A review by genny
Bunny by Mona Awad

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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