who come through these types of damaging parenting situations. But despite throwing in 5-ish pages of the “history of homeschooling”, there’s not enough here to inform anyone or motivate any change whatsoever within the homeschool community. Maybe that’s not his goal, and that’s fine. But what was the point of highlighting his unschooling if he didn’t want that to take the blame for his struggles?
I don’t even disagree with him that the lack of oversight of homeschoolers can lead to abused children flying under the radar or being educationally neglected. I just think that this is not a story primarily about homeschooling and it is disingenous to claim otherwise.
March 7, 2026
This is a story about a mother’s all-consuming—and stifling—love for her son. The author recounts his experience of being pulled out of elementary school for a “homeschooling” experience that addressed his mother’s loneliness more than his own educational needs.
I devoured this book. The author is an engaging writer and I felt pulled right into these scenes. My favourite part was his return to public school in high school, equipped, at his mother’s request, with a filing cabinet on wheels instead of a backpack and a noisy electric typewriter for note-taking. Needless to say, making friends did not come easily. This section in particular was funny and painful in the way the best adolescent stories are.
This book is an indictment of loose homeschooling regulations that allow kids’ education to slip through the cracks, but it’s also a deeply personal story about the author’s relationship with his loving but flawed mother. The book was written after her death, and is not necessarily a flattering portrait, but the author’s underlying love for her shows through.
This was a truly gripping read that will appeal to readers of Destroy This House and Educated.
I devoured this book. The author is an engaging writer and I felt pulled right into these scenes. My favourite part was his return to public school in high school, equipped, at his mother’s request, with a filing cabinet on wheels instead of a backpack and a noisy electric typewriter for note-taking. Needless to say, making friends did not come easily. This section in particular was funny and painful in the way the best adolescent stories are.
This book is an indictment of loose homeschooling regulations that allow kids’ education to slip through the cracks, but it’s also a deeply personal story about the author’s relationship with his loving but flawed mother. The book was written after her death, and is not necessarily a flattering portrait, but the author’s underlying love for her shows through.
This was a truly gripping read that will appeal to readers of Destroy This House and Educated.
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March 7, 2026I don't really know what to think about this book. I do know the title is pretty misleading. Although he was one of the very first to be homeachooled in Texas when it became legal, this book isn't really about his experience but about his toxic relationship with his mother. I got to the end and I don't think he ever truly saw how messed up his relationship with his mom was. Also, if you think this book is gonna be like Educated. It isn't really.
January 18, 2026
(free review copy) Block expertly demonstrates that you can write about trauma, without the trauma being outwardly horrific. Children can be traumatized without being sexually abused, without their being a horrific ending. This memoir reads like fiction, and I simply couldn’t put it down.
As an educator and parent, homeschooling has always been of great interest and concern to me, and Block is finally opening up about how painful and lonely this experience was for him, and how our the United States lack of oversight of this practice puts children in potentially great danger of abuse and lack of schooling. And the history and LOBBYING behind homeschooling!
If you love memoirs that combine personal experience with social impact, definitely add this to your list.
Source: free review copy via Edelweiss
As an educator and parent, homeschooling has always been of great interest and concern to me, and Block is finally opening up about how painful and lonely this experience was for him, and how our the United States lack of oversight of this practice puts children in potentially great danger of abuse and lack of schooling. And the history and LOBBYING behind homeschooling!
If you love memoirs that combine personal experience with social impact, definitely add this to your list.
Source: free review copy via Edelweiss
January 6, 2026
This memoir is the January 2026 “Read with Jenna” choice for her book club. She has a fairly good track record for her choices that match my reading tastes, and I needed to read this ARC anyway, so I gave it a shot. That being said, memoirs aren’t usually part of my reading tastes.
Homeschooled, however, hooked me right in from the beginning. Before homeschooling was a thing, Stefan’s emotionally manipulative mother removed him from the structure of school to embark on unregulated homeschooling with no curriculum and questionable methods in order to keep him close and prevent him from growing up (and perhaps away). During the course of the book, we sympathize with his confusion over the love for his mother and his need to have other things in his life, and later his struggle to integrate into a society that left him behind in many ways. It is an honest, disturbing, and somehow humorous look into the author’s journey to find himself.
