Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Bunny by Mona Awad

109 reviews

rebeccajost's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective 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

Dark academia meets magic meets absurdism. It more flirts with the ideas of dark academia, and I’m again disappointed that the book isn’t as absurd as I had hoped. 

I enjoyed that the book focuses heavily on the psychology of the MC, and doesn’t sanitize the MC as a particularly likable person even when she’s an interesting character. 

Prior to reading this I expected the book to be much more absurd, with a more subtle subplot that revealed itself at the end with many different interpretations. I personally feel that the reveal at the end was pretty clear at the end of the first part. I feel like it was a bit of false advertisement there, because it was much more linear and clear than expected. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Death, Mental illness, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Alcohol, and Classism

Moderate: Self harm, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Toxic friendship

purplelake's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Gore, Mental illness, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Addiction, Bullying, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Self harm, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Confinement, Eating disorder, Rape, Vomit, Grief, and Car accident

gumiho0712's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Mental illness, Blood, Grief, and Toxic friendship

genny's review against another edition

challenging dark funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I debated on my rating for this, but as I thought back on it and looked at it from different angles, I couldn't deny that this merits 5 stars from me. I went into this expecting something odd in the way that literary fiction often can be - the lines between reality and fantasy blurred, cryptic messages about ~*life*~, depressed (or depressing) characters...and we did get all that, but I didn't expect this to be a satire of sorts. It's so FUNNY! I felt a very Samantha-like horrified laugh bubble up in my throat multiple times. Once I realized that this was akin to campy horror like Jennifer's Body, that's when the book and I really "got along".  It wasn't there to mock me with its absurdity, as if I wasn't intelligent enough to Understand Literature; instead it was there to poke fun at the very idea. Even the ending was funny to me,

like the finale of a horror comedy movie where it's finally daybreak and the characters have to awkwardly stand there, eyeing each other and surveying all the damage in the light of the sun.

There's fantastic commentary underneath the absurdity that is easy to digest: Samantha's extreme insecurity, her hatred for convention while she craves it at the same time, the unattainability of perfect female friendship (her idea of it, at least), etcera etcetera. I might be in the minority who didn't guess the twist about

Ava

, and now I want to reread the book with this in mind. Bunny is definitely an acquired taste. I'm pleasantly surprised that I ended up loving it so much. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Drug use, Gore, Mental illness, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual content

kathleencoughlin's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No

4.5

Bunny is spooky, culty horror novel reminiscent of Jennifer's Body, Heathers, or Scream Queens. Samantha starts as an outsider and who often exudes "not like other girls" vibes; one of the Bunnies said something to the effect of her liking to wallow in her own grittiness and that's a fairy apt description. She seems to be staunchly anti-Bunny, not just for their cliquishness but also for their overt femininity. But like many good stories of the genre, I see how someone could be drawn into the fold. Tiny cupcakes, nice clothes, and a seemingly single-minded camaraderie sounds like a good deal, right? We soon learn though that their twee exteriors hide something not just passive aggressive but primal and dark. Overall, I really enjoyed Awad's book and think she did a better job than a lot of similar media at addressing the classism and underlying grief that inform stories like this.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Gore, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Body horror, Misogyny, Self harm, Torture, Murder, and Gaslighting

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Homophobia, Grief, Abandonment, and Classism

fairygodfish's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I tell her he loves her because I love her.

On my second reading of Bunny, I felt compelled to write a review. Because I feel as though this book is often misunderstood. Misconstrued as anti-feminist, women-hating-women, overly pretentious. This could not be further from the truth.

Bunny is an exploration of deep unbearable loneliness. It is a study on loving women. It is beautiful and terrifying and masterfully written.

And Samantha hates the Bunnies, yes, but she also loves them. She wants to be them. She loves them so much, because what they have is what she has never had. And they love her, too. Yes, they are twisted, and fucked up, and awful, but they are, like Samantha, just women. When she gives them a chance, takes them up on the smut salon, she gets everything she has ever wanted and it is intoxicating and terrifying and it is awful, because when you’re a college age girl with little to no friends you desperately want the cliquey best friends to be awful, because then you’re not only not missing out, you’re better than them. Bunny is a story about how you’re not.

And Ava. My god, Ava is heartbreaking. This is the part that isn’t a rant about perceptions of the book, but about what I loved about it so much. I loved the weird bunny boys and the gore and the exploding heads and the drugs but I also love how Ava is portrayed.

She is textually in love with Ava, she loves Ava so much and it breaks my HEART how it ends. It is genius that Max is Sam, and Sam is in love with Ava, so Max is in love with Ava. It is such a fantastic portrayal of understanding your feelings for a woman, but being unable to admit them properly to even yourself. That Max destroys the bunnies because she wants to destroy the bunnies. Ugh.

It’s seriously a thrilling, heartbreaking, wonderful read. I truly recommend it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Mental illness, Violence, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Gore, Toxic relationship, Violence, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Grief and Car accident

thereaderfriend's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Loved this. Very heavy influences from Heather's, The Craft, Jennifer's Body, Alice in Wonderland, Frankenstein,  Mean Girls, and so much more. Creepy, ambiguous read. Very open ended. Something I think you've gotta reread bc somethings I think were hidden underneath and meant to be analyzed and revealed later. Look into the trigger warnings before reading!! Also wanted to say I loved the writing styles! Felt like I was in the book because of the atmospheric writing. Definitely felt the senses and the watching eyes that seemed to always be there even if they weren't always obvious. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, and Gore

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Blood, Gaslighting, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Confinement, Drug use, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Vomit, Grief, Death of parent, and Alcohol

ekmook's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Classism

Minor: Alcoholism, Fatphobia, Mental illness, and Death of parent

froggybooks's review against another edition

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

i LOVED this. I didn’t love the ending it felt meh and a bit rushed ngl. I guessed the some of the plot points but i really love how twisted and “messy” it was. the way it was written was beautiful and although some people said it was inaccessible, i felt like not knowing every word added to the confusion and messy storyline of the book

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gore, and Blood

Moderate: Drug use, Grief, and Death of parent

Minor: Classism

dearbhlanoonan's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Murder

Moderate: Drug use

Minor: Grief