✨ The Title/Cover Draw:
I tried to read Bunny Last year and it wasn’t really my thing. When I found this book releasing later this year, I decided to give Mona Awad another chance. Thanks to @simonandschuster and @netgalley for the opportunity to read this.
💜 What I liked:
Miranda as a main character is sympathetic through most of the book. Her chronic pain and lack of understanding by doctors (and friends and family) is something that really resonated with me. Many times you feel so frustrated with them you just want to scream “STAND UP FOR YOURSELF!”
😱 What I didn’t like:
The language is beautiful and poetic, but half the time I wasn’t totally sure what is happening. It’s sort of like a very lucid drug trip where you aren’t totally sure what is real and what is in Miranda’s head.
💁‍♀️ The Characters:
In this story we follow Miranda through her job and life. She comes into contact with students while putting on All’s Well, even though the students want to stage a coup and do Macbeth.
🚦 The Ending:
The ending is very open ended so you can interpret what happens for yourself.
💭 Consider if you like:
Strange and ambiguous stories or stories where things are just a little unsettling.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Received from Netgalley.

Bunny was an amazing read, and if you haven't picked that up yet, I highly recommend you do so. I was excited to see another Awad title available for request and was thrilled to be approved. This is out in August, but I couldn't wait to get started.

Miranda's theatrical career was cut short following a horrible fall of the stage that left her with crippling chronic pain. Now a professor at a local community college, Miranda is trying to revive the department by staging a performance of Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well. Debilitated and struggling to find her footing, Miranda is miraculously healed, and what follows is a dizzying descent into her mental health as she tries to stage the performance of a lifetime.

I *loved* this book.

Awad's writing is crisp and hilarious. With Miranda's sadness and the heavy subject matter, you'd expect it to be depressing or tragic, but there are moments of pure comedic magic--a fact that's echoed by the protag herself as she justifies the performance of All's Well as neither a comedy or a tragedy. It's an interesting moment of breaking the fourth wall, and I loved the parallels between the classic literature and Miranda's experience.

The overarching theme running through All's Well, however, is an examination of pain--specifically women's pain--and the inability to be taken seriously. I've read countless articles lately about how medical professionals dismiss or diminish the pain women feel. Serious ailments are written off, leaving many women in a hopeless position of despair. There's the constant argument of whether or not her pain is imagined, a psychological cause, and with Awad's brilliant structure, you ride the fence of ambiguity. Miranda is a delightful unreliable narrator, and we never really get a firm hold on whether what she sees is reality, especially given the Faustian nature of the events.

On a side note, as a forever English major, I appreciated the nods to various Shakespearean works, and the proverbial easter eggs were fun to find and analyze in relation to the story. But you do not have to be a Shakespeare lover to find this funny, and I think many readers will love Miranda and her harrowing adventure.

Witty, hilarious, and insanely clever, All's Well is the book you didn't know you were missing. Out in August, add this to your TBR NOW and thank me later.

Big thanks to Simon and Schuster for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

I really wanted to like this book. But it was like a depressing, bad bad dream from the start and it just got worse.

In some ways, the book reminded me of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, in the sense that the main character had a lot of inner dialogue and she was on the edge of a breakdown all the way to the end. But the difference between these two books is that I could follow Extremely Loud - I got so confused and lost with the storyline and trying to determine what was real/in her head that it took away from the arc of the story.

I don't see myself reading another one of Awad's works.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Mona Awad was so wonderful to read! I enjoyed reading this book so much. I highly recommend everyone read this one.

The voice of Miranda Fitch is inimitable from the outset of Mona Awad’s Shakespeare-themed novel. Miranda is a theatre professor at a [seemingly] elite college in Massachusetts. She is a Shakespeare enthusiast and as she prepares to produce ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ with her students, we learn that her life is unraveling.

Miranda is in chronic pain, the result of an acting accident. Her relationship (with Paul) ended. She isn’t respected by Fauve, her faculty boss, and some of the students, namely Brianna, do everything in their power to help the spool of Miranda’s life unravel further. It is clear that her life is challenging but it’s also not definite who’s to blame - and this is partly due to the first-person narration of the novel. When Miranda has a life-changing experience at The Canny Man pub, with colleague Grace, things take a very different turn.

I loved this for the most part, perhaps a reflection of my work in education as a teacher, and the way Awad depicts young people, the ins and outs, often trivial, of work in a school. However, towards the end, the novel changes. Who is losing the plot? Miranda? Brianna? The play itself? There are definite elements of the fantastical here, with clever links to the work of Shakespeare, and there are hints at karma, but readers are perhaps not too sure what’s real, what isn’t, what’s a dream and what is tangible.