Thanks to Hanover Square Press/Harper Collins, Stefan Merrill Block (author), and Edelweiss for providing an advance digital review copy of Homeschooled: A Memoir. Their generosity did not influence my review in any way.
Homeschooled, however, hooked me right in from the beginning. Before homeschooling was a thing, Stefan’s emotionally manipulative mother removed him from the structure of school to embark on unregulated homeschooling with no curriculum and questionable methods in order to keep him close and prevent him from growing up (and perhaps away). During the course of the book, we sympathize with his confusion over the love for his mother and his need to have other things in his life, and later his struggle to integrate into a society that left him behind in many ways. It is an honest, disturbing, and somehow humorous look into the author’s journey to find himself.
Thanks to Hanover Square Press/Harper Collins, Stefan Merrill Block (author), and Edelweiss for providing an advance digital review copy of Homeschooled: A Memoir. Their generosity did not influence my review in any way.
January 24, 2026
Audio: the way he read it, I don’t even think he knew what he wrote.
Content: he romanticized his mother’s emotional abuse.
Stay far away.
Content: he romanticized his mother’s emotional abuse.
Stay far away.
January 12, 2026
3.5 stars, rounded down for chastising all of the homeschool community. I would have rated this book more favorably if it had been more bipartisan on the issue of homeschooling and focused on the tendencies of his mother. This is a story of a mother’s love mixed with her mental illness and growing obsession with her child, while family members stood by and allowed it. It blames homeschools legality as the culprit for the authors suffering, when in fact the mothers behavior stretched into public school environment as well. This books tries to be a call-to-action for readers to protest the existence of homeschooling, which doesn’t sit well with me. Overall it is well written and moving, but not captivating.
January 10, 2026
I’m not sure how to feel about HOMESCHOOLED, a memoir about living with a mother’s unstable, controlling behavior.
As a former high school teacher, I have complicated feelings about homeschooling. Some students were like the author: socially stunted and academically poor. I felt frustrated and sad for these kids who just wanted to be accepted and have a chance to learn.
On the other hand, I have seen students achieve great success in a home learning environment. They are academically rich, confident kids who haven’t been smothered OR neglected.
I think the author would agree: there are no perfect learning environments. We can all tell harrowing stories about public, private, or homeschool education.
In HOMESCHOOLED, the author is putting a spotlight on a broken woman, not necessarily a broken system.
Every educational setting has its shadows. We have a responsibility to protect the children hiding there and turn on the lights.
As a former high school teacher, I have complicated feelings about homeschooling. Some students were like the author: socially stunted and academically poor. I felt frustrated and sad for these kids who just wanted to be accepted and have a chance to learn.
On the other hand, I have seen students achieve great success in a home learning environment. They are academically rich, confident kids who haven’t been smothered OR neglected.
I think the author would agree: there are no perfect learning environments. We can all tell harrowing stories about public, private, or homeschool education.
In HOMESCHOOLED, the author is putting a spotlight on a broken woman, not necessarily a broken system.
Every educational setting has its shadows. We have a responsibility to protect the children hiding there and turn on the lights.
January 16, 2026
The author makes a very good case for more oversight of “homeschooling” as it is almost entirely unregulated and can be very damaging to the future prospects of these children.
January 26, 2026
When I first heard about this book I was hoping for a great story about homeschooling, as I homeschooled my three children for eleven years and it was such a great experience for our family. However the author's story was not at all like our family's experience. He had a co-dependent mother who did NOT educate him or his brother and his father sounded almost non-existent. I am quite sure he needs to work out more things in his life. It truly makes me sad he had this experience.
I do hope people who don't know what homeschooling really is, do not base their opinions on his story! I educated my children to be life-long learners. All are college educated, two with masters, and all have successful careers, serve in their communities, and are happy and well-adjusted. Our entire family are all readers, constantly seeking to be curious and learn more, no matter how old we get.
