A review by abookishmagpie
Bunny by Mona Awad

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-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

2.5

 What an absolute journey this book was. It has had some decent hype for a few years and I always hemmed and hawed on if I really wanted to read it, because it is definitely outside of what would normally interest me, but I always was just very curious was it was often cited as a book that you either love it or hate it. So for the Halloween season I decided I would finally dive in. The basic concept is that we follow Samantha, a woman starting her second year at a prestigious MFA program, who feels like an outsider in her fiction cohort. The four other women she is in school with have their own little cliquey (almost cult like) connection where they call each other Bunny and host their own get togethers. Samantha both hates them, but wants to be at least invited into their world. When she does some extra weird things begin to happen and she becomes almost like a different person and she has to find her way back to her friend Ava and try to graduate on time and with her sanity and writing voice which has been hard to find since she entered the program. To say this is a unique story is putting it mildly and I can’t really explain much without spoiling it either, I think the writing was skillfully good and engaging for sure, but the story itself was for sure not for me. I was in a constant state of, “What the F?” while reading and sometimes that was okay and others I was just kind of annoyed by it. The final plot twist was clever and did bring the overall story together better, but the bulk of it was just so wild and outlandish I can’t really admit to liking it. I guess I am going to fall into the category of not liking this book, and that’s totally fine. An experience nonetheless.