Bunny Review (With Spoilers)

 I first saw ‘Bunny’ in the bestseller selection when I wandered into WHSmiths at London Luton airport to find something to pass the seven hour delay of our plane. I was drawn to the interesting cover and the brief summary at the back. That time, I ended up purchasing overpriced sudoku and a bottle of water, as I already had a book to read, but this book was then placed on my TBR. However, despite the interesting concept and the high reviews online, I really did not enjoy ‘Bunny’ enough to be able to recommend it.
The main character of the novel is Samantha Heather Mackey, an outsider in her prestigious art school. She is borderline obsessed with the group of girls she calls Bunnies that largely exclude her. The catalyst for the plot of the novel is when Bunnies invite her to join them for their ‘Smut Salon’ in which the girls are practicing turning bunnies into boys. Samantha’s grip on reality is starting to unravel once she sees this and she slowly becomes unsure who if anyone she can trust. I thought that this was an original concept, at least the one I have not read before. Because I have read the summary before starting my reading, the reveal of what the Bunnies are actually doing was not surprising, but I imagine that it can be unsettling to those who did not know this element. Because they are all together in a writing class, they get inspired by fictional literary male characters, which I found interesting. However, they call these men ‘drafts’, ‘hybrids’ or ‘darlings’. This invitation and subsequent inclusion into the Bunny group also means that Samantha loses her only other friend, Ava.
When it comes to characters, this is where my biggest issue with this novel is. Samantha, the narrator and the protagonist of this story is just so goddamn dull and keeps throwing herself pity parties. I found myself not caring after her umpteenth time she told how misunderstood she is. I fully understand that her home life was bad and that she is struggling with writer’s block, but all she does throughout the entire novel is complain and whine, while constantly lying and digging herself further into this mess. Her attitude towards other people is also painful to read. She is condescending towards the Bunnies and has an unhealthy obsession with Ava, her friend. Speaking of Bunnies, I found them a lot more interesting and fascinating than Samantha and Ava, who are described as ‘not like other girls’ feminists. Bunnies are all pink and girly mean girls, while also possessing a huge amount of intellect and drive. I found their cruelty and violence towards their own creation juxtaposed with this femininity powerful, but underdeveloped. Usually, when there is a group of characters, especially female characters, that are this similar, I struggle with differentiating them, but in this case the four women all have their own characteristics that make them different enough not to mix them up. 

The start of the novel was promising, but as it kept going the less interested I was getting. I enjoyed the writing style and I will not deny that Mona Awad can write, but the story that was being told here became so boring and flat that I found myself skimming through pages of Samantha telling us how unhappy and depressed she is. I can understand that maybe the point is that her days are long and pointless,so the form of the novel should follow that, but it does not translate too well into the book. Additionally, I understand that this is a book about a pretentious art grad school and I did expect the characters, plot and the writing to be as well, but this was just a weak attempt at that, barely scratching the surface of anything substantial. While I did not really enjoy ‘The Secret History’ at least Donna Tartt had something to say. This is just a poor man’s Donna Tartt. 

I have already briefly touched upon Samantha’s attitude towards other people in the novel, especially women that I really did not appreciate, especially for a book that was advertised so heavily as feminist. On top of that, I found the whole plot quite weak in that sense. Yes, the women are taking control of their own bodies and creating their own men, but it does not really contribute to anything at all. If it was supposed to be dark academia, I think it falls flat in that regard as well. I can accept that I might have missed some profound metaphor or hidden meaning, but I simply found that it has failed in anything meaningful.
The ending of the novel is so mind numbingly stupid I had to read the last few pages again just to see I understood it correctly. In her true ‘not like other girls’ fashion, Samantha is actually the best at sacrificing innocent animals to create not only men, but also best friends. She creates Max from a bunny, her best friend Ava was actually created by Samantha the whole time and somehow there is some weird stag getting involved in it all? While Bunnies are struggling to create decent men who actually function as human beings, Samantha does it without thinking. At the end, Samantha is incapable of dealing with her own problems so it is the stag and the man she literally made that deal with Bunnies by essentially disfiguring them all  because they were mean to Samantha?

Overall, I rated this book ⅕ because I could not rate it lower. While the concept and some of the characters (Bunnies mostly) were good, I did  not find enough in this work to rate it any higher. Did you read ‘Bunny’? What did you think? Did you enjoy it?