Review: Half His Age - Jeanette McCurdy

Review: Half His Age - Jeanette McCurdy - January 2026

Hello everyone, and welcome back to our little corner of the internet! It's your favourite book blogger, The Phantom Paragrapher, curling up on the sofa with a warm cuppa to chat about our latest read.

I finally dove into Half His Age by Jeanette McCurdy. After seeing the initial buzz, I was practically vibrating with excitement. Given the provocative title, I went in expecting something gritty and transgressive perhaps something in the vein of Alissa Nutting's Tampa, which famously and chillingly echoed the Mary Kay Letourneau case. I was braced for a dark, psychological deep-dive into the power dynamics of a taboo relationship.

Instead, I found something much closer to our teenage TV screens.

The story felt less like a heavy literary scandal and far more like a Pretty Little Liars subplot specifically, major Ezra and Aria vibes. The novel follows Waldo as she pursues her Creative Writing teacher, Mr. Korgy, and that "forbidden student-teacher" DNA is woven into every chapter. While Tampa makes you want to scrub your brain with soap, Half His Age feels more like a glossy, YA-adjacent drama. Accessible and fast-paced, but lacking that jagged edge I was prepared for.

One of my biggest takeaways  was the surprising lack of genuine heat. I expected fireworks, or at least a slow-burn chemistry that made the age gap feel inevitable. Instead, the connection between Waldo and Mr. Korgy felt oddly superficial. The passion read more like a checklist of physical encounters than a soul-shattering bond. It's actually a realistic portrayal of what happens when the thrill of the forbidden is the only thing holding two people together. Once that honeymoon haze fades toward the end, the cracks don't just show , they shatter the whole illusion.

I wanted to love this one more than I did. I wanted the depth of a character study, but got the breezy drama of a CW show. That's not to say it isn't a page-turner but the emotional resonance just wasn't there for me.

If you're a fan of age-gap tropes and forbidden romance without the heavy psychological scarring of darker fiction, this will be right up your alley. But if you're hunting for the next Tampa? You might find this a little too lukewarm.

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