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This well and truly didn't do it for me, though I think the concept is compelling.
The problem starts, I think, with the Bunnies. Reading about them made me feel the way an alien would feel watching Mean Girls—clearly there's an attempt at humor there, an exaggeration, a stereotype, but one that is bizarrely unfamiliar to me. Or maybe it's an inappropriate combination of stereotypes that's the problem. Rich girl snob meets pretentious wannabe english major meets sexy baby. That's not a person I've ever met; the exaggeration doesn't ring true. Instead it reads as a collage of every woman someone (cough cough?) doesn't like.
That's the most concrete example of a wider problem, which is that this book's sense of humor never really lands. I can see the joke, but it never comes to a punchline. I've heard people describe it as a satire, but it's not clear to me what it would be a satire of. A lot of disparate elements (which, individually, could be funny or satirical) are forced together into a single entity, and it just doesn't work—its actively less than the sum of its parts.
As for the horror elements, I was more intrigued by the background than anything that actually happens in the story proper. The uber-elite liberal arts college in the middle of a vaguely Lovecraftian town (city?) more fond of beheadings than poetry readings—hey, that's fun! I like that! More of that, please! The whole workshop thing, on the hand? Kind of meh. Fell kind of flat. Less, please.
The problem starts, I think, with the Bunnies. Reading about them made me feel the way an alien would feel watching Mean Girls—clearly there's an attempt at humor there, an exaggeration, a stereotype, but one that is bizarrely unfamiliar to me. Or maybe it's an inappropriate combination of stereotypes that's the problem. Rich girl snob meets pretentious wannabe english major meets sexy baby. That's not a person I've ever met; the exaggeration doesn't ring true. Instead it reads as a collage of every woman someone (cough cough?) doesn't like.
That's the most concrete example of a wider problem, which is that this book's sense of humor never really lands. I can see the joke, but it never comes to a punchline. I've heard people describe it as a satire, but it's not clear to me what it would be a satire of. A lot of disparate elements (which, individually, could be funny or satirical) are forced together into a single entity, and it just doesn't work—its actively less than the sum of its parts.
As for the horror elements, I was more intrigued by the background than anything that actually happens in the story proper. The uber-elite liberal arts college in the middle of a vaguely Lovecraftian town (city?) more fond of beheadings than poetry readings—hey, that's fun! I like that! More of that, please! The whole workshop thing, on the hand? Kind of meh. Fell kind of flat. Less, please.