Half His Age - Jennette McCurdy

Hardcover

Biographical Note:
Jennette McCurdy is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I'm Glad My Mom Died, winner of the 2023 American Library Association Alex Award. The book has been published in more than thirty countries and has sold more than three million copies. McCurdy is creating, writing, executive producing, and showrunning an Apple TV+ series loosely inspired by I'm Glad My Mom Died, starring Jennifer Aniston. Half His Age is her debut novel.

Review Quotes:
"Assured, provocative . . . cements [McCurdy's] standing as a talented writer . . . articulates the vulnerability of girlhood with guts, humor and just the slightest whisper of warmth." --The New York Times

"Eerie and unsettling and believable." --Gillian Flynn

"McCurdy is a fearless and darkly funny writer with an unerring eye for the perfect mortifying detail." --Tom Perrotta

"Recently, I picked up Jennette McCurdy's Half His Age. It was like picking up a downed power line, so full of rage and want and, well, electricity, that I couldn't put it down. In her scorching account of a high school student and her teacher, McCurdy gets at some hard truths about what we want out of relationships, and what we actually get." --Ann Patchett, Oprah Daily

"Jennette McCurdy writes sentences that glimmer and cut like razors. With Half His Age, she delivers a deeply felt and humorous tale about the dangers of youth and desire--this novel is uncomfortable, unpredictable, and unputdownable." --Aria Aber

"This is a bold and unapologetic novel for edge-seekers, doom-scrollers, latchkey kids, horn-dogs, and all those who love hard." --The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"McCurdy's furious writing--her dystopian rendering of a culture squandering its dreams and desires on the crack high of cheap stuff--is hard to tear yourself away from." --The Atlantic

"[A] revenge story, one where McCurdy excavates emotions she herself had at seventeen. And if it makes you angry, about feminism or rampant consumerism or the power dynamics in age-gap relationships, even better--McCurdy still is, too." --Rolling Stone

"Hilarious, gross, disturbing, poignant." --The Washington Post

"A writer able to capture some of the darkest parts of human nature with unflinching honesty and devastating humor." --NPR

"A bleak, often hilarious and uncomfortable triumph that underscores McCurdy's talent for focusing in on the multilayered nature of trauma and artfully unpicking it, one scab at a time." --The Guardian

"Brimming with teenage angst and McCurdy's signature dark humor . . . This is far from a romance, and it's not a glamorization of age gaps--it's an analysis of consumerism, insecurity, misguided desire, class, and addiction." --USA Today

"As unapologetic and undeniable as its young protagonist . . . McCurdy treats Waldo's want with an almost reverent seriousness." --Elle

"Haunting, hilarious, and heart-rending . . . a coming-of-age story that refuses easy answers--the kind McCurdy tells best." --Bustle

"[I was] unable to stop turning the pages . . . Written with an unrelenting energy, Half His Age marks a new chapter for Jennette McCurdy." --Buzzfeed

"[McCurdy] has created a brilliant teenage character who won't play the victim. . . . You can think of this as a post-MeToo novel in that it is beadily intelligent about the currents of predation without feeling the need to deliver lectures." --The Times (UK)

"An unflinching, uncomfortable tale of power dynamics and disaffected youth . . . McCurdy's voice is all her own: clear-eyed realism coupled with emotional honesty." --The Independent

"Bold and brash . . . A vivid picture of all that we dismiss when it comes to the complexity of a young woman's desire. . . . With each of her books, McCurdy continues to lean into the uncomfortable conversations that end up leading the discourse." --Harper's Bazaar

"With her electric debut novel, Jennette McCurdy has established herself as one of the most exciting literary voices of our time." --Carley Fortune

Publisher Marketing:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I'm Glad My Mom Died comes "a thorny examination of power, lust, shame and rage" (Los Angeles Times) from "a writer able to capture some of the darkest parts of human nature with unflinching honesty and devastating humor" (NPR)

"Unapologetic and undeniable . . . If there was ever any doubt whether the narrative command that Jennette McCurdy displayed in her bestselling memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died might translate to fiction, let it henceforth be put to rest."--Elle

Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn't know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn't? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it's just enough that he sees her when no one else does.

Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles--or attempts to overcome them--in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved.

Review Citations:

• Publishers Weekly 12/15/2025 (EAN 9780593723739, Hardcover)
• Booklist 01/01/2026 (EAN 9780593723739, Hardcover)
• Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2026 (EAN 9780593723739, Hardcover)