I'm Glad My Mom Died

CW: Eating Disorders, Codependency, Parental Abuse, Narcissistic Personality Disorder

This book is a stark reminder that abusers can look like well-meaning parents/significant others to everyone else, but it doesn't stop them from being abusers even after death. Parents should never be put on a pedestal just because they're parents because they're flawed just like everyone else. Yet, this book is also McCurdy starting the hard work of owning her truth, processing, and overcoming. What a powerful read that inspires grace and self-reflection.

This is a really insightful and well written account of a heartbreaking relationship. With the title of this book (which is a great title), I was expecting the entire thing to be just a scathing indictment of her mother, but its a lot more complicated than that.

The book is written in such a way that her mother's pattern of abuse and manipulation is obvious, but from Jennette McCurdy's perspective at the time when believing in her mother and making her happy was important to her (and still is to this day, to some extent). This was really revealing and deeply affected me, as McCurdy walks through key moments in her life and I had to try to understand how her mother could possibly behave in the way that she does and sympathize with McCurdy's inability to do anything about it.

I'm not necessarily a big memoir reader, but sometimes when I read them they are a bit scattershot, covering a lot of different areas of a person's life with varying degrees of interest. This book is a lot more laser focused on its thesis as described by its title, and I find that to be a lot more engaging.

Jeannette strikes the perfect balance between portraying her childhood innocence while reflecting on how impactful her abuse and trauma was as a child. She goes into detail about hard topics and brings inquisitive and funny insights into her life. The story telling makes this book impossible to put down and the topics make it hard to keep going. One of the best books I've read. 

damn her mom, the ‘creator' and so many people in her life sucked... yikes. the writing was well done, I made me uncomfortable multiple times, Jenette had quite some issues on her own many developed because of the abuse, but wow... the acting industry sucks, especially fo children, I hate it. it sucks more because I liked Sam and Cat as a kid and seeing how much she was going through at the time is hard.

(4.5, rounding up.) Super intense but so good - I need to reread it because the chapters are so short I found myself reading the book faster than I wanted to, almost by accident. It's hard to say I “enjoyed” a memoir about growing up with an abusive mom, but Jennette's voice is so strong and direct and strangely funny, even when talking about horrible things. I was a few years too old for her generation of Nickelodeon shows, so I wasn't familiar with Jennette before reading this, but I'm definitely rooting for her and keeping an eye out for what she does next.

A note: if parental abuse/mental illness/substance abuse/eating disorders are triggers or difficult topics for you, please take care of yourself. This book is very good and very smart about those things, but it is also very intense.

This book was exceptional. I usually don't write reviews but this book made me want to write one. I have always been a Jennette fan and I was excited to read the book. I got the book on audio the minute I heard that she was the one reading it. That was the best decision I made. She reads the book with such emotion and depth, you can hear all of her feelings in her voice. The anger, pain, love, idolization, and confusion of her life all in one. I am not a memoir kind of girlie but this has by far been one of the best books I've read this year.

Fuuuck. I was not expecting that. I got this from the library because of the hype and I don't often do audiobooks because my brain doesn't seem to retain information delivered aurally but I'm glad I heard this in the author's voice. It's harrowing to hear what she went through; it's laid out in such a basic way, without caveats or excuses, that the trauma is obvious but never devolves into self-pity.

The smartest thing this book does is to keep past events in the present tense. That way we really get a look into the mindset of a victim of a parent's abuse without having to reconcile each moment with “but actually.”
Thoroughly interesting and well written, but it can absolutely horrifying if you are sensitive to depictions of child abuse. I suppose we should all be sensitive to that thing.

Tough book to write a review for — I enjoyed it but obviously I didn't ENJOY it. I often struggled to remember I was reading a memoir because the vignettes Jennette highlights, and their timing, is just so insane. I was most impressed with the way this book emulated the feeling of loving someone who struggles with addiction. I wanted her to make the right choices and was devastated when she didn't, but it really highlighted how debilitating her struggles were/are. I don't think I would call it particularly funny though which is what I kept hearing — certainly grim and in some sections darkly humorous/ironic, but some parts felt over-the-top joke-y which killed the jokes for me. Worth reading, but I won't be revisiting

*Came back to dial this down to 3 stars, sorry everyone, I was too scared at first to not love a beloved book!! But now I've read a few more memoirs and feel more confident in my rating lol

There's a lot of hype around this memoir, and I can see why. Jennette McCurdy offers us a view deep into the consciousness of a child star, with all the trauma that we in the public to some degree acknowledge comes with child stardom from seeing so many of them crash and burn into deeply troubled adulthoods. The author has experienced all of those traumas and then some: a complicated relationship with an emotional abusive (and clearly mentally unwell) mother, who battles (and loses) with cancer; the author's own mental illness, including an eating disorder; toxic work environments; toxic romantic relationships; being treated like chattel by an industry that cares more about making money than anyone's health or well-being; and the list goes on. It's rare to get this kind of insight into what goes on behind the scenes of happy-go-lucky children's shows, and the author does a fantastic job of going deep and getting vulnerable in telling her story.

