The premise of the book is very interesting. But I have to admit that I had a very difficult time reading it. The writing style included a lot of short choppy sentences that were hard for me to follow. I wasn't enthralled with this book at all. It was just ok.

It delivers on its promise of "no holds barred," but of what, I'm not sure. Can't say if I would've chosen this if I'd been aware of other worldly elements, but that may be an attraction for some readers. What it did need was some editing, some acceleration of pace, less repetition.

All’s Well by Mona Awad is a weird and wonderful book. A book unflinching in its portrayal of chronic pain, that forces the reader to sit in miranda’s discomfort in such an immersive and encompassing way that, by the time Miranda starts making decisions, or rather, choosing inaction, that results in other people suffering, you understand how she could do that, even while internally condemning her willful ignorance and hypocrisy. Reading some other reviews to try and orient myself about my feelings on the book, I came across a few saying that the scenes about Miranda’s experiences with doctors not listening to her never really came to anything, never made their point about people who experience chronic pain, especially women, not being taken seriously by health care professionals. To which I would say, how would you know that was the point if she never made it? The repetition itself is what makes the point, much like the repetition in the prose of certain phrases showing us Miranda’s compromised state of mind, repeating the same phrases, giving them different meanings, all serves to help make the reading experience feel like a headlong, dreamlike, exasperating rush that leaves you unable to look away, even when the lurking threat of tragedy never leaves. Speaking of tragedy, and repetition of phrases, my personal favorite use of this device was the phrase “it’s both.” Particularly as it helped put into context, for me, what the book itself is. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? It’s both. It’s a problem play.
My two small critiques of the book are the sort of things that can be hard to determine whether the author included out of a place of ignorance or bigotry, or with intention of them being read as Miranda’s personal failings in those areas. There’s a through line of this idea of “the fat man”, first used in a metaphorical example of her pain, that there’s a chair on her foot, a fat man sitting on the chair, crushing her, and then in an only slightly more tangible sense, when the three men begin to appear to her, one of them being continually described as “the fat one.” I know Awad has written on the experience of fatness before in her debut novel, and has experienced being fat herself, and I haven’t, so it really isn’t my place to tell her how she can and can’t speak about it here, and ultimately I understand this is an existing literary symbol. However, I think it’s something other readers should be aware of going in, and would like to hear more opinions, particularly from fat people, on its use in this context. The other instance was one line in chapter seven, in which she is having a meeting with the dean and two other men, who are referred to as Comb-over and Bow Tie, presumably higher ups of the school, about putting on a different play due to Briana, who’s parents contribute heavily to the program, being unhappy with the choice of All’s Well That Ends Well. The men attempt to sway Miranda with promises of improvements to the stage, to which she replies that she understands, they need money. Then she has this piece of internal dialogue: “I picture the dean, Comb-over and Bow Tie idling on a dark street corner, wearing spandex dresses full of holes. Thigh high patent leather boots. Long blond wigs. Thumping the windshields of passing cars with the meaty palms of their hands.” I can understand the intent of brashness and shock value in this line, and again, maybe this is meant to exemplify a flaw on the character’s part, but as this line is extremely disparaging of trans women, sex workers, and the intersections thereof, I feel it would’ve been better to not include it at all.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book for any lover of theater, supernatural, Shakespeare or just an unusual premise.
Miranda Fitch is a depressed theater professor in a dying college theater program.. Miranda' suffers from great pain due to a fall off a stage during her own acting career. As she struggles to direct a play, placate the dean and parents and balance her social life she finds a surreptitious solution to all of her problems - but at what cost? I loved the dark comedy, irony and the underlying theme of magic. Highly recommend!

All’s Well is the latest from Mona Awad – a strange, perplexing, but oh-so-satisfying novel that fits well with her previous works. Awad’s bold style and irreverent, caustic voice creates an interesting world that smoothly blends the real with the surreal.

Like her previous novel, Bunny, Awad sets her latest at a small New England liberal arts college. The novel’s protagonist, Miranda Fitch, is a former actress dealing with chronic pain, an invisible illness that has pushed her away from her career on stage and to a life in academia as an assistant professor for a theatre program where she oversees the direction of an annual undergraduate Shakespeare production. Miranda resents her youthful band of performers, and when they push back against her choice of play, Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well, the book plunges into strange quasi-magical terrain that remarkably stays grounded in Miranda’s experience.

As in Bunny, Awad has an incredible capacity to create a sympathetic heroine in Miranda. She is a fully-fleshed character, one that the reader can root for even as she devolves into her own theatrical narcissism. A strength of the book also lies in its ability to make the strange seem almost regular, which is further reflected in Miranda’s fight against her invisible disease. I worried as the book neared its conclusion that Awad would feel compelled to wrap things up too cleanly, but she smartly resists any impulse to overexplain the book’s mythology.

