Bunny by Mona Awad
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.
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This book was my choice for my in-person book club. I wanted something with dark academia vibes to set the scene for our fall pick and in that sense, it didn’t disappoint. Bunny might possibly be one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. It was nothing as I expected, left me very confused, and yet, I came out loving it. I think Awad’s writing is what won me over even if the plot was a little more disturbing and twisted than I expected. In the strangest prose she managed to so perfectly convey what it feels to be an outcast. I see a lot of people comparing this to Mean Girls or the Heathers musical but I see it as entirely its own. Samantha, our main character and whose point of view we follow is both naive/good and malicious/mean. So too are her antagonists, the Bunnies. They fit perfectly in each others world even as complete opposites and I found their dynamic throughout the novel so interesting that the more gruesome bits almost took a back seat for me. It’s definitely a read meant for lovers of Dark Academia, so if that’s your genre, you’ll love this read.
This book follows Samantha, a student in a prestigious writing program in New England, immediately setting the scene for a dark and introspective read. Samantha has had it rough, with a dead mother, an absent father, and only one true friend in the world, she holds nothing but disdain for the group of girls in her writing workshop that are joined at the hip. She scoffs at them calling each other Bunny and contemplates all the ways in which she is better than them and their frivolity. However, most of her spite comes from longing. The longing to belong as easily as they do with each other. As her dream is granted and she begins to join their group, she finds how easy it is to lose yourself along the way. As she gets deeper into the Bunnies’ world and attends their infamous “Smut Salons” she find out the gruesome truth the Bunnies motives.
I really loved the nonsensical-ness of this book. Typically this type of writing style leaves me unimpressed because it’s usually done in such a conceited way but the way this author took the nonsensical, mixed it with academia slang, and turned it into a little bit of a thriller just totally ensnared me. Even by the end I had no idea what had just happened and any answers I thought I’d sussed out had blown away in the wind and I still enjoyed it. It’s a story that makes you stop and think and theorize and still not have the answers and I loved that it left everything so open to interpretation. Every time I hear a new theory about this book online, I’m further amazed.
I’m typically a character-driven book lover so books that don’t really have likeable characters don’t appeal. However the morally greyness of this entire cast was intriguing. I didn’t like Samantha, nor did I hate her, I didn’t like the bunnies, nor did I love them. Even side characters like Ava and The Lion were neither wholly likeable or unlikeable yet each character was just mysterious enough to keep me intrigued and genuinely interested in their fate. The horror elements in this were done extremely well too. The casual gore yet the thrill of not knowing what’s next and the overall wrongness associated with the theme just felt so uncomfortable in a way that made it so creepy.
Overall, really enjoyed this read. I gave it 4 stars just because, given the winding way it was written, the beginning was very slow. But once we got into the thick of the plot midway through, I couldn’t put it down. If you’re a lover of dark academia, this is the perfect fall read. I can’t wait to discuss it with my bookclub.