I did enjoy this book, and so so appreciate the author for telling her truth and so wonderfully portraying her complicated feelings around her relationship to her mother. But I didn't love this book. It was definitely very good for a celebrity memoir, but that feels like an asterisk. Maybe it was the author's fairly deadpan delivery, maybe it's that I didn't really know who Jennette McCurdy was before reading this, maybe I can't relate enough to be deeply touched by her story. Regardless, I'm glad she wrote it, and I'm glad I listened to it.

jennette mccurdy talks about her struggles as a child actor and the emotional, physical, and mental abuse of her mother that led her to multiple eating disorders. this really was ‘heartbreaking and hilarious,' and i really loved the audiobook.
you hear and see countless stories of the horrific things child actors go through, but it truly is incredibly sad to hear what mccurdy went through. i do believe she inserts dark humor in the best possible way, which makes it feel like you're listening to a friend recount their story.
this felt so raw and powerful and i highly recommend this memoir.

this does heavily discuss eating disorders, body shaming, abuse, manipulation, grooming, death ( + ones i might have missed) so bear that in mind when picking this one up.

Rating an autobiography is hard because it can feel like you are essentially rating someone's life. What I can say about this is it is readily apparent Jeannette wrote this herself (I would presume not the norm for celebrity autobiographies) and it is very well written.

She had a horrible childhood and I had absolutely no idea. I grew up watching Nickelodeon and still watched some of the shows even when I'd “aged out” of them, and iCarly was definitely my favorite from that period of time. Sam was the best part of iCarly. She was just hilarious.

She was living a horrible lie, supporting her family, her mom was actively putting her in mental and physical danger. In many ways, this is such an upsetting read.

I am so glad that she is making choices for herself. She deserves that and she put in so much work to get there. And somewhat selfishly as a viewer of the show, I'm glad Miranda was such a supportive friend. I was bracing myself for something very sad there, and it sounds like their relationship is built on real honesty and friendship.

A thousand trigger warnings in this book for just about every unsettling thing you can think of.

My emotions were all over the place while reading this! as someone who struggled in my personal relationship with my mother I could relate a lot, and as someone who grew up with Jennette as part of my childhood, I could not help but feel for her knowing what she was experiencing during those times. Her writing is catchy and engaging, I could not get myself to put the book down at all. The way she uses irony during hard recallings of situations she lived makes the writing easier to go down, but also made me feel for her more, as I recognize I use the same tactic to speak on emotionally hard things to talk about.
This is one of the best books I've ever read, and would totally recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat.

4.5 stars.

This book was incredible. Highly recommend the audio book, read by Jennette herself. I laughed a lot, I cried a lot, and most of all I very frequently exclaimed, out loud, “what the fuck?!” Because there was just that much crazy shit going on.

Big content warning for parental abuse and eating disorders.

This is an aptly named book. Her mother was a nightmare of a narcissist and sadly, she is better off without her. It was a very interesting look into the life of a child actor, and one who never even wanted that life. I'm really glad Jennette went through therapy and has made so much progress to heal from her mother's abuse. A compelling book for sure.

I didn't have Nickelodeon in my childhood, nor do I have any idea about American television shows and stars from the 80s and 90s. So this book wasn't even on my radar until I saw the various discussions on social media about the title, and also some of the abuse allegations against a children's show creator from the times and by the time I realized the connection between the two, I had gotten this audiobook copy. So I decided why not give it a try.

And wow is this a powerful one. Right from the shocking prologue, it's a raw and honest portrayal of a childhood full of manipulation and abuse by the author's mother and I have to say it wasn't easy to listen to most of the time. But the author (who is also narrating the audiobook) injects humor into a somewhat bleak story of her life, telling us about how she was essentially forced into acting, then given an eating disorder by her mother, constantly emotionally manipulated and micromanaged which only led to many more years of her dealing with anorexia, bulimia, alcohol addiction and more. It's heartbreaking and very rage inducing, especially when you see the author trying to justify her mother's actions as love. It's only much later after her mother's passing and going to therapy does she realize that what she went through was abuse.

What I found interesting was that the author's tone is never judgmental of her mother. She only relates the incidents as they happened and lets us form our own opinions. And the way she almost skims over the whole part about how she came to the realization of the abuse and came to terms with it and her relationship with her mom in that context, shows that she probably doesn't want to accuse her mom in her own words. I can only hope that she is doing much better in her life now and is able to move forward in her life.

I was fully confident I wasn't going to rate this 5 stars until I read the last ~20% of the book and now I'm sitting here blown away by how well crafted this story is.

Don't get me wrong, it was a well written book from the start. Her account of her acting career was engaging, it was well paced, and her prose is casual, witty, and sarcastic. I kept turning the pages out of curiosity since ever chapter would reveal something new and I was really invested in learning more about her childhood.

I thought I had the book figured out... but then she drops the hammer.

Her recovery.

Reading about how hard and emotionally exhausting recovery is gave me a perspective on mental illness I haven't read anywhere else. This really is an important book and I have so much respect and admiration for McCurdy for not only tackling her own demons, but also for sharing them with us.

The hype is real, this is an essential book and I'm so glad I read it!

I have no idea whatsoever how to review personal memoirs.

I guess I never really thought how much kids trust their parent to want what's best for them and rarely question them. I don't believe that I've read a book that horryfied me more than this one. On the other hand it was one of the most emotional reads.

So much of McCurdy's story is unrelatable to me, and her existence overall was such an unknown to me besides the awareness of her being a Nickelodeon actress and that week she dated Andre Drummond (it's not even in the book!), but I still found the book to be incredibly engrossing in spite of that. The levels of manipulation she had to face are brutal to read about, but it feels like an important story to tell and I'm happy she did it so succinctly.