Jennette McCurdy

In her first novel, Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy follows Waldo, a ravenous seventeen-year-old who fixes her want on a married creative writing teacher. It's a coming-of-age character study with teeth: funny, mortifying, and angry, for readers who want their literary fiction raw rather than tidy.

Jennette McCurdy's memoir takes its deliberately shocking title seriously and earns it. The former child star traces a childhood organized entirely around her mother's ambitions and control, and the strange, complicated liberation of grieving someone who hurt you. It's far funnier and braver than you'd expect.