Bunny

By Mona Awad

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Soon to be a major motion picture

"Jon Swift + Witches of Eastwick + Kelly 'Get In Trouble' Link + Mean Girls + Creative Writing Degree Hell No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled O Bunny you are sooo genius " --Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

"A wild, audacious and ultimately unforgettable novel." --Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times

"Awad is a stone-cold genius." --Ann Bauer, The Washington Post

The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel from the acclaimed author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and Rouge

"We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?"

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525559752
• ISBN13: 9780525559757
• Release Date: June 2020
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

3.5 stars

BUNNY by Mona Awad This book is bizarre as hell. I can only describe it as a wild, disturbing, pastel-colored fever dream with sinister bunnies running amok. Samantha is a grad student at a prestigious university somewhere in New England. In her writing workshop there’s a clique of four rich, pretentious women who call each other Bunny. Samantha is equally repelled and intrigued by them. When Samantha receives an invite to one of Bunnies’ “Smut Salon” parties, she decides to attend despite her better judgment. That’s when the plot (and Samantha’s mental health/stream of consciousness) goes completely off the rails. I had many questions while reading this. Mainly, “WTF?” and lots of “What the hell is happening?”. The scenes of the Bunnies fake-praising each other’s work, while eating mini foods and conjuring hybrid bunny-boys was all sorts of weird and demented. I don't have any personal experience with hard drugs, but I assume this is what an acid trip would feel like. It’s a bit like Alice in Wonderland mashed up with Heathers and Mean Girls. There’s amusing, anti-establishment commentary at the beginning which I enjoyed. A little satire sprinkled with a bit of horror, if you’re into to that sort of thing. Ultimately, you’ll either love or hate this book. As for me, I’m… somewhere in the middle. Rating: 3.5/5 ⭐️

One of my Favorites

I absolutely love Awad's writing style. This book is amazing, I could not put it down. I finished it within 2 days, then I immediely bought her other books

What did I just read!?

Loved it! Our weird relatable heroine really finds an herself in an interesting plot. Definitely recommend and the writing is Amazing!!

More Bizarro than Horror, but still highly enjoyable

I see a lot of people attaching a deep social commentary to this that just was not apparent to me when I picked this up. Are there "mean girls"? Yes. But *is it* Mean Girls? Or Heathers? No. But then again, neither of those movies are the archetypes people make them out to be in terms of nuanced explorations of female relationships either. I guess people want this to be a "girl story" because all of the main characters and antagonists are women, but I feel that's a mislabeling. A female-driven narrative doesn't have to justify its existence by saying something thoughtful about women. It can just be a story with women. It takes place in fine arts program, and the characters reflect actual fine arts students, if a bit exaggerated for maximum "MMMHMM" value. I think the narrative has a lot more to say about personal presentation, social performance, insecurity, and masking in this specific environment than it does anything strictly feminine. Like I said in the title of this review, this is more bizarro than horror. It is an exceptionally strong slap in the face when the final pages sort of unravel the entire story (but in a good way).