I do hope people who don't know what homeschooling really is, do not base their opinions on his story! I educated my children to be life-long learners. All are college educated, two with masters, and all have successful careers, serve in their communities, and are happy and well-adjusted. Our entire family are all readers, constantly seeking to be curious and learn more, no matter how old we get.
January 27, 2026
Audiobook. Seems like the author still has years worth of therapy to unpack all the damage his mother has done to him. Parenting is serious business, and she made him the apex of her happiness. I do agree that homeschooling should have more regulation. I doubt the homeschooling crowd will go for this though…..it was interesting to learn about the fundamentalist Christians role in getting homeschooling legalized in TX. TX remains one of the easiest places to homeschool with no regulations whatsoever. The author took me down memory lane since we are the same age and I group up in a neighboring suburb. I don’t remember being affected by the large number of suicides but I definitely remember the undercover cops and busting up the heroin ring.
January 30, 2026
The gasps I gusped!!!!! This man had me crying in a Five Below!!!!
I am a known homeschool hater and this only had me doubling down, but it really shows some important elements that the larger conversation misses—namely mental health and unnaturally close/suffocating relationships that can cripple individuals for decades.
This was beautifully written with SO much heart. We know I love an insane memoir and this one is a bullseye.
I am a known homeschool hater and this only had me doubling down, but it really shows some important elements that the larger conversation misses—namely mental health and unnaturally close/suffocating relationships that can cripple individuals for decades.
This was beautifully written with SO much heart. We know I love an insane memoir and this one is a bullseye.
January 10, 2026
To be clear, this is less of a memoir about homeschooling and more of a book about a broken woman who fights to keep her son close to her from his childhood into adulthood. I was moved by the author's loving and compassionate portrayal of his mother while recounting the suffering she caused him. As someone who was homeschooled, there were several relatable moments that made me consider how easily this education system—or I guess the parents—can fail a child.
February 1, 2026
Homeschooling can mean many different things within the context of different families and cultures, and its definition and iterations are ever-expanding. Stefan Merrill Block in his memoir Homeschooled is using the term “homeschooled” in a way that elevates his voice, suggesting that he can speak to the experience of millennial homeschoolers (homeschooled during the 1990s and the early 2000s in the United States of America). However, the author of this memoir and I are from a very similar cohort demographically, and this fact has led me to leave the following review.
As a survivor of the conservative Christian homeschool movement that began in the 1980s and is still ongoing, reading the memoir Homeschooled was incredibly painful for me personally. It was painful not because I related or empathized with the plight of the memoirist, but instead because I was left with a feeling of the author’s complete disregard for survivors of the Quiverfull homeschool movement. Such survivors I’m sure number in the hundreds of thousands across the United States by now, as I write this review at the beginning of February 2026. The disregard to which I refer was unintentional on the part of Block, I’m sure, but it gnaws at me nonetheless.
Allow me to quote a passage from the book, a book in which Block attends public school for eight of the thirteen years in which most American schoolchildren attend, “I win a lot my junior year, and my senior year too. I win the regional science fair again, and this time at the International Science Fair in Philadelphia, I win first place. I become a National Merit Scholar, and the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, and a finalist in The Science Talent Search, which the organizers like to call ‘The Junior Nobel Prize.’ I win something called ‘The Golden Scroll,’ which comes with a weekend-long ceremony among celebs at a resort in Scottsdale, where I eat lukewarm chicken in very close proximity to Martha Stewart and Lauryn Hill and Oliver Sacks. In my room, I surround myself with trophies and certificates and press clippings… I’m 93.3 FM’s Citizen of the Week.”
Now bear with me as I describe the experience of my peers who were raised in the conservative Christian homeschool movement beginning in the 1980s in the United States. I myself have met and formed close relationships with Christian conservative homeschoolers of the following denominations and groups: Roman Catholic, Ukraine Rite Catholic, Southern Baptist, Institute for Basic Life Principles, Independent Fundamentalist Churches of America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and more which I am likely forgetting.
