Review: Bunny | Mona Awad

This review is spoiler free.

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

Published: 2019, by Head of Zeus.
Pages: 289
Format: eBook/Kindle Edition
Genre: Horror, Fiction, Contemporary, Adult
Contains: Violence, Death, Murder, Animal abuse, Abuse, Torture, Blood/Gore, Strong Language

‘Bunny’ follows Samantha Heather Mackey, who 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 unbearingly twee rich girls who call each other ‘bunny’, and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ home, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister world of the Bunnies, the edges of reality begin to blur.

This book was completely an impulse read, wanting to delve into something a lot darker and I’d heard of this book mentioned a few times before. In all honesty, I’m not quite sure what I’ve read.

Samantha is a routable character, wanting to befriend her and lure her away from the world of the Bunnies. However, that was all I really knew about her. She was gone too soon, lost in the world of the Bunnies that I was unable to pinpoint much of her own personality. Although, that might be a narrative technique to get the reader to understand the depths that the Bunnies had drawn her to, there was so much confusion that it blurred the lines between good use of techniques and overuse of them.
The Bunnies were a group of fascinating characters, many of whom I’d found myself drawn towards constantly. I wanted more and more of them, and yet there was something missing from them: an understanding of who exactly they were.

As mentioned above, there was very little understanding within this story, and I don’t think that’s a fault in the slightest. The lines between reality and imagination are meant to blur, however, there comes a time when reading where enough was enough. I wanted a coherent narrative, I wanted to be kept up at night thinking about the horrors of this book, and yet I was left in a slump and confused. It was a shame, because I feel the concept of this novel has so much potential and it was over halfway there.

Overall, this was an okay read, and one that has left me feeling a little unsure on where to rate it. I’m not sure whether I enjoyed it or not, or whether I’m simply not smart enough to understand it.

3/5?