Second Life

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What to expect

One of TIME Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 . One of LitHub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025.

'Acutely empathetic, thoroughly researched, funny, irreverent and moving' Observer

'What a book! Has the lyricism and intelligence of a literary masterpiece, and the urgency of a thriller' Marianne Levy, author of Don't Forget to Scream

'So interesting, astute and beautifully crafted. I loved it' Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence

In the summer of 2020, when Amanda Hess was pregnant for the first time, a routine ultrasound screening detected a mysterious abnormality in her baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers online. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search unleashed a destabilizing onslaught of data and technology, and she was vulnerable - more than ever - to conspiracy, myth, judgement, commerce and obsession.

In Second Life, Hess tells her deeply personal story of a pregnancy that falls outside the fêted category of 'normal'. But this is also a story about all of us. For as she made her way through a bizarre digital world of pregnancy apps, prenatal genetic tests, gender reveal videos, rare disease Facebook groups, 'freebirth' influencers and hospital reality shows, Hess realised that ideas of eugenics, surveillance, ableism and hyper-individualism are being sold through shiny technologies to a new generation of parents.

At once funny, surreal and heartbreaking, Second Life asks compelling questions about how our most fundamental human experiences are fractured and reshaped by technology.

Critics Review

Acutely empathetic, thoroughly researched, funny, irreverent and moving ... Hess creates community through her brilliance with language .... beautiful but never airbrushed prose
Observer
Hess's debut memoir bursts with humor and intelligence as it weaves the story of her own pregnancy ... this unexpected page-turner is as vulnerable as it is sharp
Vulture
Captures the anxiety and weirdness of reproduction in our modern screen-based, app-oriented culture. Insightful ... very funny
Wall Street Journal
Spot-on and brutally funny
Atlantic
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, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
Second Life is an excellent book. So interesting, astute and beautifully crafted. Amanda Hess interrogates new lands of contemporary parenthood with nuance, curiosity, smarts and heart. I loved it.
Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence
Second Life is a tender, perceptive account of pregnancy and early motherhood - and a stylish confrontation with the demented landscape of digital parenting content. It also happens to be a subtle indictment of a healthcare system that leaves some parents scrolling for alternatives. Hess is a smart, savvy, and generous guide
Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley
Second Life is indispensable ... frank, funny, searingly smart. A must read for anyone who has ever wondered what it means to parent in the digital age and an essential antidote for the information-overload they'll certainly be met with on the internet
Allie Rowbottom, author of Aesthetica
There is no better writer than Amanda Hess to dissect the joys, fears, and humiliations that accompany having children in the information age, and no wittier chaperone through the strange world of surveillance, monetization, bureaucracy, and alternative medicine to which pregnant people and mothers are subjected. Second Life is a sharp, moving, sometimes harrowing, and always funny companion to some of the best and worst things life has to offer
Max Read, editor of Read Max and former editor-in-chief of Gawker
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
New parents spend countless hours staring at our phones, scrolling for the comfort American systems fail to provide us. But pushed to the brink, only Amanda Hess could step through the blue light looking glass - journey through her specific, and our collective, anxiety, dissociation, data points, targeted ads, and apps - and emerge a more sensate, embodied, and sharper critic. The honesty of Second Life takes my breath away
Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother
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 funny - 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
What a book! It has the lyricism and intelligence of a literary masterpiece, and the urgency of a thriller; I read it in two sittings. Hess dissects the experience of modern childbearing with surgical precision, even as she holds out her heart. This is the book on motherhood the world needs right now.
Marianne Levy, author of Donu2019t Forget to Scream

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