Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
What an amazing story of success after growing up in a dysfunctional home with mentally ill parents and an alcoholic father. The swinging from love from her parents to her father blaming his children for his problems is hard to read but her ability to overcome so much is inspiring.

I Guess That You Had To Be There
This is an autobiography based on serious child abuse. If this triggers anyone, please do not read. The early half of the book is all about how tortured parents made their children feel as badly as they did. Most of the abuse is psychological, but it is severe. While the father is the active abuser, the mother is passively allowing it to go on. Both parents are mentally ill. I found it very difficult to read about this. The second half of the book is about how the three children grew to adulthood, had their own lives, and survived and thrived. While this helps the story digest better, it is still hugely depressing. The only thing worse would be if any of the children had committed suicide (they did not). This is not a book for empathetic readers. It did give me nightmares and sent me into sorrow over my own youth. I received this ARC book for free from Net Galley and this is my honest review.

This was a most interesting biography and I have read many over the years.
To endure what this sister and brother did during their earliest years till the end of their teens was amazing.
Their parents were intelligent,educated,good looking but so cruel,both mentally and physically to their children,they also had to be certifiable insane.
I could not put this book down once I started to read it,bittersweet.

How Kathy McCoy was able to write the story of her childhood is an example of not just a survivor but of a woman with determination to overcome terror, threats, and a childhood without love. Her writing is strong which allows her to tell a vivid tale of a life no child should have to live. Unfortunately and thankfully she had a brother to cling to throughout her growing up years. It is a question of whether either would have survived alone. Add an impotent mother either unwilling or unable to intervene on the children's behalf adds to the brutality and unbelievable story. All you have to do is read her story and you will realize how lucky you were, no matter what kind of dysfunction you lived through.

A beautifully written and relatable memoir about growing up with in a dysfunctional family with an abusive mentally ill father, a complacent mother, and overcoming all the difficulties associated with it and in the end truly succeeding at life.

This is a weighty memoir. The author had a dysfunctional childhood with an abusive, mentally disturbed father and a passive mother. The stories she shared gave me chills. Some of the nuns at her parochial school were horrible harridans while others became lifelong friends. There were bright spots: her grandfather on his deathbed wrote a check for her first year’s tuition at NorthWestern. Each of her siblings wrestled with their own demons as a result of their childhood. It’s an interesting read, but I felt like a glass a wine at its conclusion.