[4] Lockwood began writing the book shortly after she and her husband, owing to financial difficulty and illness, moved back to live with her parents in her father's rectory.

[14] Rooney likewise said Lockwood's book displayed "the same offbeat intelligence, comic timing, gimlet skill for observation and verbal dexterity that she uses in both her poetry and her tweets.

"[8] In The New York Times, Dwight Garner called Priestdaddy "electric," "consistently alive with feeling," and Lockwood's father Greg "one of the great characters of this nonfiction decade.

"[15] Writing for Playboy, James Yeh dubbed it "a powerful true story from one of America’s most relevant and funniest writers," The New Yorker praised the book as "a vivid, unrelentingly funny memoir ... shot through with surprises and revelations,"[16] and The Atlantic lauded it as "a deliciously old-school, big-R Romantic endeavor.

"[17] Gemma Sieff, writing for The New York Times Book Review, concluded the memoir positioned Lockwood as "a formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she pleases.