Bunny

A Novel

By: Mona Awad

Narrated by: Sophie Amoss

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Enter the Bunnyverse with the “wild, audacious . . . unforgettable” (Los Angeles Times) #DarkAcademia novel that started it all – the precursor to We Love You, Bunny

“[A] cult classic.” —People

“[A] viral sensation.” —USA Today

“O Bunny you are sooo genius!” —Margaret Atwood

“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 seem to move and speak as 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, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper 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 into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.


Named a Best Book of the year by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library

stick with it!

I have to admit that for the first half of this book, I hated it. so glad I didn't give up...by the second half, I was hooked, and in the end, it was endearing and relatable and so very unique. Let go of all expectations, hold on and take the ride!

Not what I was expecting, but better!

I’m going to start off by saying that I definitely understand this book isn’t for everybody. It is a little bizarre and maybe hard to follow upon a first listen, but for me the time invested was totally worth it! I appreciate listening to something a little different from time to time, and this book certainly delivered in that regard.

I really appreciated the satire and the way Awad pokes fun at various literary/art tropes throughout the novel. Having graduated from a liberal arts program, some of the dialogue felt a little too real and sent me right back to undergraduate group critiques. I actually found my self laughing out loud at times because of how spot-on certain moments felt.

All of that being said, there is no doubt that this book is more than a little bonkers. I actually read the book first in paperback and loved it so much that I decided to buy the audiobook to listen to while I work. The audiobook really enhanced my experience; the narrator, for me, felt perfect and did an excellent job with the various voices, placing emphasis in the right places, and overall never felt flat. The characters really come to life through audio, and I was able to pick up on subtle Easter eggs that I didn’t catch during my initial reading.

I know that peoples’ main hiccup with this book is that at times it can feel hard to follow and too self indulgent. I would just like to argue that I think that is the point. When I first read the book, I was engrossed almost the whole way through; however, there was a point towards the end when I thought, ‘where is this going? I hope the payoff is worth all of the time I just invested’. In my opinion, this is one of those rare books that actually has a satisfying ending. If you find yourself a little frustrated halfway through reading but are overall enjoying yourself, I would urge you to stick with it until the end.

-**Spoiler Warning**-

This book is full of amazing Easter eggs that are so much fun to catch during a second listen. To anyone who still finds themselves confused, definitely consider rereading or listening a second time.
Towards the end of the book the reader realizes that Samantha is actually schizophrenic, and all of the supernatural experiences are delusions and/or metaphors for her experience as a writer in the Warren graduate program. The reader is confused while reading because Samantha herself is confused and cannot distinguish between the real world and her imagined one. A lot of the key moments that feel so bizarre initially start to make sense in the end, and the reader can start to draw his or her own conclusions as to what actually happened (ie. Ava’s long periods of absence during the book, the frequent pills that Samantha is given that make her ‘feel better’, the workshops full of exploding Bunny Boys). Overall I found Bunny to be an amazing commentary on mental health, higher education, capitol A art, and so much more!

Yes, it's weird. No, that doesn't matter.

To see all of the reviews of this book, you'd think it's some kind of avante-garde piece of literature that's going to leave your head reeling with how "out there" it is. The kind of writing, in fact, that Awad criticizes so harshly In this novel. In reality, I found it a highly accessible, well-written novel with far less suspension of disbelief than some other popular novels demand. There's just that one weird concept, which really isn't the star of the piece, that followed all of the expected rules and never oversteps its bounds. It's a strong story with strong characters that caught me of guard many times over. The performance was on point too, but I had to take a star off for that Scottish accent, which the narrator never quite nails.

Great addition to the canon of literary criticism

Spoiler alert: this book seems to be a very elaborate metaphor for the process of creating and editing fiction. If “murder your darlings” was a real thing and not a piece of advice about writing, this is approximately what it would look like. Anybody who has written fiction, or tried to, or thought about it will appreciate this book. Please see it through to the end!

I wanted to love this book.

I set the bar real high on this one, and it just didn’t do it for me.