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Tuesday, November 26, 2019

#ATBR2019 Review: Bunny by Mona Awad @jessmapreviews

Bunny 
by Mona Awad


Publisher: Viking
Publish Date: June 11, 2019
320 Pages
Kindle Edition
Standalone
Genres: Horror, Contemporary


The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls who seem to move and speak as one

"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 are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become 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, a caustic art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunny cult and starts to take part in their ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they magically conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision.

A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire, Bunny is a dazzlingly original second book.


My Review:


When I saw reviews coming in from Bookstagrammers whose opinions I highly respect, I just KNEW I HAD to get this book.  Did I see a reference to Heathers?! Well, pour me a cup of drain cleaner and lets yell CORN NUTS together! When I got to Part Two, I am practically huddled in a corner with the letters W-T-F hanging above me in cartoon form while my eyes bug out.  I have NO IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING. First we get US movie, where bunnies play a bit part and now THIS. Y'all, I'm done.  I can't do bunny anything anymore. Nope.

So what's my damage? I think I could go forever without ever seeing or using the word "bunny" again.  Or Samantha - who uses a person's name THAT OFTEN in conversation? Samantha... Samantha? Samantha! SAMANTHA! BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY!  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! And look, I had just watched Tusk before I read this.  And while they're WILDLY different stories, I think I capped my *this is unusual, uncomfortable and just plain weird* arsenal.  

Am I mad I read this? I don't *think* so.  Would I recommend it? Probably not.  HOWEVER, this book seems to be very divisive and I'm on Team NOPE.  I still have no clue what I actually read, what this is actually about or why I'm probably going to watch the adaptation to screen... but I think it'll resonate better (for me) through that medium than what my brain was trying to process with this one.

★★

Jessica's Review:


So after seeing some great reviews from other Bookstagrammers (mainly Emily’s rave comments about it – @bookhappy) I decided I needed to get to this one for the #bravethebacklist challenge for November. BUNNY by Mona Awad was something I wasn’t expecting. Like, at all. What others were saying was completely accurate – this was one wild ride and I loved every second of it.
I want to keep this review short and sweet because I think this is one of those books you need to go in with as little info as possible. I will say that I loved the character development and the insanity of it all. There were many times I found myself saying, what in the hell am I reading?? What the hell is going on? And that is precisely what kept me flipping those pages. I finished part one while at the hair salon and I was so mad I had to wait an hour to continue (my drive home). I have found a new author to find more books from!
5 stars

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