The homeschool movement across these denominations and groups is defined by a philosophy (termed Quiverfull) that requires women to conceive and bear children until their physical bodies are no longer capable of the act, even up to the point of death. This philosophy produces families where the number of children may range from as few as one or two, up to (commonly) seven or eight children, or even eleven or twelve children, or at the furthest end of the spectrum (like in a family that you may have met on TLC) nineteen children. These conservative Christian homeschooling families are easily recognizable. Across the various groups and denominations that I’ve mentioned here, certain principles tend to hold true. Contraception is prohibited. Touch and intimacy outside of marital, procreative sexual activity is prohibited. In many cases, girls are prohibited from wearing swimwear, and even pants (picture instead a floor-length denim skirt from Walmart). Youth are prohibited from engaging with pop culture, wearing commonly acceptable clothes for their age group, and using even the slightest amount of profanity or cultural references in their speech. Children are prohibited from learning any information that is not previously vetted by their parents to fit the insular worldview which is being promoted by families, clergy, and various agreed-upon organizations. These children ultimately grow up unable to identify simple historical facts, celebrities’ faces, examples of print or video media, and much more. They will become scripture scholars through Bible Quizzing and/or leaving the house mainly to attend church, even if they can’t read. They will often be able to relate to only very specific niche examples of media that would surprise the average family (a couple of things I can think of might include Anne of Green Gables, VeggieTales, The Chronicles of Narnia, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Rhett and Link, The Secret Garden, select Christian music). They become little experts in self-censorship and censoring others’ thinking and behavior. See the BITE model for high-demand groups if interested.
These children are expected as they grow older to provide both housekeeping and childcare for large numbers of younger siblings. Many children in the conservative Christian homeschool movement never attend school, have no peers with whom they have ever connected that are not members of their biological family, and ultimately fade into an obscurity from which they will never return. They will never voice their opinions, even to a small percentage of the readership which Stefan Merrill Block has been privileged enough to reach – a privilege he was able to take advantage of through the many opportunities he was given to attend school.
In the homeschool culture in which I grew up, parentified children, with little to no social connection outside the home, consistently and demonstrably began to engage in shockingly unsafe, abusive and predatory behavior with their siblings, cousins, and others with whom they were at times allowed to be in contact. “Bad apples” like Josh Duggar are not outliers. On the contrary, in conservative Christian homeschooling, community members resembling Josh Duggar are a completely open secret, even fodder for sadistic and inhumane humor. Many go on, with no experience in formal education and only experience in domestic and child-rearing activities, to be functionally illiterate. Many stay within the movement, a movement in which their parents had attended school prior to homeschooling them, but in which they now continue, as illiterate, oftentimes dangerous adults, to homeschool their own expanding “quiver” of offspring, which is now (in the 2020s) the second generation. In this setting, not unlike in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, one need only imagine the consequences in areas such as personal autonomy and sexual health and safety.
I haven’t even mentioned other health, nutrition, or financial outcomes associated with having as many children as a body can withstand, let alone mental health or substance use outcomes within the community.
Homeschooling families like the ones I have described here believe that all of the above is worth it, more than worth it, in fact. They believe they are the City on a Hill. They share their esoteric wisdom with the in-group, stating that all other people on the planet are evil and demonic, and that any personal or generational suffering is more than worth the reward that comes at the end of the Myth of Christian Homeschooling: the salvation of their children’s souls. You will find that some of them openly refer to mainstream American culture as The Culture of Death. It’s a doozy when you’re five.
Homeschooled, to me, a Quiverfull survivor, is like an account written by a British student who has attended boarding school in the United States for a few years, returned to England, and then has had the audacity to publish a book under the title Immigrant: A Memoir.
At the end of the book, Stefan Merrill Block offers the following words, “I also believe that the lack of proper homeschooling oversight has become a crisis, the scale of which we’re only beginning to perceive…” These words are undeniably accurate, but they epitomize the idiom too little, too late.
