Book: Bunny
Author: Mona Awad
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Release Date: Out Now
Synopsis
We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.
Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ‘Bunny’.
But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.
Blending sharp satire with fairytale horror, Bunny is a spellbinding trip of a novel from one of fiction’s most original new voices.
Our Review
As a disclaimer, there are descriptions of animal abuse and animal experimentation. The Bunnies get their comeuppance, but the descriptions are quite upsetting, nonetheless.
Perfect for fans of Mean Girls, Clueless and The Craft. Bunny has it all!
As most of you already know, I am a sucker for a good thriller and this book was a ‘god tier’ recommendation from the booktuber gabbyreads, so I added it to my wish list instantly. This was the last book I read during 2020 and it helped me to end the year with a bang.
Bunny focuses on Samantha, a university student in an exclusive creative writing course at a prestigious university. I related to Samantha in this essence as she has a similar university background to me, and I loved the chapters in their creative writing seminars. I had a few quirky lecturers, and they were brilliant. However, Samantha is joined on her course by the Bunnies, a nauseatingly close clique of girls who have an annoying group mentality and look down on Samantha. That is, until they get Samantha to join their elusive group.
Once Samantha is an official member, the chapters are written from the point of view of the hive mind that she has access to. Mona Awad perfectly blends reality and fantasy in her narrative to the point that you don’t know what is real anymore, as the Bunnies perform experiments on, well bunnies, to turn them into their perfect men. Their perfect men being different tropes from classic literature, like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Very non-romantic and toxic men which is hilariously ironic.
Bunny is a brilliant exploration on the power of imagination and incorporates fairy-tale elements that we are all familiar with to create a perfect black-comedy/horror novel. Mona uses stories and plot devices that we are all familiar with but turns them on their head in an amazingly unique way. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Have you already read Bunny? Let us know what you thought in the comments!
Bunny is out now and available to buy from Amazon.