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A review by annaonthepage
All's Well by Mona Awad
dark
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
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.
Moderate: Ableism, Cursing, Death, Mental illness, Sexual content, Medical trauma, and Abandonment
Minor: Fatphobia, Sexism, Blood, Murder, Alcohol, and 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.