And if you’re wondering how I was able to write and post this review, given everything I’ve just shared about the intersection of homeschooling and high-demand religion in America… Well, I was lucky enough to go on to the setting of higher education after completing homeschooling. And following all of that, I’ve spent an entirely gratuitous amount of time carefully considering these issues, involuntarily reliving my experiences, and intentionally researching the systems that created them. In words that a fellow Quiverfull kid would probably know all too well, “I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” And I feel the pain of that reality every day.
Skip Homeschooled. Instead, watch Shiny Happy People and read Educated by Tara Westover, A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings, or Rift by Cait West. If you were drawn to Homeschooled because you’re interested specifically in the topic of being raised by a mother with a personality disorder, read I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
As a survivor of the conservative Christian homeschool movement that began in the 1980s and is still ongoing, reading the memoir Homeschooled was incredibly painful for me personally. It was painful not because I related or empathized with the plight of the memoirist, but instead because I was left with a feeling of the author’s complete disregard for survivors of the Quiverfull homeschool movement. Such survivors I’m sure number in the hundreds of thousands across the United States by now, as I write this review at the beginning of February 2026. The disregard to which I refer was unintentional on the part of Block, I’m sure, but it gnaws at me nonetheless.
Allow me to quote a passage from the book, a book in which Block attends public school for eight of the thirteen years in which most American schoolchildren attend, “I win a lot my junior year, and my senior year too. I win the regional science fair again, and this time at the International Science Fair in Philadelphia, I win first place. I become a National Merit Scholar, and the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, and a finalist in The Science Talent Search, which the organizers like to call ‘The Junior Nobel Prize.’ I win something called ‘The Golden Scroll,’ which comes with a weekend-long ceremony among celebs at a resort in Scottsdale, where I eat lukewarm chicken in very close proximity to Martha Stewart and Lauryn Hill and Oliver Sacks. In my room, I surround myself with trophies and certificates and press clippings… I’m 93.3 FM’s Citizen of the Week.”
Now bear with me as I describe the experience of my peers who were raised in the conservative Christian homeschool movement beginning in the 1980s in the United States. I myself have met and formed close relationships with Christian conservative homeschoolers of the following denominations and groups: Roman Catholic, Ukraine Rite Catholic, Southern Baptist, Institute for Basic Life Principles, Independent Fundamentalist Churches of America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and more which I am likely forgetting.
The homeschool movement across these denominations and groups is defined by a philosophy (termed Quiverfull) that requires women to conceive and bear children until their physical bodies are no longer capable of the act, even up to the point of death. This philosophy produces families where the number of children may range from as few as one or two, up to (commonly) seven or eight children, or even eleven or twelve children, or at the furthest end of the spectrum (like in a family that you may have met on TLC) nineteen children. These conservative Christian homeschooling families are easily recognizable. Across the various groups and denominations that I’ve mentioned here, certain principles tend to hold true. Contraception is prohibited. Touch and intimacy outside of marital, procreative sexual activity is prohibited. In many cases, girls are prohibited from wearing swimwear, and even pants (picture instead a floor-length denim skirt from Walmart). Youth are prohibited from engaging with pop culture, wearing commonly acceptable clothes for their age group, and using even the slightest amount of profanity or cultural references in their speech. Children are prohibited from learning any information that is not previously vetted by their parents to fit the insular worldview which is being promoted by families, clergy, and various agreed-upon organizations. These children ultimately grow up unable to identify simple historical facts, celebrities’ faces, examples of print or video media, and much more. They will become scripture scholars through Bible Quizzing and/or leaving the house mainly to attend church, even if they can’t read. They will often be able to relate to only very specific niche examples of media that would surprise the average family (a couple of things I can think of might include Anne of Green Gables, VeggieTales, The Chronicles of Narnia, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Rhett and Link, The Secret Garden, select Christian music). They become little experts in self-censorship and censoring others’ thinking and behavior. See the BITE model for high-demand groups if interested.
These children are expected as they grow older to provide both housekeeping and childcare for large numbers of younger siblings. Many children in the conservative Christian homeschool movement never attend school, have no peers with whom they have ever connected that are not members of their biological family, and ultimately fade into an obscurity from which they will never return. They will never voice their opinions, even to a small percentage of the readership which Stefan Merrill Block has been privileged enough to reach – a privilege he was able to take advantage of through the many opportunities he was given to attend school.
