10 min · 11 chaptersNarrated in your voice
Original summary · AI-drafted, human-published · added by Library
What it's about
Jennette McCurdy's memoir argues that a parent's love can be a form of control, and that surviving it does not require forgiving it. Writing from her years as a child actress managed and monitored by a mother later diagnosed by McCurdy as having Munchausen by proxy, she shows how eating disorders, financial dependency, and stolen agency can hide inside a story that looks, from outside, like a loving family chasing a dream.
Reading plan
Pick a finish date and Genius lays out the days — the plan shows today's target and keeps you honest.
Read together
Start a circle and share the code — everyone sees everyone's honest place in the book. Accountability, not leaderboards.
Who it's for
- Adults untangling a relationship with a parent who called control love - Former child performers or their parents examining the industry's costs - Readers of trauma memoir who want a specific, unsentimental account of recovery
What’s inside
- 1A Dream Built for Two1 min
A parent's ambition for a child can masquerade as devotion while actually serving the parent's own unmet needs.
- 2The Body as a Project1 min
Controlling a child's body can function as a more durable form of control than controlling her schedule.
- 3The Family Runs on Her Income1 min
When a child's earnings become a household's primary income, the child loses the standing to say no.
- 4Landing the Show, Losing the Say1 min
Getting the career you were raised for does not restore the agency that was taken to get you there.
- 5Coping Mechanisms Multiply1 min
Suppressing one form of distress does not resolve it, it just pushes the person toward a new outlet for the same pressure.
- 6Illness, Debt, and Doubt1 min
A parent's illness can extend the same control dynamic under a new and harder-to-question justification.
- 7Death and the Wrong Feeling1 min
Relief at a parent's death is a legitimate response to a real relationship, not a moral failure to be hidden.
- 8Building a Self From Scratch1 min
Recovery required McCurdy to actively construct preferences and habits of her own, because she had never been allowed to develop them.
About Jennette McCurdy
Jennette McCurdy is an actress and writer best known for playing Sam Puckett on the Nickelodeon series iCarly. After leaving acting, she turned to writing and performing a one-woman stage show that became the basis for this memoir, her first book, published in 2022.
