Half His Age

A teenager narrates their own exploitation by the adults who should protect them — same refusal to sanitize a young person's damage, different setting and scope.

If the part of Half His Age that stayed with you was the portrait of a teenager failed by every adult in her orbit — parent, teacher, system — then Barbara Kingsolver's Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead belongs on your list. Set in Appalachian Virginia, it follows Damon Fields through foster care, addiction, and a predatory adult entertainment industry, all told in his own voice with the same kind of unflinching refusal to soften what happens to young people when institutions abandon them. The scope is bigger than McCurdy's intimate character study, and the politics are more explicit, but the core emotional truth overlaps: a minor's vulnerability dressed up as their own choice. People searching for books like Half His Age that center a teenager's exploitation with literary seriousness rather than sensationalism consistently point to this novel.

An age-gap relationship examined through a young woman's desire and its costs — shares Half His Age's unsettling intimacy and refusal to moralize.

For readers who want to stay close to the specific emotional world of Half His Age — a young woman drawn into a relationship defined by age and power imbalance, told without the safety net of a moral verdict — Earl, Honey by D S Getson is a compelling next read. Like McCurdy, Getson is interested in what desire looks like from the inside when the outside world would call it a mistake, and the novel sits with that tension rather than resolving it. The intimate, close-focus narration will feel immediately familiar to anyone who just finished Waldo's story, and the Southern register gives it a distinct texture while keeping the psychological intensity high. If you're searching for what to read after Half His Age and want to stay in the territory of complicated female want and the relationships that exploit it, this is a strong match.