Second Life

Praise

One of Time Magazine‘s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 • One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025

“Hess brings to her subject humility, curiosity, and a sly, self-aware wit. . . Sweeping and incisive. . . Fresh and complicated. . . A captivating, charged, and crucially provocative consideration of motherhood in modern America.”
—Kirkus Reviews *starred review*

“[A] fierce and funny debut memoir. . . .An astute document of pregnancy and parenting in the internet era. . . .Incisive and refreshing.” —Publishers Weekly *starred review*

“The story of a crisis-born odyssey, Second Life charts a new mother’s descent into and re-emergence from the internet’s ‘pregnant underworld’ with clarity, rigor, and tremendous wit. That such a deft a vivisector of our digital age should find herself lost in its churn of data-brokerage, commerce, and myth is a reminder of what we’re all up against, and an engine of Amanda Hess’s bracing and eloquent memoir.”
—Michelle Orange, author of Pure Flame

“Amanda Hess is that rare thing, the real deal. Second Life is unexpected, intellectually rigorous, funny, beautiful; and the wisdom is hard-won. A major debut from a profoundly talented writer.”
—Claire Dederer, bestselling author of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

“Second Life is a treat….Hess takes us on fascinating detours into the history of fetal imaging…feminism’s flirtation with eugenics, and the origins of what we now think of as ‘natural childbirth’….A tender and often very funny memoir….Hess is a generous thinker, even when she’s up against ideologies that repel her.” —The Cut

“There is no better chaperone than Amanda Hess through the strange world of surveillance, monetization, bureaucracy, and alternative medicine to which pregnant people and mothers are subjected.”
—Max Read, editor of Read Max and former editor-in-chief of Gawker

“Only Amanda Hess could step through the blue light looking glass of our phones and explore her specific—and our collective—anxiety, dissociation, data points, targeted ads, and apps; she emerges a more sensate, embodied, and sharper critic. The honesty of Second Life took my breath away.”
—Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother

“Second Life is an incredibly urgent and moving investigation into the business of pregnancy and motherhood in our divided, digital age…Occasionally harrowing, frequently hilarious, and deeply original.”
—Thomas Page McBee, Lambda award-winning author of Amateur and Man Alive

“Finally, a book about parenthood that acknowledges that the internet is the first place we go to navigate pregnancy. Hess doesn’t demonize or valorize it but rather serves as a smart—and very amusing—guide to the good, the bad, and the truly weird of how we give birth today.”
—Marisa Meltzer, author of the New York Times bestselling Glossy