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This came across my radar recently because it's a "Read with Jenna" (Today Show book club) pick.

Synopsis from Amazon:

Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” Hungry for more time with her boy who was growing up too quickly, 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, such as her project to recapture her twelve-year-old son's early years by bleaching his hair and putting him on a crawling regimen.

Years 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 insatiable love.

And the first praise/liner note is from Jenna Bush Hager: "One of the most beautiful books I've ever read".

Um no, it's one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. I mean thank God it seems that this guy is a "normal" adult with a wife and family and appears to have survived his crippling childhood. There was (IMO) nothing funny or inspiring about this story.

The family is a Psychologist/Professor father who is the main bread winner, two sons and a "stay at home mother". Stefan is the younger brother. Not sure how or why Aaron, the older brother escaped mom's psychosis. The mom was insanely enmeshed with her youngest son (her baby) and pulled him from school in grade 4. For the next FIVE years they lived in a crazy insular cocoon. Aaron was just trying to save himself and who could blame him. But the dad? Massively missing. He was married to a woman who was clearly suffering from a mental illness of some sort, paranoid at minimum. She was clearly abusive to Stefan and neglectful to Aaron. Dad was minimally neglectful to both, but honestly it was just such a huge cluster/abusive situation all around. I can understand why the author painted it as a more rosy romantic picture........but for the people who have reviewed this book and NOT call out the mental illness and abuse....? I don't get it.

There are so many examples.....she was forcing him to regress to a literal baby/toddler (bleaching his hair "blonde", forcing him to actually crawl), some inappropriate boundaries were crossed, holding him like a baby in the pool while singing to him. She forced him to perform embarrassing acts in front of his middle school peers, ensuring that he would never be able to integrate eventually into the public school realm. Not to mention her paranoia and extreme distrust of the medical profession. Which also led him to be further isolated. Ugh, I can't with this book. I HIGHLY do not recommend.