Bunny | Mona Awad | Dark Academic Thriller | Book Review

 

"Did you join any special clubs or groups in college that had a big impact on you?"

Name of Book: Bunny

Author: Mona Awad

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Publication Date: 10 Oct 2022

No. of Pages: 272

Format: Digital

We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny. Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny'. But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.

Mona Awad was born in Montreal and now lives in the USA. A graduate of York University in Toronto, her debut novel, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, won the 2016 Amazon Best First Novel Award, the Colorado Book Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Arab American Book Award. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, TIME magazine, Electric Literature, VICE, The Walrus and elsewhere.

My Opinion

Mona Awad's Bunny begins with the eerie, intellectual tone reminiscent of The Secret History, setting up expectations for a dark academic thriller. However, the novel quickly spirals into an absurd, surreal narrative that lacks coherence and purpose. The protagonist feels disconnected, her voice often lost in the chaos of the story. The characters surrounding her seem aimless and hollow, as though they exist in a different world altogether. What starts as a promising premise — a student entangled in a mysterious cult — dissolves into a confusing mess where the lines between reality and fantasy blur excessively. The cult’s motives are never fully explained, making it hard to invest in the stakes. By the end, I was left more puzzled than intrigued. While Bunny may appeal to readers who enjoy surreal, experimental fiction, it ultimately fell flat for me due to its lack of direction and emotional grounding. The book deserves only 3 stars.

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