In the homeschool culture in which I grew up, parentified children, with little to no social connection outside the home, consistently and demonstrably began to engage in shockingly unsafe, abusive and predatory behavior with their siblings, cousins, and others with whom they were at times allowed to be in contact. “Bad apples” like Josh Duggar are not outliers. On the contrary, in conservative Christian homeschooling, community members resembling Josh Duggar are a completely open secret, even fodder for sadistic and inhumane humor. Many go on, with no experience in formal education and only experience in domestic and child-rearing activities, to be functionally illiterate. Many stay within the movement, a movement in which their parents had attended school prior to homeschooling them, but in which they now continue, as illiterate, oftentimes dangerous adults, to homeschool their own expanding “quiver” of offspring, which is now (in the 2020s) the second generation. In this setting, not unlike in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, one need only imagine the consequences in areas such as personal autonomy and sexual health and safety.
I haven’t even mentioned other health, nutrition, or financial outcomes associated with having as many children as a body can withstand, let alone mental health or substance use outcomes within the community.
Homeschooling families like the ones I have described here believe that all of the above is worth it, more than worth it, in fact. They believe they are the City on a Hill. They share their esoteric wisdom with the in-group, stating that all other people on the planet are evil and demonic, and that any personal or generational suffering is more than worth the reward that comes at the end of the Myth of Christian Homeschooling: the salvation of their children’s souls. You will find that some of them openly refer to mainstream American culture as The Culture of Death. It’s a doozy when you’re five.
Homeschooled, to me, a Quiverfull survivor, is like an account written by a British student who has attended boarding school in the United States for a few years, returned to England, and then has had the audacity to publish a book under the title Immigrant: A Memoir.
At the end of the book, Stefan Merrill Block offers the following words, “I also believe that the lack of proper homeschooling oversight has become a crisis, the scale of which we’re only beginning to perceive…” These words are undeniably accurate, but they epitomize the idiom too little, too late.
And if you’re wondering how I was able to write and post this review, given everything I’ve just shared about the intersection of homeschooling and high-demand religion in America… Well, I was lucky enough to go on to the setting of higher education after completing homeschooling. And following all of that, I’ve spent an entirely gratuitous amount of time carefully considering these issues, involuntarily reliving my experiences, and intentionally researching the systems that created them. In words that a fellow Quiverfull kid would probably know all too well, “I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” And I feel the pain of that reality every day.
Skip Homeschooled. Instead, watch Shiny Happy People and read Educated by Tara Westover, A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings, or Rift by Cait West. If you were drawn to Homeschooled because you’re interested specifically in the topic of being raised by a mother with a personality disorder, read I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
January 16, 2026
4.25-4.5 stars. A Read with Jenna - Jan. ‘26 pick. Kudos to SMB for writing this incredible debut. This exceptional memoir read just like a fiction novel growing up under the thumb of a dominant-clingy mother, yet the author takes it all in stride. He finagles his way into public high school and seeks out peers to help the loneliness from years of no playmates and homeschooling. This didn’t feel like a ‘woe is me’ telling, but instead (with his being the audio narrator) you can listen as he puts his life out there in a matter-of-factly tone. You can’t help but feel heavy-hearted for any child suffering from a parent’s instability.. and thankfully he managed to overcome the trauma even as it continued into adulthood, not easy by any means. Wanting independence and in keeping concern for his mother’s feelings he set boundaries. I spent one afternoon reading/listening to this and am so glad I requested it. Really interesting. Do recommend. 🎧Pub. 1/6/26
I received an ARC from HarperCollins via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
I received an ARC from HarperCollins via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
February 8, 2026
The marketing shouts “HOMESCHOOLED” but this man’s story actually has very little to do with homeschooling and everything to do with his mother’s undiagnosed mental health issues.
Too many problems with this book to capture in a short review, but needless to say it was a slog.
Too many problems with this book to capture in a short review, but needless to say it was a slog.
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