Reviews with content warning for Bullying - Bunny

First of all, I wasn’t sure what I was going into when I picked up this book. Not my cup of tea in terms of the genre, but I wanted to give it a fair shot so I read until the end. I found that the writing style was very immature. To me, it sounded like something I would’ve read in high school. But the content was disturbing.

I didnt feel like the end was satisfying, though it felt like it was supposed to be a closed ending with the scene where Max attacks the Bunnies. It didn’t feel like there was a smooth transition (or any transition for that matter) between Samantha coming out of the trance-like state and going back to Ava.

It felt rushed but drawn out at the same time. I think the length of the book was enough to do a better job of building up the characters and the plot. I wouldn’t recommend it personally, even putting aside my distaste for the plot, due to the writing style.

Content Warnings

rhyce_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

samflowerv6's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

“We never joke about bunnies, Bunny.”
I WORSHIP YOU MONA AWAD!! Any freaks who like this book (myself included) are my favorite.

“Can I take your coat?” Cupcake offers. I turn to her. She’s looking at me so hopefully. So willing to take a coat I’m not wearing, I almost want to give her my skin.”

“What do you think, Samantha?” Fosco asks me. That it’s a piece of pretentious shit. That it says nothing, gives nothing. That I don’t understand it, that probably no one does and no one ever will. That not being understood is a privilege I can’t afford. That I can’t believe this woman got paid to come here. That I think she should apologize to trees. Spend a whole day on her knees in the forest, looking up at the trembling aspens and oaks and whatever other trees paper is made of with tears in her languid eyes and say, I’m fucking sorry. I’m sorry that I think I’m so goddamned interesting when it is clear that I am not interesting. Here’s what I am: I’m a boring tree murderess. But I look at Vignette, at Creepy Doll, at Cupcake, the Duchess. All of them staring at me now with shy smiles. “I think I’d like to see more of the soup too,” I hear myself say.”

“I look at all of my dreams and nightmares distilled into one man-shaped shape. All the love and hate I have in my heart plus one fucking bunny.”

“Behold the lavish tent under which the overeducated mingle, well versed in every art but the one of conversation.”

“They laugh. What’s so fucking funny? I want to say. But I don’t. I laugh with them. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.”

How empty and emptied I felt walking away with all my words still on his floor. Wanting so badly to pick them back up. Take it all back. Wipe away the night, my dumb tears, my endless tumbling out of words. I never meant to give this to you.

“Their cheeks are plump and pink and shining like they’ve been eating too much sugar, but actually it’s Gossip Glow, the flushed look that comes from throwing another woman under the bus.”

“We've read Jane Eyre too, you cunt, and we've read The Waves, and when we read it, you know, we wept for minutes."

“Whenever I read one of Victoria’s vignettes, I always feel so dumb because I can hardly understand them at all. And then I blame myself. I think, Kira, this must be just too brilliant for you to grasp. Surely you must have missed something. Even though there’s always been this small voice inside of me that says, Um, what the fuck is this, please? This makes no sense. This is coy and this is willfully obscure and no one but Victoria will ever get this. I would in fact need to live inside Victoria’s spoiled, fragmented, lazy, pretentious little mind to get it. And who apart from us, apart from me, is going to be willing to do that? To work all night with a Victoria Decoder? Who would even care to? And then I feel like screaming JUST SAY IT. TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED. TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THIS MEANS AND WHAT YOU DID WITH HIM EXACTLY.”

“Read. Be a guest in other worlds.”

Content Warnings

lexigoyette's review against another edition

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dark 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? It's complicated

4.0

WTF did I just read? A fever dream I enjoyed wholeheartedly.

‘Rouge’ in a different font.

The Heathers meets Frankenstein, but set in a pretentious academia setting.

Content Warnings

aliceruthless's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious 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

No summary could prepare me for this book

Content Warnings

rosemaryandrue's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

No matter how Samantha loathes the cliche of girls who make up the rest of her writing group, with their overwrought work and their insistence on referring to each other as 'Bunny,' she can't help but get sucked into their strange world when they invite her to join them.

This is a dark and satirical read which pokes plenty of fun at the pretentious streak that can run deep in the people who attend MFA programs - considering the author was one of them, the mockery is more authentic and amusing. But it's also an off-kilter exploration of intense loneliness and imagination which themes I found fascinating.

I didn't always like Samantha, but the space to disagree with her makes the book more enjoyable. I enjoyed the fantastical elements of the story and various twists and turns that burst out at me, all perfectly unpredictable. The writing is vivid and easy to follow even when things turn psychedelic, which is not always easy to do.

However, the book is definitely structured in distinct acts, and I thought that they did not always blend together as they ought. The various parts of the story - the Bunnies, Samantha's relationship with Ava, and Samantha's acute writer's block - coexist and sometimes overlap, but don't successfully gel together, which in the end lowered my overall enjoyment of the book.

Content Warnings

piepatch's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

Content Warnings

lzimmeade's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

3.0

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