Fans of Awad’s previous work will no doubt enjoy All’s Well, which builds and improves on her oeuvre.

I love the theatre. I love it so much that I spell it “theatre” not “theater”. In my younger, more vulnerable years, I performed a lot on stage. I was Snoopy in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Dr. Einstein in Arsenic and Old Lace, Biff in Death of a Salesman, and so many others. Biff was my favorite and most challenging role. I’ve thought a lot about that role in the years after and I want to do it again because I have so much more to bring to that role.

There are three more theatrical things I was to do before I slough my mortal coil. I want to be in the musical Next to Normal (but I would have to prevent myself from crying each performance), Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and I want to do a Shakespeare play. I don’t even want a meaty role, I just want to speak in iambic pentameter on stage.

All’s Well by Mona Awad caught my eye right away. The cover is just beautiful. And terrifying. Terrifyingly beautiful. Beautifully terrifying. I think that last one is the correct term. Anyway, using the comedy mask as your book cover is a surefire way to get a theatre nerd to pick up your book.

What awaited me inside was nothing short of confusing and brilliant.

Miranda is a former stage actress who now teaches theatre at a college after taking a nasty fall while performing. She muddles through her days in a haze of pain and painkillers all while staging the school’s latest Shakespeare production, All’s Well That Ends Well. Miranda is stuck in the past, always wishing she was back onstage playing Helen, the heroine of All’s Well. Her cast, however, hates the play and wants to do Macbeth instead.

(Sidebar: I will say Macbeth in a theatre I don’t give a damn. Theatre superstitions are fun until they get annoying. Of course, my superstition isn’t annoying at all, I just have to go to every actor before the show and shake hands with them while looking them in the eyes, saying “Doctor”. Not annoying at all.)

One night, she meets three strange men who will change her life as long as they can see a good show. Thus begins the incredibly confusing second act of All’s Well.

I don’t want to go into spoiler territory too much because there were parts of this book that made me audibly gasp. It’s weird, it’s strange, it’s funny as hell. There is a lot of magic to this book that is left unexplained (my favorite kind of magic). The last quarter of the book is just stress inducing madness and I am HERE FOR IT.

This book reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books, Some Things That Meant the World to Me by Joshua Mohr. It has that same weird magic where you can’t tell if the narrator is dreaming everything or if it is actually happening.

I highly recommend this book, however, it is not a light read. Be prepared to actually do some work with this one. Overall, I give it a 4/5, 8/10. Make sure you grab a copy from your local indie on August 3rd, 2021!

Thanks NetGalley for the eARC!

I absolutely loved this book, with occasional moments of wondering what I was doing spending my time in this way. LOL. Here is what I wrote on Goodreads, where I have it four stars.

I did not know how to rate this book. I am sure that some people will be, "No ... 4 stars ... I don't even know what this is," and others will be "No ... 4 stars ... How could you? If this is not 5 stars, nothing is."

I started. And I kept going willingly. Happily. Wondering whether Miranda would survive? thrive? fall apart? be in a drug-induced coma? spinning along wildly on hallucinogens?

You can read other reviews and get a good sense of the plot, so I am not going to bother. I guess the main thing here is that I loved the manner in which the language wrapped me up in every aspect of Miranda's life.

This book was weird- interesting, page-turning, magic (or mental?).... I couldn’t tell. Miranda suffers from chronic pain from a stage injury she suffered some time ago. There seems to be no cure for it and it’s weighing on her as she prepares for the Shakespeare play she is directing, “All’s’ Well That Ends Well”. The events that happen from that point forward get a bit eerie.
Miranda is somewhat of an unreliable narrator so it left me questing what was happening, what was real? The ending left me with many unanswered questions so I’m hoping the author will divulge the answers in future interviews.

Miranda Fitch is in pain. Very real, 10/10, makes-you-want-to-die, everyday PAIN. The pain is so bad that it keeps her from practicing basic hygiene and she is often wearing the same clothes day in and day out. She takes a ridiculous amount of pills everyday and is disrespected by her students in her theater class. Her pain is real and the way she suffers is unreal. It's all just absolutely horrible for Miranda...until one day it's not. Can her pain come back? Maybe. Can she give her pain to another person? Maybe. Are physical therapists demons that are here to suck health and inflict pain? Also, maybe. This is a Mona Awad book, so pretty much anything is possible...and impossible.

Aside from this being off-the-wall book that catches you completely off guard, I need to say that I know that the pain that Miranda feels in this book is a reality for many women in the world. Miranda has suffered emotional and physical injuries that have left her pain invisible to others and untreatable by professionals. This type of pain is often not understood by peers and can lead to the person feeling isolated from the world. Suicide is common. Even though this book has a slew of unrelatable problems that range from probable witchcraft and magical baths to strangers in bars serving stranger drinks, this book still focuses on the very real problem of invisible pain and how it can destroy a person's life.

