“I’ve never really not written, never not had another world of my own making to escape to, never known how to be in this world without most of my soul dreaming up and living in another.

Bunny, by Mona Awad

Summary

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort–a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door–ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

My Thoughts

This book is an acid trip. There, I said it. Let’s start positive: the writing is amazing. Mona Awad is a master of prose, making every location, sense, and emotion feel vivid and real. It started out very strong, as a Secret History-esque dark academia novel taking place in a New England MFA program. Awad is quick to point out the commonplace elitism and classism in the program Samantha is in, and the cliques that form as well.  I enjoyed the focus on female friendships in the story, as dark academia is often a more male-focused genre, and on the intricacies of how women interact and become friends. The Bunnies have a very cult like energy that make you want to be one of them; wear pastels, giggle and pet each other and write heart shaped letters to one another. There is a very sapphic energy to their friendship that the author toes upon, practically psychosexual, though it never goes further and ultimately, the girls end up focused on a man, which was a bit disappointing, not because men are bad or anything, but because he felt more like a plot device than an actual character because Awad could not commit to the sapphic energy of the book. Our main character is lonely and an outsider, deeply hurt. I thought the novel was going to go somewhere originally, after she joins the other Bunnies, and that she would learn more about loving herself, being less lonely, form friendships, write a beautiful book, self-destruct  from said friendships, or something more. Instead the entire book feels like a classic dark academia novel was put through a blender full of hard drugs. It starts as a kind of fairy-tale, coming of age style story, but by the end of the book, it feels like the author just did not know where to go with it, and went for my least favorite trope: did the events of the book actually happen, or did our narrator hallucinate it all? It diminishes a lot of what has happened, and it ends with Samantha not really growing at all by the end because of it. That said, it is a lot of fun, and has a very satirical take on some classic dark academia elements, like their pretentious class commentary and the cult-like vibes of the main friend group. Our main characters are all very different women, from the girly Cupcake, to the vintage Vignette, to the alternative best friend. I honestly would not DNF this since it was a fun read, but it was also a bit disappointing at the end. Overall, one of the weirdest books I have ever read.
Review: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

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