Seventeen-year-old Waldo is hungry, and her unexceptional town in Alaska, Post-its from her absent mother, and nightly Shein shopping binges just won’t cut it. Enter Mr Korgy, her new creative writing teacher, whose failed dream to be a writer and married, mortgage-ridden life captures her interest. Waldo and Mr Korgy shortly begin an affair that pushes her desire to its limits. Author of ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ and child star I grew up watching, Jennette McCurdy doesn’t fail to exercise the honest, dark, and funny voice she’s popular for in this book. Although I was apprehensive about reading the much-frequented student-teacher trope, I was pleasantly surprised by how McCurdy explored exploitation without compromising Waldo’s complexity. Grisly sexual descriptions and fast-paced monologues about power imbalance and adolescence in a chronically online world evoke a female rage that feels like it’s coming directly from McCurdy, and simmers long after the book is closed. IM

Published by 

HarperCollins