I Hated the Ending of Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy So I Drafted a Better One—Do You Agree?

I want to say aside from the ending I thought this book was mostly really great. I didn’t think the prose was as strong as her memoir, (those sentences in I’m Glad my Mom Died were so raw and fresh and specific and wrought with detail) but I found this to be an interesting and compelling take on grooming, age-gaps, and the complicated nuance of consent BUT I had a clear vision of what the ending should have been I was surprised an editor hadn’t convinced her of it.

So, my problem lies with just the last 5-10 pages…I understand why McCurdy wanted to give Waldo the happy ending and the freedom right there in the moment, but too me it felt too rushed and not really in character for both how Waldo behaved previously and what she’d learned from her mother. I know McCurdy probably wanted us to be sure we knew that Waldo was making different choices than her mother but hear me out:

Instead of Waldo hiding in the bathroom to avoid getting on the plane to Hawaii, and everything that actually happens…

Waldo gets on the plane. It’s a long flight…She has plenty of time to think, maybe she uses Mr. Korgi’s first name for the first time as she tells him she just wants to sleep for the flight. She gets the window, of course. Maybe she sleeps, maybe she just stews on the choices that led her here. At some point near the end of the flight she looks out the window at the unwilling state in the distance, and brings to mind Mr. Korgi’s words. The ones he said in his confession. About he imagined them in Hawaii, the only two people in the world. Instead of those words comforting her, it sickens her. An image once dreamlike in its perfection corrupted by the ugly, messy, gross, truth of the thing. The very thing she imagined she wanted when she first fantasized about his !>wrinkly balls.<! We don’t need to see her actually free to know she is free in her mind, and after this trip they have nothing. The book would end not with a feeling on punishment for Waldo, that she got what she deserved, but that she’s going to be free, right after we close the book.

To me this was so clearly what McCurdy should have done and thought she had mapped it out so clearly and actually foreshadowed it…Am I wrong?