Reviews with content warning for Medical content - All's Well

POV: We follow our main character, a burgeoning theatre actress now heading up the college production of Shakespeare as an assistant professor and navigating academia.

Mood Reading Match-Up:

-Swipes of bizarro academia

-Speculative and magical realism theatre production drama

-Wintery theatre and cozy pub vibes

-Themes and symbolism around pain, disability, chronic illness, recovery, redemption, beauty, adversity, ambition, and hypocrisy

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🐺 Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags 🐕

🗣️ Tale-Telling: The narration is present-tense third-person and what I’d call mind-bender style. I was pulled in to the characters’ world through every little task, pain, and thought. It led to a rollercoaster of empathy and frustration, understanding and annoyance with our main character and showed the complexities of pain and perception.

👥 Characters: The characters were vibrant, multifaceted, yet constantly shifting as we learn more about them. Miranda, our MC, is dealing with an invisible chronic condition, but she was so much more than that. She had me both rooting for her recovery and success, while also making me feel second-hand embarrassment, annoyance, and even disgust.

🗺️ Ambiance: The setting was crafted and captured the wintery aura. Each location, from office to stage to clinic to a pub, was rich with atmosphere and character.

🔥 Fuel: The story revolved around pain – real and imagined. There were elements of wondering if what’s happening has a physical or cosmic origin. The mysteries build with magical realism and psychological drama, so understanding dawns slowly while questioning the nature of reality (in the story).

🎬 Scenes: The pacing was slow, steady, and immersive. I think depending on your tastes for subtletly (read – ‘I have no clue what is going on’) and introspective narratives this could be a hit or a miss. The scenes oscillated between being deeply introspective and distantly observational. Often my perspective of Miranda and the other characters would change after a discussion or hearing Miranda’s motivations and thoughts. A lot of the scenes are directly or symbolically showing the harsh realities of academia, personal struggles and battles of wit and willpower.

🤓 Random Thoughts: This wasn’t a typical mystery or thriller; it was an exploratory journey into empathy and the surreal. It involved dismissal of a woman’s pain by male clinicians, but gender wasn’t the focus. The focus is the difficulty communicating one’s inner condition, the dismissal itself and the broader commentary on perception, judgement, and disbelief of invisible ‘mystery’ pains and illnesses. I think it may resonate or be cathartic for anyone who has experienced ‘invisible’ conditions like chronic illness, pain, or mental illness.

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Content Heads-Up: Medical (chronic pain, clinical disbelief, injury). Alcohol use (self-medicating, casual). Drug use (prescribed). Medical incompetence.

Rep: Cisgender. Heterosexual. White Americans.

👀 Format: Library Digital

“Reviews are my musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶 refined by my AI bookworm bestie ✨”

🌟💗 Potential Favourite of 2024

Content Warnings

venice_the_vampire's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

god i love love LOVED the beginning of the book and the depictions of chronic pain so much, they way they were written were so interesting and real and relatable. i also really love that i was at times angrily on miranda’s side, while at other times i felt horrifically guilty for almost beginning to doubt her pain and deem her an unreliable narrator, like everyone else in her life clearly has. the book was a bit confusing, and the end didn’t quite satisfy me, but i still absolutely adored the book.

Content Warnings

biobeetle's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny informative reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

ecb03's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Content Warnings

applesodaperson's review against another edition

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challenging sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I honestly did not enjoy this book. I also didn’t like Bunny by Mona Awad, but I thought I would still give this one a try. But I enjoyed it even less. The premise was intriguing, but I found every single character to be unpleasant. I think there is a way to do an unlikeable narrator well, but I just don’t like the way Awad does it. It makes it even harder to read when the perspective of the main character makes all of the other characters unlikeable too. Especially in this one, Miranda assumes that every other person is thinking the worst possible thing about her, which makes all the other characters seem as unrealistic and unpleasant as Miranda is. I also thought that the magic aspect was confusing, much like it was in Bunny. It also just felt like a chore to read, to the point that I almost DNF’d it. If you are going to read this book, I would recommend reading at least a summary of All’s Well That Ends Well by Shakespeare, and also Macbeth. I didn’t do this but I wish I would have, because there are so many references to these plays.
Read from the Provo library.

Content Warnings

xbernadette's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

withlivjones's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Holy hell, Mona Awad has done it again. This book as it all: trippy dream sequences, mysterious characters reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, and overall a really powerful message about how women’s pain, especially if it’s invisible, is so often dismissed and erased. Part of me sympathises with and roots for Miranda as she gains the ability to take ownership of her chronic pain and punish those who have downplayed it, while part of me grows slightly more horrified as she descends further into insanity. This book, like Awad’s other writing, reads like an acid trip, and I am so here for it.

Content Warnings

orlagal's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

Content Warnings

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