In her fiction debut Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy – former Nickelodeon child actress and bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died – tells a tale as old as time. The novel follows a 17-year-old girl, Waldo, who falls in love with her middle-aged creative writing teacher, Mr Korgy, and soon starts an affair with him.
While this may be an old trope, it doesn’t read like one. Instead of glamourising the affair or putting Mr Korgy on a pedestal, the book is raw and, at times, vulgar, with the teacher being anything but attractive. It becomes clear early on, that we might not be headed to a happy ending. McCurdy does not try to excuse the affair, nor does she attempt to frame it as something beautiful. Because it isn’t.
Waldo comes from a neglected place – shaped by her mother, her socio-economic background, all of it – and she is angry. She is raging, trying to fill that neglect through her attraction to Mr Korgy, consuming everything in sight if she cannot consume him, showing the darker sides of capitalism, and the urge to fill a void by buying and buying and buying for a short hit of dopamine. In that sense, maybe not the affair itself, but the consumption can feel painfully familiar in today’s fast-paced world.
One thing is clear: Waldo isn’t stupid. She may not be very intrigued by life as it stands, largely because she doesn’t know better and has had few good examples, but the reader quickly realises how perceptive she actually is.
This is not always a comfortable read, sometimes bordering on disgusting. The discomfort is the point. By refusing to glamourise the affair, McCurdy foregrounds rage and agency, allowing Waldo to understand what is being done to her, even if she remains trapped inside it.
The writing is superb. The chapters are short – 88 of them across 288 pages – and the book almost reads like a social media doom scroll, delivering quick dopamine hits before moving straight on to the next chapter.
The pacing was just right for me. I’m someone who is constantly looking for dopamine hits, trying to stay away from short and cheap gratification like doom scrolling or buying things online simply because it’s easy. This book feels like an easy fix for anyone who does the same – a way to be more aware, to slow down, and to be a little less chronically online. And it works: I did not want to put the book down.
I haven’t read McCurdy’s debut memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, but I’ve heard only good things. It’s definitely on my list now, because if this novel proves anything, it’s that McCurdy knows exactly how to package uncomfortable truths in words you still want to read.
Half His Age was released on 20 January 2026 and is available in bookshops, online, and as an e-book.
