Bunny

, #1

eBook

Published June 11, 2019 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:
978-0-525-55974-0
Copied ISBN!
(3 reviews)

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 …

11 editions

reviewed Bunny by Mona Awad (Bunny, #1)

Ugh, no

Samantha—loner and outsider at prestigious Warren University—finds the rest of her writing cohort beneath her and relentlessly denigrates them with her arty friend, Ava, until an invitation arrives.

I did not care for this at all. I found it predictable, and irritatingly coy about its predictability. The protagonist is the worst mean girl of all the mean girls, and a tedious, self-absorbed one at that. I just found everything about it silly and boring, and wouldn't have read it had I known it was magical realism, which I despise. Absolutely not for me.

Review of 'Bunny' on 'Goodreads'

I barely remember reading this book at this point because it has been over half a year, so apologies for a dull and ranting review. I picked this one up because of the wisps of hype I had observed around the book and the fact that it promised an intriguing spin on the dark academia trope. But Bunny was a chore to get through, and I would have and should have DNFed it… if not for my annoying curiosity as to where these strange events would lead. Let that be a lesson to just DNF a book if your heart isn’t in it, no matter if you walk away without knowing how everything is resolved. (I’m still working on this.)

To start off, every character managed to annoy me, particularly our protagonist, ‘Smackie’ (and dumb nicknames abound in this book, so here is your warning if you cannot abide by …

Wtf was this even, but in a good way.

This book should be the definition of a fever dream. I have no idea what was going on. But I was fully invested in the characters and the story. The writing was fantastic. Awad did an amazing job with really immersing your view as the MC is being absorbed into the Bunnies.

I just have no idea if this was schizophrenia (which is referenced MANY times throughout the book) or magical realism. I spent the whole book wondering if this was actually happening or not because of some of the events that go on. An absolute trip. Highly recommend.

Subjects

  • American literature