‘All’s Well’ is a great novel - but I think Awad has laboured the point to a degree. Some tighter editing and less dwelling on certain aspects would make for a more concise, slightly more direct read. But read and enjoy!

I really feel like my mind has been turned into mush. I know what I read, but the meaning? There could be so many things to analyze..... I really enjoyed how things continuously left me wondering how things are actually going since Miranda was such an unreliable narrator! The ending was a little lackluster, I expected more of a punch to the gut, but it fell flat for me. If you are into unreliable characters and searching for deeper meanings this may be the one for you!

This is my first experience with one of Mona Awad’s books and it won’t be my last. All’s Well is a dark, disorienting, and trippy story that I could not put down.

Miranda, the main character, is a college theater director who’s putting on the play All’s Well That Ends Well. She refers to the play as “both a comedy and a tragedy” and I think that’s also the vibe Mona Awad had in mind for this book. Somehow, All’s Well had an overall dark tone but also had me laughing out loud every chapter. I seriously have never laughed so hard reading a book before.

I loved the spiral into fantasy, the references to theater, and the sarcastic/comedic writing style. And Miranda might be my favorite character I’ve read about so far this year.

This book really messed with my mind--and I mean that in a very good way! I loved teaching Shakespeare to my high school students, and I continue to love the theater and any book in a school setting. But I was not prepared for this darkly comic, often-unsettling novel that centers around Miranda who is the theater director in a college, determined to stage All's Well That Ends Well even though her students are determined to do Macbeth. Because she suffers debilitating pain in her hip and back from a fall off a stage, we also get insights into her personal life as she sees many doctors who all believe they can cure her, but nothing seems to help--until she meets three strangers in a bar--and everything changes for her. I really had no idea where this was going but I was constantly amazed at Awad's surprises and Miranda's inner dialogues which reveal so much about the human condition. So even though my head is spinning, it is with sheer delight at such a fresh voice in fiction!

This book was difficult for me to get into and I found myself not wanting to pick it up again. I got through it though and it was dark, depressing, and confusing. The storyline itself was good but it seemed way too long.

Miranda is broken. Her body has betrayed her and with this wretched new reality, she has lost everything that makes her. Her career, her marriage, her sanity have all been sacrificed on the alter of pain and injury. After a fall from the stage and a botched surgery, it’s all she can do to get up in the morning, let alone direct the Shakespeare club at her tiny college. But one night after rehearsal, she encounters three strange men and a strange kind of magic that begins to transform her and everything around her. Is this the gift she’s been seeking? Or something she should avoid at all costs?

Miranda’s story really resonated with me from the get-go. As a fibromyalgia patient, I’ve spent the years watching people be mystified by my pain, by the absence of anything concrete to point to why I can’t seem to manage what everyone else can. Seen their faces when I try to make them understand that, no, their remedy did not help. I still do not feel better. If anything, I’m worse than I was. Taken all the drugs, tried all the therapies. Finally been diagnosed, but still had no treatments or cures. It’s soul-sucking. It’s so much worse than sick or injured. It’s both. And more. When Mark tries to pull her hip out of socket, I almost had to stop reading.

And then we enter the fever dream of Miranda’s subconscious. Because, as a sufferer of invisible pain, we have all had that moment when we would do literally anything to find relief. We would make that Faustian deal in breath, in a heartbeat. Shamefully, we’ve wished our friends and family could just understand, could just feel what we feel, for a moment, for a day. If we could only have one day, one afternoon, one night when the pain was gone. When we could put it down, walk away from it. Who wouldn’t drink that golden liquid chance?

And so Miranda enters an actor’s nightmare. Nothing makes sense, and yet everything feels right. Doesn’t it? The imagery is so haunting and daunting. So many parallels with the plays in her life and memory. It was a real treat to be inside her mind, disturbing, but exhilarating.

This won’t be for everyone, but I loved it. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this gifted copy. These opinions are my own.

DNF 5 Chapters in.

Upon reading the description for All's Well I immediately added it to my tbr. Unfortunately, once I started reading it, I had no interest to continue. The first chapter spends MANY pages giving us a very descriptive account of a prescription drug commercial that the main character, Miranda is watching. While ultimately you understand the point of it all, I could not for the life of me understand the point of describing every single thing about this commercial when it could've been easily summed up in a couple of sentences. There were many instances in the 4.5 chapters I read where I felt that the author simply was writing to write as opposed to furthering the story.

