Book Review: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ by Jennette McCurdy was released in 2022, and was a NYT bestseller. The autobiography was inherently very controversial due to its title and thus highly sought-after book upon its release due to the name alone.

Saying that, McCurdy’s book also will have garnered significant traction as it came out around a year after the show she was best known for, ‘iCarly’, got a reboot, during which time, her role had not been reprised, which piqued the interest of fans of the original show, who noticed her absence.

This book was a very hard-hitting and emotional exploration of manipulation, abuse and control. It was written with a strong voice, and explored McCurdy’s experiences before her rise to fame, as well as after she joined ‘Nickelodeon’.

With the above in mind, there are a lot of prospective triggers to be mindful about before beginning to read this book. It covers parental abuse, anorexia, bulimia, manipulation, sex abuse, coercive control, substance abuse, cancer, and long-term terminal illness, and goes into some of these topics thoroughly.

While I will not be unpicking the various milestones and achievements McCurdy experienced in her life, nor will I be actively passing judgement on her for her behaviour, since that is incredibly unhelpful, I feel like sharing this review is valuable, especially now the book has been out for a few years.

What I will say, however, is that this book shines a light on the burdens child actors experience, and the lengths to which they will go in order to achieve their dreams as well as the dreams thrust upon them. It is a harrowing, visceral and poignant compilations of events and significant moments that made McCurdy the woman she is today, and celebrates the journey she is on with eating disorder recovery.

What surprised me, when reading this book was how much, despite the title, the book focused on McCurdy’s internal life, especially since the audio clips that were well-circulated on social media were all focused on her experiences at ‘Nickelodeon’, and the implications that working there had on her career. The two that come to mind are McCurdy recounting an experience with The Creator, likely, though explicitly never stated to be Dan Schneider, encouraging an underage McCurdy to drink because the ‘Victorious’ kids did it, and had “edge” which the ‘iCarly’ kids lacked. The second, was a reiteration of a remark McCurdy’s co-star Ariana Grande made about playing charades at Tom Hanks’ house, while McCurdy was having to act around Grande’s absence from set, while having been forced to turn down roles in the past that caused scheduling conflicts with ‘Nickelodeon’ herself in the past, and acting with an empty box, where Grande’s character, Cat Valentine, was supposedly locked inside.

While this book does address the power imbalance at ‘Nickelodeon’, and McCurdy’s experiences, it focused more on her publically acknowledging the harrowing impacts her mother’s abuse had on her as a child and young adult, thrusting her into habits of co-dependency and encouraging her to develop an eating disorder at eleven years old to halt the onset of puberty.

This book is one of those books that I will not be able to stop thinking about, because of the sheer heartbreak that came from reading it, and knowing that McCurdy’s mother could not be held accountable for her actions in the past. I had very strong opinions about it, and thoroughly recommend it for fiction and non-fiction readers alike, and in the fallout of the years since publishing her book, all I can say is that I hope McCurdy is healing, recovering and thriving as she strives toward her goals as a writer, and not as an actress.