Review of Bunny by Mona Awad

*Bunny* by Mona Awad (2020). Published by Penguin Books.

For those of you who have never set foot virtually into this space, welcome! This is my blog, which serves as an online diary and digital archive of everything I’ve watched, read, and experienced in the past few years. Recently, it has become a source of income for me, and a crux as I faced unexpected unemployment after an opportunity I was told I had fell through. Feel free to click around if you liked this post.

Anyways, in the fall of 2024 I entered a period of what I call funemployment. I had been promised an opportunity that never materialized, after waiting three months and being assured that I would have the opportunity in the end, and once that was over, I took a hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to live my life for a bit. So I focused on this blog!

You’ll see this post a bit later than the fall of 2024 due to the sheer amount of backlog I have going on right now, but basically I also discovered a treasure drove of content and half-written reviews that I had in notes storage.

I write this blog for myself at the end of the day, as it’s a form to keep my thoughts together, but I’ve been making it a project of returning to these notes and publishing them.

Bunny was something I read a while back. I’d been named a runner-up in a respectable fiction contest, and had been selected by Mona Awad for that slot, so I was returning to her bibliography and reading through it.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to bore you with the details just in the introduction.

After entering an MFA program, one girl finds herself into a dark, mysterious clique.

Our protagonist in this book is Samantha Heather Mackey. She’s starting a new MFA program at a New England college, and she’s looking forward to starting such a writing program, especially as she’s here on a scholarship. After all, for most writers, they love to be at MFA programs and in a supportive environment, right?

So when she starts attending classes, she finds that she might have a little bit of a darker mind than most people in this program. Until she meets a group of rich girls. They’re a bit odd, as they only call each other Bunny, and they often work as a bit of a chorus. What I mean by this is they speak together, move together, and don’t seem to think for themselves.

It’s a bit weird, and Samantha thinks so too. She isn’t the biggest fan of her MFA cohort because of this and intends to stick to herself and her friend Ava during the time she’s there, but one day everything is about to pivot in the opposite direction when she receives an invitation.

It’s from the Bunnies, and they want her to come to to their salon. The salon is named the Smut Salon, which in itself is something bizarre, and Samantha thinks she’s not going to do it.

But despite her best judgement, Samantha ends up coming to the Smut Salon, which kickstarts a series of bizarre experiences that lead her to slowly get sucked into the world of the Bunnies. I describe this part of the novel as a bit of a fever dream.

The Bunnies have a bit of a clique situation, but it’s dark and wild, and especially when they begin conducting their own rituals before the writing workshop. And the more that Samantha goes deeper into their world and everyday activities, the more her own reality is going to unravel.

All of this is to say that Mona Awad novels are quite the experience. I feel like if you’re not into the vibe and atmosphere she creates within her work, then you’re going to find yourself struggling really hard to get through the novels. Awad is such an incredible writer, but these are not characters you are going to like in the end.

Even the protagonist herself isn’t the most pleasant, and I could see how someone could see her as whining and self isolating on purpose. But we don’t have to agree with a protagonist to see a novel as good or bad (and even then I disagree with describing novels, or art in general, in such a way) to enjoy the novel.

Overall Thoughts

For me, this was a novel I struggled to get through. I enjoyed All’s Well, and couldn’t finish Rouge, but I did manage to get through this novel in the end. The language and prose itself is done very well, but I simply wasn’t into what the novel’s story was getting at.

I did find the main character insufferable as well, which is why it was a little more than difficult for me to get through this one. I think some people are either going to love or hate the novel. I didn’t hate it, I could see a lot of its merits, but I could tell that it wasn’t for me at the end of the day.

So go pick this one up if you’re interested and haven’t read it already. I could see it going either way for the average person, so take a risk and see for yourself. Go to your local independent bookstore, or a library branch near you to pick it up.

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