ALL'S WELL - Mona Awad

Well, this didn't work for me at all.

A one-time theatre professional, Miranda Fitch, is now a college professor and she's close to losing this job. She is addicted to pain-killers for her chronic back pain. She loathes herself, her students, her life.

She has selected Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well - one of his 'problem' plays - for the current production. The majority of the theatre students however were hoping to perform Macbeth and have decided to revolt.  The leader of the revolt, the star of this (or any) play ... not because she's so talented, but because her parents make donations to the school ... has called for mom and dad to threaten to pull funding if the play isn't Macbeth.

Everything in Miranda's life seems to be going against her until some unknown supporter steps in and offers a larger donation to the school's theatre program and growth if Miranda can do the show she wants to do. With this surprise, life slowly turns around. Not only does her chronic pain go away and she builds on a thrilling sexual relationship with a friend and colleague, but her student nemesis seems to be taking on Miranda's former issues.

There's an interesting idea here in this book, and I give an 'A' for concept, but author Mona Awad writes the miserable Miranda so well that I took an instant dislike to the character and to the story.  Well... I guess it was hard to dislike the story right away because the story didn't really develop until a third of the way in.

Miranda was miserable and very negative about nearly everything. I didn't want to spend time with her, so I didn't want to open the book to read. Sure ... something was bound to happen to her, but I really didn't care. It was a struggle to keep reading through the first half of the book.  it gets better, but I don't think it pays off, ultimately.

The first person narrative felt weird.  I understood that this was to help get across Miranda's take on the events around her, and it was possibly the best way to express her level of pain and misery, but it came across as a YA angst novel. Really, all she does is tell us about her pain. Again, and again, and again.

If there's a correlation between Awad's story or Miranda's plight, and Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, I don't know what it is.  All's Well is not a well-known work (certainly not well known by me) so how it fits with the scheme and theme of the story, I don't.

I was really hoping to like this, and it starts to pull up as it reaches the final pages, but the first half sets a tone that it just can't overcome.

Looking for a good book? All's Well by Mona Awad is a book about a miserable woman, and it never really establishes itself as anything else.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

2 stars

* * * * * *

All's Well

author: Mona Awad

publisher: Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 1982169664

hardcover, 352 pages
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MURDLE VOLUME 1 - G. T. Karber

Image
 I enjoy puzzles of many different varieties. I had not heard of 'Murdle' before this but essentially this is a combination of the game of Clue and a Sherlock Holmes micro story. With suspects, possible murder weapons, potential locations, and/or motives plus some very brief hints, readers are meant to combine the logic of what's know with deductive reasoning to identify the killer (or killers?) in 100 different mystery word puzzles. I will admit right off the bat that I did not do all 100.  I didn't even do half of these, but I did so some random sampling through all the categories (Elementary, Occult Medium, Hard Boiled, and Impossible). I did not get any correct in the Impossible category (of course not ... they were impossible!) and only one correct in the Hard Boiled (of five). The Elementary puzzles were, as expected, pretty easy and the Hard Boiled only a little bit more difficult. Each mini mystery comes with a grid printed in the book to help the reader-detecti
Read more

VINYL RESTING PLACE - Olivia Blacke

Image
 Juni Jessup and her two sister, Tansy and Maggie, have gone into business together in their hometown of Cedar River, Texas, opening a combination record store and coffee shop. Vinyl LPs are making a comeback after all, despite critics thinking the medium was dead.  But speaking of 'dead' ... finding a dead body in the supply closet just as they are looking to have a grand opening is not part of the plan.  Juni's life gets more complicated when their uncle, Calvin, already a suspect in the murder, disappears. And the police officer leading the investigation is Juni's EX-boyfriend (who passive-aggressively keeps putting himself back into her life). Convinced that her uncle would never murder anyone, Juni sets out to prove his innocence - which isn't easy since he's making himself look guilty - because Calvin is family and family is EVERYthing to Juni. As readers of my blog know, I'm not a big fan of most cozy mysteries, but the setting caught my eye and my in
Read more

THE RAVEN THIEF - Gigi Pandian

Image
 With Tempest Raj now a member of the company, Secret Staircase Construction (a company who, as their title suggests, builds mystery-themed, secret rooms inside homes) has finished their first job. Their client now wants to celebrate to kick off her new beginning - new home and new life now that she's divorced from her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property, led by Tempest's friend, Sanjay.   But during that séance, while all those gathered sat in a dark room holding hands, Corbin's dead body crashes the party, falling across the table in front of everyone. There were eight people in the room, and they were all holding hands, but all the evidence points to one of them being the murderer.  Suspicions point to Ash, Tempest's grandfather, because he was the only one with Corbin's blood on him. Of course, as a doctor, he was also the only one who checked on the body - wherein he acq
Read more