Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - All's Well

Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

All's Well by Mona Awad

43 reviews

kam_pearson's review against another edition

2.0

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

bluberrybooks's review against another edition

4.5

challenging funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I enjoyed the story writing and the story itself. The way she talks about pain and how the doctors and people around her treat her is very real. Doctors dismiss and don't really listen to their patients. They all have their own idea of chronic pain that is flawed and treat their patients horribly in different ways wheather they mean to or not. I have chronic apin and I related to doctors/ physical therapists not really understanding or not having the knowledge to help me. There were many lines that's struck me.

I loved the magic and dream sequences. It felt like a thriller, comedy, drama and realistic fiction all at once. I love the different genres combined

All's well really captures chronic pain and how ignored and overlooked it is by everyone around you even family.

Spoiler...

I love the character development even if it was small with most of the characters like Briana and how Grace apologized Miranda grew as a character as well.

This review is not well written, but I loved it overall

Content Warnings

wishesandpages's review against another edition

3.5

dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

rosalind's review against another edition

3.5

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Had high hopes for this as it has all the ingredients that sounded perfectly up my street. The concept was intriguing and I can’t lie, as a chronic pain sufferer myself, I found moments extremely cathartic. But the writing style really let it down for me; for the most part, it felt heavy-handed and lacking in the kind of subtle exploration I was hoping for.

Content Warnings

eisenbuns's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Reading Mona Awad's books requires a certain amount of faith. It is a leap, in a way, to give yourself over to the extreme and the absurd so wholly. Is it worth it? Will I reach the end of the journey and wonder whether the journey even happened? I've certainly felt that way reading literature like this before. Bret Easton Ellis comes to mind. But after reading 'Bunny' and letting myself go along for the insane, quirky, ride, I knew what I was getting into when I started 'All's Well.'

I'm so glad I was able to put aside all of my concerns and preconceptions, and dive into this work. 'All's Well' is a story of magic, of witches, of the fantastical and the mundane. It's also, primarily, a story about living with chronic pain. How it feels to be rendered invisible to professionals and loved ones alike. How it transforms you.

I think this book is an absolute masterpiece. I loved it even as I hated it.

Content Warnings

taylortut's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

beccam22's review

5.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-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: Yes

Content Warnings

bebopfloof's review against another edition

4.5

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

A fascinating and challenging novel. So much of this felt like being struck in a dream where nothing quite makes sense.

I loved the way this novel had such a foreboding, chaotic feeling that built through the reading experience.

I also enjoyed reading about a woman with chronic pain that talked about medical gaslighting and the way people treat you when you have an invisible illness. But I also loved that the main character was in many ways unlikable, and the way we learn more about her as the novel goes on.

Content Warnings

hazmatz's review

3.5

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Look, I read this over two days so it clearly got me. I can't fully say I understood it through and through. Reminds me of the Pisces in it's protagonist. Miserable (justifiably so?) and resentful of the world and it's people.

At best I found her understandable. At worst absolutely contemptable. Which I think I would have liked more if there was a little more catharsis towards the end. Anti-climatic for me (which is mentioned in the book? An intentional lampshade?)

You definitely feel this book. You feel the frustration of no one believing you, of diminishing your suffering. But Miranda turns that pain into...just absolutely thinking so little of the woman around her, either by infantilizing or villainizing. Can't fully tell if this was on purpose though, and had the same struggle with Bunny.

Overall will keep returning to this author I think.

Content Warnings

courtneyfalling's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

THIS BOOK. Wow. This was wild.

This book recreates chronic pain, ableism and healthism, and medical trauma very well. I'm not sure I've read another novel like this, especially not one staged with so many supernatural and thriller-like elements. The scenes between Miranda and her PT were excruciating and hyper-realistic. You can tell Mona Awad's had her own pain and disillusionment with the medical-industrial complex.

Miranda is an amazingly developed and flawed character, and reading through her perspective

especially as she becomes more frantic and manic throughout the book

is captivating. The mix between supernatural mysticism and Shakespeare retelling is littered just enough to make the plot work, but Miranda, the harm done to her, and the harm she does take center stage.

Miranda's use of Brianna and Ellie as caricatures heightens the drama, especially early on, and I was cringing with Miranda's simultaneous pity and love-bombing of Grace. And the blurs between Paul and Hugo... oof. I feel like Miranda herself and Miranda's view on the people around her strayed close to stereotyping at points, but the narration was so carefully orchestrated to make that the scary point? Like, how ordinary this story is and how easily we can ignore the complexity and humanity of others? And the ending was really bittersweet with this slight zoom outward to all the women in chronic pain, potentially haunted in similar storylines. It wasn't too heavy-handed and it brought everything in the novel to an emotional and targeted end.

Content Warnings

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