My biggest issue though was how much Miranda spoke about sex. Now to be clear, I am not a prude and I don't care if people talk about sex. However, if I had kept count of how many times sex was mentioned, I probably would've been up to 30 mentions by the 5th chapter. What also made me extremely uncomfortable is that many times when she was talking about sex, she was speculating about the sex lives of her students. I'm a teacher myself, and although I work with children, not college-aged students, if I was working with college-aged students I could not in any way imagine theorizing about their sex lives. It made me incredibly uncomfortable and because of how much this was discussed I could not continue to read this book.

Miranda, Prof of theatre studies/performing arts, is in chronic pain. She gobbles up muscle relaxants and pain relievers, and drags her cement leg from surgeon to physiatrist to black market masseuses for treatment, all to no avail. Not is it till she meets three odd strangers supping on a golden elixir does she start to feel some relief. With relief comes a kaleidoscope of mania, witchcraft, and revenge. This book was absolutely delicious, it might even be better than Bunny! Am I right? It’s weird from the first nibble right through to a big chomp to its core. The story is propulsive, the main characters brilliantly drawn, and the side characters delightfully odd. If you like dark, Lynch-esque, unnerving novels then you will love this.

Wow, wow, wow! Just completed All’s Well by Mona Awad. This was an ARC provided by NetGalley for an honest review. This was an amazing read! The main character Miranda has all sorts of healthcare issues which are causing her excruciating pain. She has lost most of her life as she knew it due to her medical issues. She is that person who you ask how they are doing because you know they always feel bad but you really don’t care to know the specifics. That is this woman’s life. She is hard to love but you can feel such deep sympathy for her. She is still passionate about one thing which is her directorship of the Shakespearean play All’s Well that Ends Well. That is the only thing keeping this woman going. One night she gains the ability to heal herself and in so doing gets a certain amount of revenge on those who treated her abysmally due to her pain. But her achieved health comes at a cost! Miranda was such a dimensional character. You rooted for her, you wished she would not whine, you loved her determination and finally you loved her humanity. I rated this book as 4 stars and can highly recommend it.

Miranda, who has had chronic pain for years, by a twist of mysterious witchery becomes pain free. She is directing Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well to a reluctant group of college students in a failing theater program, all while her pain increases and is unabated by the myriad physiotherapist and doctor's appointments she attends. An altogether weird encounter changes her pain and also the trajectory of her life. Suddenly, All's well.

Reading the first few chapters, I didn't know if I would like this story. I understood Miranda was in constant excruciating pain, but she also was judgmental of everyone around her in a petty way. I was glad when she was alleviated of her pain, but overall she wasn't a likable character. This kind of worked for the rest of the novel, especially when she becomes more manic later in the story. The story started to get a lot more engaging with the changes happening in Miranda's life. It was intriguing to see how people reacted to her new state of elation. I was even rooting for her at times, liking her newfound resiliency toward people who were trying to bring her down, even while she was avoiding looking directly at the bad things she had done. I enjoyed the parallels between the events in the play and the events in Miranda's life. Miranda didn't seem to have much agency in her life before or after her pain was alleviated, and I do think there was a message in that. There was also some good commentary on the misunderstanding of chronic pain, how people struggle to understand what is not visible to them.

This was a fairly engaging read on the whole. I do think it dragged at times and was a little repetitive when we were in Miranda's head. I usually enjoy being sucked into the psychology of the protagonist, but she went on a lot of thought tangents and had extended conversations with people in her head, always assuming what they were thinking about her. I didn't particularly like the ending. It felt like there was a lot of action and it led to something, but that something wasn't very satisfying.
I received this as an ARC e-book from Netgalley.

In keeping with her previous books, in which witchcraft and darkness and breakdowns of body and mind are all fair game, Awad here goes back to college, this time focusing on theater teacher Miranda. Miranda, in a precarious position at work and dealing with chronic pain, casts a spell and summons a trio of odd men. Her pain transfers to a despised student, Miranda's crush is suddenly smitten with her, and her favorite student is about to be a star. But what's really going on? How much of what happens is strictly in Miranda's mind, and how has her chronic pain shaped her perceptions of the events that unfold in the book? This is completely unnerving horror, but spiked with moments of empathy and sympathy, and for me, also a person who deals with chronic pain, a thought-provoking read. I want other people to read this immediately so I can talk with people about it.

I did not enjoy this as much as I had hoped. I found the narrative incredibly difficult to follow and, at times, seemed to ramble on for far too long. Overall this was n entertaining read, but could have been significantly shorter.

