Bunny, by Mona Awad

Bunny, simply put, is a strange book. Very strange. It’s a novel I would classify into the dark academia genre, or maybe fantastical horror, which is something I wish I realized when I started reading. I was definitely expecting a Mean Girls kind of story, which it sort of was, but I got a much more sinister plot instead. 

The novel follows Samantha, a poor graduate student on scholarship for a writing program at a wealthy university in New England. She feels simultaneous envy and hatred for the other four girls in her cohort who call each other “Bunny” and are annoyingly inseparable. Samantha and her best (and really only) friend Ava make fun of the Bunnies ruthlessly, until Samantha gets an invitation to one of their girl’s nights they call the “Smut Salon”, which she feels drawn to attend. From this point on, she starts hanging out with the girls more and more and things in the group get weirder and weirder, even culty (maybe you’d like it, Steve!).

It was very gripping, right from the beginning, and just kind of fell down the rabbit hole (no pun intended) of hallucinations, drug trips, and what I interpreted as schizophrenia. I was so confused throughout the entire story and really tried to wrap my head around what was real and what was imagined through the lens of the very unreliable narrator. After sitting on the book for a bit, and admittedly reading up on Reddit theories explaining the ending, I can officially say I have absolutely no idea how much of the book was based in reality. I have a guess for some of it, and some of the characters, so someone else please read so we can discuss!! But whether or not you’ll truly enjoy this book depends on how much you like plots that the author leaves open to interpretation, and certainly how much you appreciate the Weird. 

Although everyone who has read this book seems to be so caught up in figuring it out (including myself), or forming new theories, I haven’t seen anyone talk about how heartbreakingly sad the story is. I won’t give away the ending, but the amount of emotion and pain written into the odd symbols, animals, and characters left me in tears long after I put the book down. I am a crier, but this was heavy. There are definitely periods of depression that the main character goes through and lots of mental illness, so keep that in mind when reading. Also some gore and violence, including toward animals (a TW for all but especially Babs that I thought I should mention).

There are obviously elements of the supernatural which I have yet to decide are either a part of the weird universe that the book is set in or drug induced visions or rather schizophrenic hallucinations. Either way, I really felt for Samantha and all the genuine emotions she experienced throughout. She wasn’t necessarily a likable character, or even honest, but the writing was so well done that I started to feel her feelings so strongly that it was truly painful to read toward the end. I loved this book because of these emotions and how strange it was and how much it made me think. The characters are all very extreme, the writing is so detailed, and the commentary on classism and sexism is really well done, I think. It seems like people either love it or really hate it, but luckily I am one of the former!

—Maggot