Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy — A Teenage Narrator, a Teacher and the Story She Tells Herself

Waldo is seventeen, a high school senior in Anchorage, Alaska, and in many ways the adult in her own home. Her mother drifts from one man to the next and rarely keeps a promise. Waldo is sharp, funny and painfully aware of how she looks and how other people see her. Then she becomes fixated on her creative writing teacher, Mr. Korgy, a married forty-year-old father. What follows is a relationship that Waldo thinks of as a love affair, and that the novel shows, piece by piece, to be something much darker. Half His Age, published on 20 January 2026 by Ballantine in the US and Fourth Estate in the UK, is the first novel by Jennette McCurdy. Many readers know her as the author of I'm Glad My Mom Died, her bestselling 2022 memoir about her difficult relationship with her mother and her years as a child actor. A voice, not a romance The whole book is narrated by Waldo, in the first person. That is the key choice. Lolita is narrated by the abuser. McCurdy shifts the perspective to the teenage girl, and her understanding of the relationship, with all its self-deception, wit and anger, is itself part of the novel's subject. Jana Siciliano, reviewing for Bookreporter, called it "a first-person wail of anger". The adults around Waldo, including her mother and Mr. Korgy, keep failing her, and the reader sees that far more clearly than she does. McCurdy is also interested in the pressures on young women more broadly. Waldo's running commentary on beauty, shopping and online life is one of the book's sharper threads. Eloise Budimlich, reviewing for The Nightly, praised the way it shows how parental neglect leaves a teenager open to abuse, and how the predatory teacher comes across as pathetic rather than romantic. Short chapters, heavy subject The chapters are very short, and the pages turn quickly. Budimlich gave it 4 out of 5 and called it "a bingeable story". The mother-daughter relationship drew particular praise; Kirkus called it the novel's highlight, and readers of the memoir will recognise the territory. Where critics split Reviewers are sharply divided. Kirkus called it "a debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse", pointing to clumsy prose and major events that feel rushed. Publishers Weekly was warmer, praising the narrator and the clear-eyed portrayal of the characters' wrongdoing while finding the relationship plot predictable. LeMonie K. Hutt of The Harvard Crimson gave it one star, arguing that the long internal monologues slow the book down and that its explicit scenes rely on shock rather than insight. Siciliano felt the book lacked depth but saw it as a promising, angry debut. Please read this first This is an adult novel about the grooming and sexual abuse of a teenager by her teacher, and it includes explicit sexual content. It is not suitable for younger readers, and it may be distressing for anyone with similar experiences. The book does not present the relationship as romantic, but it does stay inside the head of a girl who, for much of the story, believes it is. Our verdict Half His Age is an uncomfortable, divisive and sometimes uneven debut, carried by a narrator whose voice is hard to forget. Read it if you admired McCurdy's memoir or want a serious novel about power, neglect and self-deception. If explicit content about abuse is something you need to avoid, this is a book to skip.