All's Well follows Miranda Fitch, once theater actress to theater teacher after an unfortunate event leaves her unable to preform and turns her life into a waking nightmare. She's trying to keep her life from falling completely apart while living with chronic pain that no one seems to believe is real, determined to put on a production that her students do not want to participate in.

The prose is well constructed, every word the right one, creating a darkly funny rollercoaster that will have you completely absorbed yet unsure what your opinion really is until the ending. All of the main characters have a beautiful depth to them creating a narrative that is all incredibly human. Miranda will tug at your heart and have you feeling her pain.

Mona Awad is a breath of fresh air with her uniquely structured narrative and bold unapologetic gumption to go where no author has gone before. Brilliant.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Simon& Schuster for providing me with an advanced copy for me to leave my honest opinions.

All I can say is ....... WHAT?

I know what I was getting myself into when I picked up this book after reading bunny.
This was strange? wild? crazy?

I am not fully sure what I just read

Due to current decisions from the publisher, the reviewer has elected not to review this title until announcements are made regarding overall changes to their publishing and distribution deals.

I have been a fan of Mona Awad’s darkly funny, sharp writing for years and her newest book, “All’s Well,” did not disappoint. The story follows Miranda Fitch, a theater professor suffering chronic pain, who in the process of staging a troubled production of Shakespeare’s “All’s Well that Ends Well.” One night she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future where the show is a success and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is not only made know, but disappears.

I appreciated the book’s investigation of female pain—physical and psychological—and the struggle to have it acknowledged and believed by others. The three mysterious benefactors tell Miranda: “We all fall, Ms. Fitch. We fall and we rise. Bones and tissue heal. But sometimes we want to hold on to the pain. Sometimes we have our reasons for not being able to let go.” And throughout the book the reader is forced again and again to question how much of her pain is real or psychosomatic, and if that even matters because to her it is real, and she is struggling. I loved Awad’s writing style, a sort of stream of consciousness with acute observations of the world all from Miranda’s perspective. While her health and body miraculously healing, springtime is also blooming all around her: “I gesture to the window and smile. Budding branches. Pale green leaves. Spring. Spring, does she see that? A time when everything is in bloom. Everything is having sex. Everything is so damp and fragrant and fuckable.”

I highly recommend this book to anyone who liked “Bunny” by Mona Awad, “The Harpy” by Megan Hunter, and “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman.

After reading Mona Awad's bizzare "Bunny", I wasn't sure what to expect from "All's Well." What I ended up receiving was a brilliant and trippy Shakespearean ride and a manifesto for women everywhere who suffer with chronic pain. I devoured the book in five hours, groping periodically for my glass of water but otherwise enchanted by the story.

Miranda Fitch, a once-celebrated Shakespearean actress, has fallen on hard times. Due to a bad fall from the stage during a production of All's Well, she suffers from a combination of factors: her failed marriage, her unfulfilling job as a college theater director, and most of all, debilitating pain that countless doctors have written off as being all in her head. After a mutiny by her cast, which is determined to put on a production of Macbeth instead of All's Well, she comes into contact with three mysterious men who promise to end her pain and restore her to her former glory. But as Miranda wanders further and further down this new rabbit hole, the question remains: how far would you go to have everything?

I liked this book a great deal more than Awad's first. Where the storyline in "Bunny" was genius, but also more chaotic, this book is straightforward until the very end when things go gracefully off the rails, the characters are solidly developed, and the conflict is distinct and intriguing. It doesn't lose the darker themes that it shares with "Bunny", but is able to convey them a lot more effectively.

Read this book right now, then find five friends and make them read it.

3-3.5/5 stars Mona Awad constructs a living nightmare in All's Well, mixing Shakespearean elements, supernatural forces, and an unreliable narrator. College professor Miranda Fitch is the only one excited about mounting All's Well That Ends Well, a "problem" play that's neither tragedy nor comedy. On top of dealing with unenthusiastic students, work nemeses and divorce, she lives in constant pain which no matter how many male doctors she sees or medications she takes continues to ail her. A twist of fortune produces a pain free, carefree Miranda who finds herself directing the lead she wants in the play she loves and a steamy romance. Naturally, it all catches up with her in a truly twisted ending that raises more questions than answers. I found myself more satisfied in the destination rather than the journey. A majority of the book I felt concerned for Miranda rather than enticed by her transformation. Awad does an excellent job of showing how women's pain is rarely taken seriously. The moments that build into the climax and onward were so wonderfully vengeful and dark that it left me questioning why what came before wasn't as satisfying. Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy!

✨ 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.

Wow. That was an experience. The best kind of strange. Mona Awad is brilliant at what she does. She’s one of a kind. All’s Well follows Miranda Fitch, a stage actress who suffers a bad fall and has been in chronic pain ever since. She’s now a college theater teacher directing Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. I felt Miranda’s pain. I could feel it. It was a weird reading experience. She visits countless doctors and therapists but nothing gets better. It all takes a turn when she meets three men in a bar one night. Things really get going from there. I couldn’t stop reading towards the end. I needed to know what was happening. Mona Awad’s writing style is genius. I felt like I was in a chaotic dream. It was great. All’s Well and Miranda Fitch are in my head now and they’ll be staying there forever I’m sure. 4 stars for now but may bump up to 5 once I let it settle.
Thank you to NetGalley & Simon and Schuster for the advance copy.
All’s Well comes out on Aug 3, 2021

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!

I've been meaning to read a novel by Mona Awad for a while, so I was thrilled when Simon and Schuster approved my NetGalley request. I must say, I wish I had read her work sooner, as this novel kept me rapt. This is the second Shakespeare retelling I've received from NetGalley recently. I was expecting to be disappointed by this one, as I absolutely adored Lyndsay Faye's [book:The King of Infinite Space|55881109]. I was shocked that I could not put this book down.

As someone who deals with chronic pain issues, I could empathize with the main character, Miranda, and her struggles for diagnosis and treatment. She has lost much of her former life, including her marriage, to pain and physical restrictions. A former stage actress working as a theatre professor, she wants to relive her own glory days by staging a production of All's Well That Ends Well. Her students on the other hand want to put on Macbeth instead.

(A quick sidebar to mention that I'd never really paid attention to All's Well, despite having read quite a bit of Shakespeare. I didn't realize what a strange play it is. If you enjoy Shakespeare and haven't read much about his "problem plays", I'd suggest looking into them.)

Minor spoilers of only the beginning of the novel:
<spoiler>When the students and a rival professor scheme to change the play to Macbeth, the situation and Miranda both begin to spiral out of control. Though the play is changed back to All's Well, Macbeth has made its way into Miranda's life, as her desire was brought to fruition by witches. Instead of having Weird Sisters, the witches are men, the Weird Brethren, an interesting twist. I don't want to spoil any more of the plot.</spoiler>

If you enjoy Shakespeare and unreliable narrators, you might also love this novel.

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.