Second Life
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
LIMITED TIME OFFER
Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
Second Life
Narrated by:
Amanda Hess
Buy Now for £12.99
-
Narrated by:
-
Amanda Hess
-
By:
-
Amanda Hess
About this listen
'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.©2025 Amanda Hess (P)2025 Hachette Audio UK
Editorial Review
She walked so we could run ... away
You could say I’ve been a tad obsessed with parenting memoirs since becoming a parent myself, and few have spoken truer to me than Amanda Hess’s, in which she documents her pregnancy to parenthood journey in a chronically connected world. This isn’t a how-to guide disguised as memoir, to be clear. I’d call it more of a commiseration guide for anyone who religiously tracked their cycle in an app, spent restless nights googling whether their sleeping newborn’s grunts were normal, or found themselves in a niche parenting rabbit hole out of sheer morbid curiosity. No, it’s not just you, she seems to reassure with each chapter. It’s the system. Hess narrates, and her delivery is warm and intimate while also capturing the subtle humour and absurdity of this whole experience of parenting (and performing parenting) online. You may still feel tempted to move to an off-the-grid cabin in the woods after listening, but at least you’ll know you’re not alone.—Sam D., Audible Editor
Beautifully told, made me think
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.