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.

We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn’t we?

Oh, Bunny! I have fallen in love. Bunny has officially cemented Mona Awad as my new favourite author. While nothing beats the sheer perfection of Rouge, Bunny has broken my brain and my heart.

I saw someone describe it as Means Girls meet Suspiria which is so true. It’s cynical and razor-sharp in tone. On the surface, Bunny is an excellent satirical dark academia horror novel that examines the lives and friendships of college girls. Yet, it’s so much more than that and I fear that no words can describe the insanity and addictiveness of Bunny and, well, Awad’s writing in general. I thought Rouge was intoxicating and Bunny even more so.

Awad really takes the reader on a grotesque trip into the uncanny that will have you shouting WTF out loud. I still can’t fully comprehend what the hell happened or why it happened but it’s just so compelling. Much like my namesake, Samantha, I fell down the rabbit hole into the disorientating, heady, super feminine and sickly sweet universe that Awad created. It’s pure mindfuck and sensory overload but it’s so, so gorgeously written.

Bunny is rainbow sprinkles, iced cupcakes and a whole lot of blood and guts. It’s claustrophobic, riveting, sardonic and all-consuming. I was both repelled and charmed by the Bunnies and I related to the loneliness and desperation for belonging of our narrator, Samantha. Bunny is both dreamy and full of anarchy, and I am heartbroken that it had to end. I wanted to stay wrapped up in this world forever. Mona Awad, keep the craziness coming!

Bunny, I love you.

RATING

★★★★★