annaonthepage 's review for:

All's Well by Mona Awad

4.0

dark hopeful 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

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I loved this all the way through to the end, which left me dissatisfied. It really spoke to me as an actor and a woman with chronic pain. The elements of Macbeth woven into the story were delicious. There were some cheekily haunting refrains and a brilliant sense of character in the protagonist and her friend. I just wish it had committed fully and not pulled the punches in the end - it felt very much like a horror, with a building sense of dread, but then blew the threat away to turn it into magical realism. Which, I guess if you're reimagining Shakespeare, isn't unlikely. It's just not a trope that fit the rest of the book.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Ableism, Cursing, Death, Mental illness, Sexual content, Medical trauma, Abandonment

Minor: Fatphobia, Sexism, Blood, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail

Hard to guage content warnings for this book as a lot is of questionable reality and implication rather than graphic on-page fact, so have tried to enter with fitting levels of each instance.