An ex-actress turned drama teacher suffering with almost debilitating chronic pain is struggling to keep her job and maintain her authority over her students as they war over which Shakespeare play to perform. Enter the three mysterious weird men who seem to know all about her and suddenly everything in her life changes!

Just when I was so sick of hearing Miranda go on about her pain and lack of sympathy from those treating her, the whole thing changes and Wow! -- What a crazy, unexpected story. Enjoyed this very much!

This darkly funny story explores the world of the theatre and how to deal with seemingly insurmountable pain. This book will especially resonate with readers who catch the references to great works of theatre - and Shakespeare specifically - written throughout the work.

Readers follow the story of Miranda from a wildly inauspicious start to - ultimately - new beginnings. Readers are left wondering how good or bad those new beginnings might end up being.

I wouldn't characterize this as a "light read" by any means, but would highly recommend this work for those people who love theatre and can appreciate just what happens literally behind the scenes as a production comes to life.

Book review time!

In 👑 All’s Well 👑 Mona Awad has created another totally unhinged, absolutely fantastic masterpiece. I’ve been a huge fan of her writing since Bunny, and this book was right up my alley - Shakespeare and teaching? Sign me up!

All’s Well is about former actor and current college theater Professor Miranda Fitch, attempting to put on a production of All’s Well That Ends Well. But she’s had debilitating back and hip pain since a fall off the stage, and her crew of student actors are staging a mutiny. I think this book is better if you don’t know much more, so I’ll leave it at that, but I’ll just say that synopsis barely scratches the surface of what this book is about.

I am obsessed and fascinated by Awad’s story creativity, which I remember from Bunny, this time compounded by literary allusions and references. There was a lot of Shakespeare, a little Dorian Gray, and maybe a few connections to The Wasteland at the end - or that might have been my over-eager former English major brain reading into it! Though the plot itself is wacky enough to make readers want to devour this text, the thing that made it for me was the little stream-of-consciousness asides. Every once in a while we got a section of Miranda’s rapidly spinning out thoughts, and wow, those were incredible.

This book was everything I hoped for and more from Mona Awad, an author I really enjoy, and in a Shakespeare book, a topic I’m equally into. It’s not easy to make a book so full of great literature feel so fresh, but this book did. Check it out when it comes out on August 3rd!

Formerly a stage actress, Miranda Fitch is now an assistant professor in the theatre department at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts. Miranda has been struggling with chronic pain since a fall from the stage ended her acting career, and is constantly confronted with scrutiny and disbelief from medical professionals, colleagues, and family. Hoping to relive her glory days where she played the role of Helen in All’s Well That Ends Well, Miranda plans a production for the college’s annual Shakespeare production. She’s facing mutiny from her students, who are lobbying for Macbeth instead.

Heavily influenced by All’s Well That Ends Well and Macbeth, All’s Well is a wild ride. Shakespeare features heavily in this novel. Though the book lays out some of the basic plot elements of All’s Well That Ends Well, I felt that my knowledge of Shakespeare was inadequate to carry me, as a reader, through the book.

All’s Well started out strong, and I found myself laughing aloud multiple times in the first few pages. As time went on, I lost interest. Miranda lacks agency and growth throughout the course of the book. There were places where I thought the storyline was taking dark turns or that we were following Miranda into psychosis, but ultimately ended up finding myself frustrated that many plot points turned out to be circuitous.

The strongest part of All’s Well was Awad’s exploration of chronic pain. The early parts of the book portrayed the ways in which people experiencing chronic pain are often dismissed across systems and relationships, and it was interesting to see Miranda fall into the same patterns when another character begins to experience similar symptoms.

This one wasn’t quite for me, but I’d recommend it for readers with a stronger Shakespeare knowledge base than I have.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for an advanced copy of All's Well for review.

Thank you Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

What a journey! I loved Bunny and have been telling everyone to read it for ages so I was very excited for this. It's got the weird, bizarre, and eerie feel that I find very unique to Awad. While I'd recommend this to anyone who liked Bunny, I think it fell short for me with the ending -- too many questions, not enough intrigue.

All's Well is about Miranda, a professor in the failing theater department suffering from intense chronic pain after a stage accident. No one in her life really believes her pain and in fact, almost everyone makes it worse. She wants to put on All's Well That Ends Well this semester, but her students want Macbeth. Strange, unbelievable things happen and all of a sudden Miranda is feeling better and her students are willing to go along with All's Well. But, reader, all is most certainly NOT WELL.

