Bunny – Mona Awad (2019) Book Review

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“But I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t stopping. Because we were already running away again, me and my imagination.”

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What opens up as a story about an isolated graduate student grappling with the cliques and pretensions of an elite creative writing programme soon spirals into something much stranger in Mona Awad’s Bunny, one of the most famous dark academia novels in recent times. Following Samantha Heather Mackey as she becomes entangled with a group of unnervingly sweet, affluent classmates known as the Bunnies, the book weaves together dark satire, psychological horror, surreal fantasy, and body horror into a reading experience that is constantly blurring the lines between reality and delusion. Equal parts unsettling, hilarious, and bizarre, Bunny has cemented itself as one of the most original works of contemporary horror in recent years. Join us today at What We Reading for our Bunny book review to learn more about what made Awad’s work such an addictive and memorable read. 

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Date Published: 2019

Author: Mona Awad

Genre: Horror, Dark Academia

Pages: 305

Goodreads Rating: 3.44/5

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Bunny Summary

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 repulsed 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 inexorably drawn to their front door – ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges further and further 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 to a deadly collision. 

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What Worked

In Bunny, Mona Awad has crafted a genuinely surreal, addictive blend of dark satire, absurdist humour, and visceral body horror. 

Its scathing critique of elitist art school culture and the “It Girl” cliques are both sharp and entertaining, whilst the juxtaposition of saccharine sweetness with over-the-top graphic violence creates a distinctly unsettling atmosphere throughout. 

I particularly loved the way Award treads the thin line between reality and madness, using the shifts in Samantha’s narrative voice to mirror her growing immersion in the Bunny’s world, and how she is gradually able to pull herself out of it again. It’s a clear, creative technique that deepens the novel’s psychological ambiguity and showcases Awad’s skills as a writer. 

What Didn’t

Despite its originality, Bunny does sometimes trip up in its execution. The novel’s ambiguous approach to magic and reality can be frustrating at times, leaving too many questions unanswered about how its strange world actually works. 

Samantha also isn’t the most compelling protagonist out there; she often falls into a ‘I’m not like other girls’ archetype that undermines some of Bunny’s more nuanced observations about female friendships and belonging. 

Meanwhile, the Bunnies all work brilliantly as a collective symbol, but their hive-mind dynamic does mean they often struggle to stand out as individuals. Vignette was easily the most recognisable out of all of them for me, but it was tough at times recognising Cupcake, Creepy Doll, and the Duchess, particularly when there weren’t any pointers telling us who was speaking. 

Verdict

For all of its flaws, Bunny is still the sort of book that you genuinely enjoy reading. While I found some of the ambiguity a little tough to picture and wished Samantha and the Bunnies themselves had been developed in more nuanced ways, those shortcomings never outweighed the sheer creativity of Awad’s vision. The novel’s intoxicating blend of dark satire, psychological horror, and surreal fantasy evokes an atmosphere wholly original, and kept me keen to discover what strange turn might be next. 

What impressed me most was Awad’s ability to blur the boundaries between reality and illusion without losing sight of the emotional heart at the centre of the narrative. Beneath the blood, absurdity, and biting humour lies a sharp exploration of loneliness, belonging, and the allure of exclusivity. Bunny might not answer all of the questions it raises, but its originality, conviction, and unforgettable language make it a novel that’s tough to stop thinking about – and even trickier to compare to anything else. 

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Our Rating: 4/5

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