SELECTED REVIEWS of AND NOW WE HAVE EVERYTHING

“This honest, neurotic, searingly funny memoir is a welcome antidote in the panicked-expectant-mothers canon. Read this, I’ll reply in the future when friends ask me for my pregnancy Google docs. It will make you feel less alone.”

―Isabel Wilkinson, New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice Pick

“The memoir industry runs increasingly on the unique, the superhuman, and the grotesque. People climb mountains, escape kidnappers, visit heaven and report back. But And Now We Have Everything shows how the most normal thing in the world — having an ordinary, healthy baby after an ordinary, healthy pregnancy — means being visited with all possible extremes of pain, fear, and love. O'Connell renders this normal and horrific experience real, in both emotional sweep and brutal particulars. The questions she asks is simple: What is it like? And this joyous, useful, grim book tells it straight: "F****** awful.”

―Annalisa Quinn, NPR. Named an NPR Best Book of 2018

“I’m not a mother, and I don’t have plans to be one for a long time, but I’ve read And Now We Have Everything twice now and I can’t stop thinking about it…I don’t think I’ve ever read something so viscerally engaging. She’s so generous with her experiences and so human; she doesn’t sugarcoat or self-censor her experiences or reactions to fit into the preconceived notions of what pregnancy, birth, and parenthood should be like. It truly is a remarkable book, and it should be required reading for absolutely everyone.”

—Sarah Cassavant, Subtext Books

"This book. Wow. I plowed through this and immediately came back to the store trying to get everyone else to read it. It feels like, in many ways, the first book about motherhood that I, as a non-mother, could relate to. Meaghan writes fearlessly and honestly about her fears, her pain, her joy, and more in this collection of essays. It brought me pain and laughter and I can't wait to put it in people's hands.”

— Abby Fennewald, Book People

“Her book is a testament, a gift to mothers … as well as to everyone else.”

―R.O. Kwon, The Guardian

With a steady-handed, acerbic candor … a firm grounding in the reality of new parenthood that rings alarmingly, unerringly true."

―Carla Bruce-Eddings, The Rumpus 

O’Connell’s writing is so visceral, so immediate, that it made my nipples hurt.

―Jennifer Schaffer, LitHub

Each story she tells is sharply observed, wickedly funny, and painfully important. I have never read anything about parenthood that so clearly encapsulates what it feels like.

―Melody Schreiber, The Millions