Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Bunny

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Bunny by Mona Awad

66 reviews

fairygodfish's review against another edition

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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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rhiannannihr's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious slow-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

3.5

This is a very polarizing book. If you’ve never read a book with an unstable and unreliable narrator then I can’t guarantee that you’ll like this story. However, if you understand that you’re going to have a front row seat to the MC’s descent into madness, then you’ll probably enjoy the ride. This story is WILD and will have you questioning everything until the very end. I highly recommend listening to it as opposed to reading it.

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iamnita's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

2.0

I've given myself some time to think this through - watched a few reviews on BookTube.
This book is challenging. It's a very layered experience, where you can't 'shut off' while reading or else you'll completely lose both the plot and the direction we're headed. As such, a re-read may be necessary to see what even happened. I am one who didn't see the hype in this, maybe because it's strange, maybe because horror isn't my genre, maybe because I just felt like the book went right over my head.
It's divisive.

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samaranicole's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

So weird and confusing and my brain can’t quite wrap my head around what I just read - but at the same time, it was so good.

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joydevivre's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.5

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kelseyland's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Extremely harrowing but unputdownable book about the ways in which niceness and shame can be weaponized among groups of women. Totally fucked up but I loved it.

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leahrosereads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.75

What the heck did I just read? I loved this weirdness and the unlikeable characters, but the actual plot/reasons behind how the story progressed, not so much. I felt like what was there wasn't incredibly developed, or I just wasn't smart enough to get it. Either way, I didn't end up enjoying this one as much as I'd have liked.

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keen's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad 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

4.0

What a ride. If I had to compare this book to any mean girl clique, it'd be the Heathers for the Heathers musical. The main character is even named Samantha Heather Mackey.

It's rare for me to finish a book in three days. To read 100 pages each day. On average, it takes me about a week to finish a book about 400 pages long. If a story's good, I'll read 40 to 50 pages daily. So, suffice to say, this book kept me interested.

I never thought I'd be able to care so much for unlikable characters. Samantha and her friend Ava are obviously flawed people. Not the type I'd want to hang around in real life, and might even actively avoid. Yet throughout the book, I still enjoyed them. I even found myself relating to Samantha to a worrying degree. And, thankfully, her flaws are directly acknowledged. Complaints I had with characterizations were relieved by that.

Then there are the Bunnies. At times, I forgot this book was a horror story. I would get comfortable with the Bunnies and think "I wish I was with them" before remembering what this book is about. Before remembering that I really wouldn't want to have to change my identity to befriend a group of girls. A few times I commented that I felt "rancid vibes" emanating from this story.

And the ending of the book. All I can say is that it makes a reread worth it.

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namizaela's review against another edition

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dark lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

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

4.25

This book was weird! That's the best way I can describe it. Thankfully, for a horror book, it wasn't that scary. Instead, it seemed almost satirical in its horror, and even in the most intense moments, the book still managed to poke fun at the central antagonists. I enjoyed the fact that this book made fun of rich, feminine, privileged women, especially when they dived so heavily into being feminist. If this book had been written by a man, I would be more inclined to say it's anti-feminist, but it seems the author is trying to criticize the vapid women in academia who are enormously privileged in every way but their gender. The symbolism intrigued me, and the plot twist in the end was satisfying, even if I had a feeling it would be the case. The book was also very captivating–I read it in 2 sittings!

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words_and_coffee's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Bunny is a bit of a trip, it’s dark academia with magical realism elements and a very loose explanation... so if you need answers to every question it’s probably not for you. The story follows Samantha an outsider who has a class at her elite university with a clique of girls who call each other simply ‘Bunny’. The story feels like a hybrid of the craft meets heathers with just a little pinch of eraserhead.

I liked the surreal, dark atmosphere of Bunny and found that I clicked with the writing style, I do wish there was more light foreshadowing elements for later events, and for me the lack of a explanation wasn’t a deal breaker but I feel like I would give it a higher star rating if I had more of a explanation.

Character wise at the start I had a bit of a hard time settling into Samantha’s perspective I found her quite difficult to like, but as the book went on she grew on me. I found the bunnies are hard to differentiate from each other but I feel that was a intentional decision as they seen as pretty much a amalgamation rather than individuals.

Over all though I enjoyed Bunny didn’t love it

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