August 2026 was a tough month for famous people. Several entertainers met their maker last month. In some cases, the death was expected, and didn’t seem all that shocking. Dolly Parton died, and many people are still in mourning for her, but she was 80 years old. Ditto to Tim Curry, who had been very ill for years. Yes, it was sad to lose them both, but it’s not like their deaths were tragedies.

In the late actress and singer Hayden Panettiere’s case, death came very unexpectedly, and was both shocking and tragic. Hayden was only 36 years old when she passed on August 16th, in Greenville, South Carolina. She was just five days shy of her 37th birthday.

Three years earlier, on February 19, 2023, Hayden Panettiere’s younger brother and only sibling, Jansen, died in New York City. According to Hayden’s memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, it was Hayden who was tasked with breaking the news of her brother’s passing to their mother, former soap opera actress, Lesley Vogel.

I wonder who told Lesley about Hayden’s death just three years later. I wonder how it felt for Lesley, and her ex husband, Skip Panettiere, to lose both of their children in such a short span of time. I mean… I can certainly guess how it felt. But the grief must have been exquisite, for both Hayden and Jansen were beautiful and talented adult children, with their whole lives ahead of them. Hayden and Jansen had been close, in spite of their personal problems. Now, they’re both gone.

Who was Hayden Panettiere and why did she write a book?

I remember the first time I saw Hayden Panettiere. It was sometime in the late 1990s. I was an avid fan of the now defunct CBS soap opera, Guiding Light. Hayden Panetierre was about seven years old in 1997, when she was introduced to Guiding Light viewers as “Lizzie Spaulding”. She already had a number of acting credits in 1997, including a lot of national ads. In fact, Guiding Light was Hayden’s second soap; she played little Sarah Roberts on One Life to Live from 1994-97.

I didn’t see Hayden on television until she’d been on Guiding Light for at least a year. Although I grew up watching that show, I was in Armenia in 1997, and when I moved back to the States, I was busy working. But in 1999, when I was in graduate school, I started watching my old soap regularly again. There she was… a golden haired girl– the daughter of Phillip Spaulding and Beth Raines– one of the show’s power couples.

I remember being really impressed by Hayden. She was such a natural on screen, even though she was so very young. And she looked like she could have been the daughter of Phillip and Beth, not just in terms of her looks, but in how she behaved. She seemed to capture the essence of the character and make it seem like she really was Lizzie, down to her core. Just look at the clip above, and how naturally and convincingly she was able to melt down into an emotional frenzy.

Of all of the actresses who portrayed Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light, I thought Hayden Panettiere was by far the best. She was so talented that her time on soaps was bound to be short. The world had plans for her. She left Guiding Light in 2000, and went on to star in bigger and better projects.

I really didn’t follow Hayden’s career beyond her time on Guiding Light. I got busy with things that took me away from watching network television and movies. I never saw her on her well-known shows, Heroes, Remember the Titans, or Nashville, but I do remember hearing her name mentioned in promos for those shows. The first time I heard her name in an ad, I stopped in my tracks, remembering her as little Lizzie on Guiding Light. She was definitely on her way. Not that many former soap stars seemed able to make the leap to the big leagues, but success in the industry seemed to come quickly and easily to Hayden.

The tabloid years…

A lot of people dream of what it might be like to go on fabulous vacations in exotic destinations. What would it be like to be a jetsetter, whisked off to a romantic place, spending time on a super yacht owned by incredibly wealthy people? Well… that actually happened to Hayden. She was the daughter of a firefighter and a soap opera actress, but her talent took her to a world in which she rubbed elbows with rich, famous, talented, and very powerful people in the show biz industry.

As Hayden got older, she found herself in situations that she was not ready to handle. In spite of her gift for acting, Hayden was still just a girl… but she was thrust into the limelight, where she was exposed to predatory people. She made a lot of money before she was even old enough to drink alcohol, and yet drinking alcohol and using drugs were things Hayden did to excess from a young age.

In This Is Me, Hayden relates stories about how, when she was still a minor, she was at parties thrown by industry bigwigs. She was exposed to disgusting behavior by some of the biggest male and female creeps in show business. While she’s mostly careful not to name any names, she does spill some tea about some of the less savory people she encountered on her rise to fame.

She had everything she could ever want… except for what money can’t buy…

I got the sense that Hayden Panettiere longed for real connections and normalcy. While she frequently expresses gratitude for her career, Hayden also writes that acting was just something for which she had prodigious talent, but not necessarily great passion.

Hayden’s mother got her into the business when she was just a baby. She worked throughout her life, earning money as a child actress and becoming famous… but also never really experiencing the normal ups and downs of growing up and being “normal.” Hayden started using drugs and drinking alcohol to deal with the pitfalls of success. Her personal life suffered tremendously.

Throughout the book, Hayden writes about some of her friends, and how important they were to her. She writes about her complicated relationships with her family members, especially her mother. She also writes about some of the men she encountered.

One man, Wladimir Klitschenko, a heavyweight champion boxer from Ukraine, turned out to be very significant. Hayden had her daughter, Kaya, with Wlad, and almost married him. But her addiction issues became insurmountable, and they not only broke up, but he took full custody of Kaya and is now raising her in Ukraine.

