Description

“Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.” –Description from the publisher

Recommendation

I picked up this audiobook because there was a lot of buzz about it on the internet when it came out and I had 4 credits from a neglected Audible subscription to spend. I watched iCarly as a kid and identified the most with Sam, plus I like to see behind the curtain of celebrities’ lives. If any of the above match your circumstances, I think this book is worth a listen. I enjoyed Jennette’s reading of it.

Discussion

Oops I didn’t write any book thoughts about anything I read in 2023 out of a sense of piled-up work and weird guilt so I’m going to keep this one kinda short and try not to overthink it.

It’s so difficult to imagine the details of others’ lives and remember that we’re all experiencing some form of a personal hell. Or maybe we’re not all doing that, maybe there’s some people who feel completely stable and happy and like they’re not struggling to justify existence. But this book was an intimate look into the author’s personal hell, and I enjoyed the matter-of-factness and dry wit with which this memoir was presented. I think my experience of the book benefited from hearing Jennette read it. There’s a part close-ish to the end where she’s talking to her therapist and realizing for the first time that her mother was abusive, and in the recording Jennette cracks just enough to really drive home the emotion. My preference for audiobooks is always for the author to read them, and so far I’ve found that I enjoy nonfiction audiobooks much more than audiobooks of novels.

The book having 90ish chapters was kind of annoying to me just because they seemed arbitrarily broken up–some chapters were one ‘scene’ and some were multiple. This is a very minor complaint.

I’m Glad My Mom Died was compelling enough for me to finish, but not compelling enough for me to finish quickly–I started sometime in (I think??) November and just got around to finishing it today during a workout. That might say more about my habits with audiobooks than it does about this particular book, though.