A review by herelieshenry
Bunny by Mona Awad

challenging 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? Yes

2.25

first, the positives:
  • some of the surrealist passages are fantastic, and the author is very good at writing things in a surreal way, especially portraying normal things as such
  • the dynamic between Ava and Samantha is very interesting in contrast to Samantha, the Bunnies, and men

now, the negatives:
  • some of the stylistic grammar-breaking choices work, but a lot of them don’t; particularly the recurring all-caps and multi-exclamation point moments irked me
  • the “gore” moments were honestly more silly than anything, particularly when half of the time it’s just “and then [xyz] literally exploded”
  • there are a lot of really out of place, pointless moments of bigotry that would not alter the story or tone at all if they were removed, particularly the weird references to lizard people conspiracies, the R slur & derogatory comparisons to disabled people, and the usage of the G slur to describe a Romani woman; it comes across very much as the author just not giving a shit about it

I think there could be a good book chipped out of Bunny with more editing, but it just fell flat to me. People also misrepresent what this book actually is a lot when recommending it; I wish I had actually known what sort of book this was when going into it rather than what it gets portrayed as.

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