Miranda is a former theater actor and current college theater director who suffer immesurable and seemingly unending physical suffering. She can barely think of anything outside of her own all-consuming pain. She feels weak and broken, and that even things in her life she has a tiny bit of control over are being taken away from her. Until one night when she meets three mysterious men who somehow know everything about her and her troubles. Then everything serendipidously begins to fall into place. Her physical pain is reduced to the point where she can actually enjoy life and all her bad fortunes turn to good. But at what cost?

Althoug I enjoyed the psychological thriller aspect of this novel, and even enjoyed the mysterious magical element, I couldn't get past the self-indulgent over-analyzation of Miranda. Her laments on her pain and the unfairness of her life went on for pages at a time and became incredibly frustrating, as I'm sure the author meant it to be. So that we as the reader could fully understand how all-encompassing chronic pain can be. But even when she is relieved of the pain, she still harps on it, and as a result the story takes forever to unfold. And when it did, I had almost lost interest.

I can definitely see the appeal to most readers, and the writing is strong, clear , and in the category of excellent. However, it was not an enjoyable or satisfying read for me.

I missed out on an ARC of Bunny, so I was super excited to get this one because Mona Awad seemed right up my alley, and I can see her becoming one of my favorite writers now. She’s super funny and is not at all afraid to get weird with her stories. This started off pretty funny and kind of reminded me of The Convalescent, and that’s the direction that I thought it was going on, but then magic kind of comes into play like a third of the way in and it just gets bonkers. I think there were a bunch of Shakespeare references that kind of went over my head, but the ones I caught were pretty clever. Man, I really liked this book a lot.

This was... oh boy... I’m so overwhelmed right now... I don’t know what words will be appropriate to express my feelings about this reading experience...

Strange... extraordinary...frustrating...blurry... illusionary...disturbing...sad...delirious...wild...different ...original...exhausting...dark...depressing ...weird...complex...conflicted...

I can keep writing those words for several more pages but it is so hard for me to put them in proper sentences because this book extracts the opposite feelings from you at the same time. You love it, you hate it, you love to hate it, you hate to love it! But for a long time I haven’t been book-drunk or suffered from intense book-gover ( which is terrible version of hungover! The meaningless words poured out of my mind at the same time! )

I have to admit: my heart ached for Miranda who suffers from chronic back pain, an invisible pain that cannot be treatable, costed her career, forced her to be an assistant professor at academia for theater program.

She’s in pain. Her pain is contagious. You can feel it in your guts. Your soul feels it! She’s crying for help! She’s absolutely unreliable narrator, taking awkward hallucinatory baths and popping pills like candies to heal herself! Of course she cannot get proper result! When you stuck with her mind, you feel like you found soulmate of Raoul Duke’s drug induced, hallucinatory vision at Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, taking long tour at her distorted realities.

She’s teaching Shakespeare as her life turns into a Shakespearean tragedy: an actress who’s dying to perform but a traffic accident already sealed her faith so she resents the young actresses-her own students who already replaced her. The play they work on All’s Well that Ends Well. An ironic name for her unresolved issues, incessant suffering, delusional mind trips.

At some part, I felt like I was walking in the foggy road, losing my path throughout my reading journey. The book’s abrupt direction to fantasyland dragging you to the witch craft, more illusionary baths, awkward strangers in the bar changing your vision kind of more mind numbing experiences leave you at a strange zone.

Conclusion is full of unanswered questions. Some blanks you fill with your own imagination!

Overall: the author’s different, interesting, extremely direct and realistic to the chronic illness was the best thing about this novel. I loved her choice to build the story at small New England liberal arts college like she did at her previous marvelous work “Bunny”.

Miranda was powerful, connectable character you truly care about. The thin line between fantasy and fiction was a little intense and confusing for me. I skip some parts because it was truly exhausting experience for me but writing is uniquely creative and original which I absolutely enjoyed a lot!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Simon& Schuster for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

I came close to leaving this book during the first part. I was put off by Miranda's total focus on her pain. It was her only focus and worse was her going to different therapies that did no good and often seemed to exacerbate her symptoms. She blindly followed what each male practitoner told her to do even when it hurt her. I was becoming depressed just reading about her miserable life. There was more action in Part Two and things started to look up as Miranda began to stage Shakespear's All's Well with her college students. Even that was over the top ridiculous. As I headed into Part Three I was hoping for some closure but it left me thinking " what the heck? " This may appeal to some people but it was not the book for me.

I received an Advanced Reader's Copy from Simon & Schuster through NetGalley. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
#All'sWell #NetGalley