I really enjoyed the narration style -- Miranda is such a great unreliable narrator, especially when things start to go off the rails. She's cruel, she's impatient. she's losing her grasp on reality. But I also saw a lot of truth in her experiences with chronic pain, with doctors, with people around her not taking her seriously. It's a dark take, sure, but a realistic one. Pairing that voice with the absolutely bonkers events of the book makes this read, like Bunny, haunting and compelling. I also really enjoyed the cast of characters here in Grace, Hugo, Miranda's ghostly ex-husband Paul, her slew of doctors, and of course the students. The relationships in Miranda's life are so fraught and sometimes excruciating to read, but they add to the constant skepticism of her own narration.

Without saying too much, the ending left a little to be desired to me. It wasn't as sharp as I expected it to be, and I still had a lot of plot questions about Ellie and Paul and obviously the three mysterious men from the bar. But overall, this is a 4 star read for me. It's got such a unique tone and I think still makes Awad an automatic read for me.

**I received an ARC from the publisher on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so good. It was trippy but in a good well. The plot was well thought out and the characters are very developed. A really good read.

See my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3861112765
A somewhat surreal story mixing elements of the supernatural with Shakespeare and the theatre.

I thought this was a great read and my high school students would love this one!! Will definitely be buying for our library and recommending to others to check this book out!! I think the doomed play and all the other factors made for a wonderful story indeed!!!

-`ˏ 4 stars ˎ´˗

“Where was all this tenderness when I needed it most when I was lying on the floor dreaming of touch like this, of a voice that would say something, anything, kind? Nowhere.”

Storyline: -`ˏ 8/10 ˎ´˗
The stage is where she belongs, but not directing students as they silently mock her for her inability to properly carry out her duties as a university drama professor. Miranda was once admired by everyone, now those very eyes see her only with pity and doubt. Due to a tragic incident on stage, Miranda now suffers from chronic back pain. This resulted in the end of her acting career as well as her marriage. She tries various methods to alleviate her pain but they were all unsuccessful, giving the impression to many that her pain was only a figure of her imagination. Feeling completely overwhelmed in all aspects, her only wish is to put on Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. Problems arise when students disagree with her play choice, at this point, Miranda has had enough, she will get what she wants and those who are trying to stop her would face misfortune. Nevertheless, the show must go on.

Characters: -`ˏ 7/10 ˎ´˗
Miranda is an unreliable narrator. She constantly misuses her medication with alcohol that makes her mind blurry. We spend the majority of our time listening to her inner thoughts, which makes it difficult to believe what she says. Not only us but the other characters she interacts with feel the same way, her mind tends to drift away and she forgets previous conversations.

Atmosphere: -`ˏ 8/10 ˎ´˗
Creepy but enthralling. The implication of magic makes the book take a dramatically dark and dreary undertone.
There were times when I felt extremely uncomfortable about Miranda's internal dialogue, some of the comments she made about her students and coworkers were unpleasant and weird. It continues to escalate the further you read. Trigger warnings: drug abuse, suicidal ideation, physical violence, and explicit language

Language: -`ˏ 7/10 ˎ´˗
Some sections were very repetitive, making the story longer than necessary.

Enjoyment: -`ˏ 8/10 ˎ´˗
It became quite intense when we focused on Miranda's pain, it was almost as if we could hear her screams when she interacted with the physicians. It's heartbreaking to see the extent to which people didn't believe her discomfort. When things took on a mystical twist, it was amazing how people responded to her differently, but it was also quite terrifying. Overall, it was a very interesting read, I think my only drawback is that I probably miss some of Shakespeare's references that would have had a greater impact on the experience.

This was wild. I really, really enjoyed it. It is so unique as far as thrillers go, and I definitely am running to go buy Mona Awad's Bunny after reading this. She perfectly captured amazing themes of female desperation in the face of a male dominated world and it was just SO smart.

This book is so. hard. for me to rate. Honestly, it feels beyond all traditional star rating establishments, because it truly seemed like a dream I could have had put down on paper. this was one of my most anticipated 2021 releases and while 3 stars might seem like a low rating, I really did enjoy it. It took a long time for me to be pulled into the story, but the last 25% really flew by in a feverish whirlwind that feels just about indescribable. If you've read Bunny, you know that Mona Awad is the master of all things weird and horrific and strange and incredible. And this book didn't disappoint in that aspect! Half the time i had no idea what was happening, but it almost felt like i had taken the place of Miranda, and that it was easy to accept the awful things crumbling around her as a part of the truth.

In the same vein, I wish that the dark aspects hinted at throughout the book (repeated goat symbolism, witchcraft, sacrifice, etc etc etc) had gone even futher. As everything was ramping up at the end I had a hope that the whole scene might flip and end up in some kind of sleep no more daze, and while the direction it went was still haunting and strange it seemed kind of lackluster in comparison to the build that was happening. I'm still not sure how to rate this, so I'm sitting at around a 3.5, and recommending it to anyone who's ready for a fever dream. I loved it but I also wanted just a little more.