Author Guide ·
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The biographical details below are based on what McCurdy has shared publicly herself, in her memoir and in interviews.
Jennette McCurdy spent her childhood and twenties as a working actor, best known for playing Sam Puckett on iCarly and Sam & Cat, before walking away from acting entirely to write. Her 2022 memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, became one of the bestselling books of the decade and turned her into one of the most direct, unsentimental voices writing about child stardom, disordered eating, and a controlling parent. Her 2026 novel, Half His Age, marks her first work of fiction, returning to the theme of power imbalance in relationships from a different angle. For a critic’s take on the memoir, the New York Times review is a solid, citable starting point.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 books · Memoir & Fiction · Best Memoirs · Best Psychology Books · My Bookshelf · Updated August 2026
MemoirStart here
I’m Glad My Mom Died
McCurdy’s memoir of growing up as a child actor under a controlling, emotionally abusive mother who pushed her into show business and, McCurdy writes, into calorie restriction from age eleven. It covers her years on iCarly, her mother’s death from cancer, and the eating disorder and self-destructive relationships that followed.
Blunt, funny in unexpected places, and completely without the softening that most celebrity memoirs use to protect a parent’s memory. The title tells you exactly what kind of honesty to expect, and the book delivers on it from the first page. I read it in a single evening and kept stopping to reread paragraphs — it’s rare for a memoir to be this dark and this readable at the same time.
Novel
Half His Age
McCurdy’s first work of fiction follows a teenage girl’s relationship with an older teacher, examining the same territory of power imbalance and manipulation that shaped her own life, this time at a remove, through invented characters rather than memoir.
Read this after the memoir, not instead of it. Knowing what McCurdy has said publicly about her own experience with an age-gap relationship gives the novel’s fictional distance a sharper edge than it would have on its own. I noticed how much restraint she uses here compared to the memoir’s directness — it’s a different muscle, and she’s clearly still working it out.
Where to start with Jennette McCurdy
If you have never read her
→ Start with I’m Glad My Mom Died. It’s the book that made her a writer, and the one that explains everything else about her since.
If you’ve already read the memoir
→ Half His Age takes the same themes into fiction, with more narrative distance but the same unflinching eye.
Looking for what else I recommend
→ See my best memoirs list and every book I’ve personally reviewed on my bookshelf.