Another man, Brian Hickerson, was someone with whom she felt a connection. But their relationship was fraught with domestic violence issues. Although she seemed to have ended her relationship with Brian by the end of the book, Hayden was found dead in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. Brian and his brother, Zach, were in attendance at the time of her passing. Although the coroner did not find any evidence of physical trauma that would have caused her to go into cardiac arrest, the investigation as to what caused her demise is ongoing.

This Is Me: A Reckoning was published May 19, 2026, not even three months before its author’s untimely death. It seemed like Hayden Pannetiere was trying to fix her life when she wrote the book. The fact that she was already five days from turning 37 when she passed is just crazy to me. When you’re young, you don’t realize how quickly time eventually passes. One day, you can’t wait to turn 21, and then, before you know it, you’re in your 50s. Maybe Hayden was realizing that she was approaching middle age and was trying to get her shit together, particularly since she lost her brother, Jansen, when he was just 28 years old.

My thoughts on the book…

I like to read memoirs. I’ve read a lot of them. Hayden Panettiere’s memoir is well written and, in many ways, has sort of an intimate feel to it. I don’t think she used a ghost writer to write her story, and if she didn’t, I am impressed.

I do feel like there’s a lot to Hayden’s story that was omitted or whitewashed. She does include some shocking anecdotes about her time as a young star. Of course she uses pseudonyms or doesn’t name names, likely for legal reasons. But in some ways, I felt like Hayden sort of portrays herself as a victim and doesn’t quite accept responsibility for some of her own parts in her story. She doesn’t reveal much that would cast her in a bad light.

I understand being really young and naive, and being taken advantage of when one is still a teenager. I do think that happened to Hayden, and it arrested her development in many ways. Based on the book, it didn’t seem like Hayden’s parents were very helpful, although I think that when children make more money than their parents do, it becomes much harder to do the job of being a parent.

Hayden paid for her parents’ housing, and that sort of flipped the power balance. Hence, she wound up hanging around with people who took advantage of her and put her in dangerous situations. It seemed to me like Hayden was in desperate need of some grounding, and being with people who were genuine, authentic, and not impressed with her fame and money.

Wlad Klitschenko seemed to be one of the more stable people in Hayden’s life. Their relationship fell apart, and she doesn’t really offer too much information about why that was. She hints at him being upset about her drinking and drugging, and the fact that their relationship was taking place on two continents.

However, Hayden doesn’t really delve specifically into what really happened… or even give too many details about how she was convinced to allow Wlad to take full custody of their daughter. If I’m to go on what she writes in the book, after a few moments of outrage over Wlad’s insistence on taking custody, she just acquiesced. I’m sure there must be more to the story than that, but she doesn’t share much about what transpired.

Then she ends up with Brian Hickerson, a man who physically abused her to the point at which he went to jail. She makes it seem like she’s left him permanently. But then she was found at his apartment when she died. Yes, she alludes to the fact that she has “problems”, but I don’t think she revealed enough about what they were.

This Is Me is an easy read and, again, I think it’s basically well-written, which is a big part of the battle. Hayden includes some photos, which I appreciated. I actually enjoyed reading the book, because in spite of her obvious issues, Hayden comes off as an intrinsically good person. I found her likeable, even if she doesn’t share as much drama as I would have expected for a book that is supposedly about her “reckoning”.

However, this book is somewhat disappointing, because in many ways, it’s quite superficial. Hayden Panettiere doesn’t reveal enough to warrant the title– This Is Me: A Reckoning. Then, the book ends rather abruptly, just after Hayden writes of her younger brother Jansen’s death in February 2023.

Overall

Hayden Panettiere did get a reckoning, but not because of the book. Sadly, I think her reckoning came in not being able to resist the toxic influencers in her life. Hayden hints at being around a lot of them… but doesn’t go deep enough in explaining what actually happened. Maybe if she’d spent a little more time writing this book, she might still be alive… she would have been busier writing than hanging out with allegedly abusive people like Brian Hickerson.

It’s tragic that Hayden Panettiere lost her life at such a young age. She had so much talent– but she also had looks, brains, money, a career, a loving family, and a beautiful daughter who will now have to grow up without her mother. I do think Hayden was trying to get back on track with her life, but she somehow got knocked off course again. That is a real shame.

Hayden Panettiere could have taken a lesson from Jennette McCurdy, who was also a very talented child actress that wrote her life story. McCurdy was unflinching in her story about growing up on Nickelodeon. She bravely went where Hayden couldn’t go, and delivered a much better and more revealing memoir. McCurdy has also managed to survive her ordeal.

My rating

I would give This Is Me: A Reckoning 3.5 stars out of a scale of 5. Again… the book is easy to read and basically interesting. Hayden Panettiere was very appealing and likeable as an actress, and even as an author, she’s winsome and attractive. But she wasn’t strong enough, or brave enough, to reveal that much about herself in this book, and that makes this project a weak effort.

Unfortunately, Hayden Panettiere will never get another chance to delve further into her own fascinating story. She was so richly blessed with talent. I think with some help from a more experienced author, Hayden could have been a good writer, too. I really wish this book had been better. What a pity.

Buy This Is Me: A Reckoning from Amazon.com.

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