A review by emory
Bunny by Mona Awad

dark tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I have lots of thoughts on this book. I want to like it so bad. The concept is so amazing and the writing style flows so well, and the suspense and imagery is so greatly controlled its like watching a horror movie in your head (the scene of the bunny prom is maybe one of my favorite unnerving passages ive ever read; the way it unravels and it becomes apparent that things are just a little bit off is so great). But at about the halfway point the plot goes completely batshit and doesnt develop anything it set up and feels a bit like a TV show thats had too many seasons. And the motivations of the characters arent super convincing, especially when there was the opportunity to make the tension between Samantha and the bunnies revolve around class and academic inaccesibility, which was touched on lightly but then infuriatingly ends up boiling down to a juvenile "im not like the other girls" dialogue with questionable takeaways with the constant reference of the evil mean girl's "feminist ideals". I again cant stress enough how intruiging the concept, the prose, and even the first half of the book are, but then the convoluted and underdeveloped plot and odd messages sent through the setting and the repeatedly stressed role of gender kind of shoots the narrative in the foot. One of the most central parts of the plot, the part that turns this into a thriller, is barely touched on until the very end. The final plot twist is the good kind of equal parts foreshadowed and unexpected and repairs some damage, but not enough to make me stop twisting my face in confusion while reading. 
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