Review: Bunny by Mona Awad

Release Date: June 11th, 2019

Genre(s): Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Horror

Publisher: Viking

Pages: 307

Rating:⭐️⭐️

Synopsis

Bunny follows Samantha, an MFA student at Warren University and a loner in her fiction writing cohort. That is, until the clique of girls,  who move together as one and call each other “Bunny,” invite her to their off-campus workshop one night, and reality begins to blur for her.

Review

What drew me into reading Bunny more than anything was hearing so much feedback about how weird this book was. And when everyone’s summarization of the book was mainly that, I wondered what was so strange about a book like Bunny that it was so hard to describe beyond its weirdness? But now that I’ve read it, I understand.

Bunny is the kind of book where things are mostly normal on the surface, with the exception of a few things. But as the book progresses, it gets darker and stranger, and more horrific. And while I definitely appreciate books like these, it felt like there was just something missing from it. I understand what the author was looking to do in this book, but I think that more detail was necessary to convey all of those things. 

For example, the ‘bunnies’ themselves, while they have their own distinct personalities and looks, feel like they’re blending together for much of the book. I’m fairly confident that this was the goal, especially given the way the dialogue is written such that you can’t tell who exactly is speaking when. But when there are more vivid descriptions of each of them, it feels like it’s taking away from the possible intention that the ‘bunnies’ are supposed to mesh together so much. Perhaps it’s only done to mark certain situations in the book, but to me, if this was the intent I don’t think it was developed to the point that it could have been. 

In general, I feel like Bunny could have been better with a much more detailed, in-depth plot. When the story began to change course and get darker, I was expecting more in terms of what was going on. I’m not necessarily disappointed that we didn’t get an explanation on the how for some of the elements in the book, as I think much of this book intends to be open for interpretation. However, I feel like we really only get a surface-level understanding of some of the character’s rationale behind what they’re doing, and that personally wasn’t enough for me. I really enjoyed reading this in the beginning, but as the book progressed and I realized we were never going to get that detail, I started enjoying it less and less.

I know lots of people really enjoyed Bunny, so I think it ultimately depends on what you’re looking for in a book. While I personally enjoyed the experimental nature of this book and understand the overall concept, I think the interpretation aspect would have been more enjoyable had it been executed differently.

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