A review by fairygodfish
Bunny by Mona Awad

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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