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The Perfect Other

A Memoir of My Sister

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

All Kait Leddy had ever wanted was a little sister. When Kyleigh was born, they were inseparable; Kait would protect her, include her, cuddle and comfort her, and, to Kyleigh, her big sister was her whole world.

As they grew, however, and as Kait entered adolescence, her personality began to change. She was lashing out emotionally and physically, and losing touch with reality in certain ways. The family struggled to keep this side of Kait private—at school and in her social life, she was still the gorgeous, effervescent life of the party with a modeling career ahead of her and big dreams. But slowly, things began to shatter, and Kyleigh could only watch in horror as her perfect sibling's world collapsed around her. Kait was institutionalized with what would eventually be diagnosed as schizophrenia, leaving Kyleigh and their mother to handle the burden, shame, and guilt alone.

Then, in January 2014, Kait disappeared. Though they never found her body, security footage showed her making her way onto a big bridge over a river, where it is presumed that she jumped. Kyleigh is left wondering: What could she have done differently? How could this shining light be gone? And how will she find peace without her sister to guide her way there?

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 22, 2021
      Leddy debuts with a heartrending account of her older sister’s battle with mental illness. During their childhood in Philadelphia in the 1990s, Leddy saw her sister, Kait, “through the hero-worship lens of a little sister” as an arbiter of all things cool and her unquestioning protector. But as Kait reached adolescence, her joyful personality turned dark and her behavior increasingly frightening—such as one night when she hit their mother in the face. “Kait’s illness spread in this darkness the way all creeping matter prospers only in the dampest, most hidden places,” Leddy recounts, detailing how, in the years she came of age, her sister, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, “came into madness.” Kait’s behavior eventually escalated, leading to stints in psychiatric hospitals, before she disappeared from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in January 2014 (an apparent suicide, though her body hasn’t been found). Gutting in its intensity, Leddy’s narrative grapples with the unearned guilt she still carries regarding Kait’s difficult life, but it also celebrates the “exuberantly bright” light her “confident and hilarious” sister once shined upon the people around her. By refusing to allow this to become a story of utter despair, Leddy offers a humanist portrait of the nuances of loving someone with a mental illness. This one isn’t easy, but it’s well worth the effort.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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