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A review by coralinejones
All's Well by Mona Awad
3.0
The lowest 3 stars imaginable. I know what you're thinking, "StoryGraph user Coralinejones, why not just give this one or two stars, why round this to three if you're bitter over it?" Well, let me tell you.
Am I a fan of Mona Awad's work? Yes! I loved Bunny. I adore how weird and flowery and poetic her writing is. I enjoy her take on the "unlikeable" woman trope that seems to be more and more prevalent as the years go on. There was something overwhelmingly captivating about Bunny. I remember staying up late to finish the book, straining my eyes as I made to the last page to see how that poetic fever dream ended. But All's Well... Good grief.
I have to admit, I throughly enjoyed the way this novel started. I empathized with Miranda like there was no tomorrow. As someone with Endometriosis I COMPLETELY understand chronic pain. I understand being so scared, so pained; feeling so alone that you want to take your misery out on anything and anyone just to feel some semblance of humanity, just to get some kind of pity. But Miranda is over-the-top.
I could get with her insufferable misery at first. I enjoyed the lengthy descriptions of her pain, I felt inspired by Awad's water color-like prose as Miranda went in and out of her goddamn mind, basically. However, where this all gets rocky is HOW Miranda treated her students. How fucking uncomfortable and unnecessary all of that was.
I won't give any spoilers as I believe you must dive into this as blind as possible but Miranda's constant, out of pocket, fueled by insecurity, mean-spirited, sexual-in-nature comments about her students, Briana in particular, angered me so much I constantly had to put the book down to take a breather. Every time Miranda "won" I couldn't and wouldn't cheer for her. I wanted to see her demise so bad. It wasn't fair how she treated anybody, despite understanding where she was coming from.
The stream of Miranda's thoughts with her overbearing unlikeable personality made this exhausting. The repetitive "Am I right?" and "Shall we?" was grating. Despite loving everything else, these small points pissed me off to no return. Like seriously.
Lastly, I didn't like the ending. Well, I did. I don't mind how it ended. I just wish there was solid understanding of what the fuck was going on. But I guess that's what we get with a book so abstract. I will never read this again!
Am I a fan of Mona Awad's work? Yes! I loved Bunny. I adore how weird and flowery and poetic her writing is. I enjoy her take on the "unlikeable" woman trope that seems to be more and more prevalent as the years go on. There was something overwhelmingly captivating about Bunny. I remember staying up late to finish the book, straining my eyes as I made to the last page to see how that poetic fever dream ended. But All's Well... Good grief.
I have to admit, I throughly enjoyed the way this novel started. I empathized with Miranda like there was no tomorrow. As someone with Endometriosis I COMPLETELY understand chronic pain. I understand being so scared, so pained; feeling so alone that you want to take your misery out on anything and anyone just to feel some semblance of humanity, just to get some kind of pity. But Miranda is over-the-top.
I could get with her insufferable misery at first. I enjoyed the lengthy descriptions of her pain, I felt inspired by Awad's water color-like prose as Miranda went in and out of her goddamn mind, basically. However, where this all gets rocky is HOW Miranda treated her students. How fucking uncomfortable and unnecessary all of that was.
I won't give any spoilers as I believe you must dive into this as blind as possible but Miranda's constant, out of pocket, fueled by insecurity, mean-spirited, sexual-in-nature comments about her students, Briana in particular, angered me so much I constantly had to put the book down to take a breather. Every time Miranda "won" I couldn't and wouldn't cheer for her. I wanted to see her demise so bad. It wasn't fair how she treated anybody, despite understanding where she was coming from.
The stream of Miranda's thoughts with her overbearing unlikeable personality made this exhausting. The repetitive "Am I right?" and "Shall we?" was grating. Despite loving everything else, these small points pissed me off to no return. Like seriously.
Lastly, I didn't like the ending. Well, I did. I don't mind how it ended. I just wish there was solid understanding of what the fuck was going on. But I guess that's what we get with a book so abstract. I will never read this again!