Bunny

4.5/5 this was SO WEIRD but SO GOOD it's not gonna work for everyone but it worked for me it reminded me of a certain movie i absolutely love.

What the hell was this??? Why was this???

Right so every now and then I try to read a genre that I usually don't read. And this is an example of that.

Don't know if I hate it or if I love it.

But I do think that Samantha is oddly relatable for many

Not a fan of dark academia... but this one is written well, and narrated even better.

hmm...
Character descriptions were really strong and this came through when she is indoctrinated into their cult and calls them all “bunny”, yet the reader can still differentiate between each of them. I thought that the bits with Ava were really special because of this as well. The book reminds me a bit of “These Violent Delights” in that I enjoyed it, but there was some integral part missing that kept me from really loving it. But overall an interesting and well-executed novel. One thing that did aggravate me was Awad's use of the term “so much” or “so many” (as in, “the [blank] [blanked] like so much/many [blank]”). I noticed this on the first few pages when she used it twice in two or three consecutive sentences, and then I couldn't stop picking it up, and she uses it quite a lot. Most authors have certain words that they use over and over it their novels, and I don't usually mind when I notice, but this particularly grated at me because she uses it so much in really unnecessary places where the sentence would have been just as poetic and maybe read better if she had taken it out. But this minor gripe aside a fun and addictive read, would read another by her if I saw it at the library and the synopsis grabbed me.

Probably a 3.5 ~ Closer to a 4 than a 3.

Wow, wtf? It's been a while since i've read something really bizarre like this. The writing style really captured the mood perfectly - and I do love an un-reliable narrator type of story. I maybe had a theory that she was really into her writing and fell into it?? I changed my tune on this as things continued... Could be really worth a re-read to catch some of the details!

Anyway, great writing style to sink you into this fever dream. Some moments go for too long but I was still on my toes because I knew something bizarre could happen at any minute. To really like this book you'll have to suspend your disbelief and follow around a disaster girl type character.

I got this rec. from booktok and it did not disappoint. I got this book free from the library on libby!

lyrical writing but lowkey anti-women. also feels like a YA novel.
 

I have so many mean things to say about this book.

It's been a long time since I finished something purely from spite, so here are a collection of things that pissed me off about this book.

-if I could go through and remove every simile from this book, it wouldn't fix it but I'd have fewer wrinkles. “Her words fell from her lips, like so many smoking leaves” STFU
-no one has ever smelled like green tea or cupcakes
-I would also bully Samantha
-the bunnies are so much cooler and better than Samantha and I cannot believe they were supposed to be the villains
-if Samantha experienced real oppression, I think her head would explode
-if you can't write something better than Barton Fink, you, as a writer, shouldn't write about writer's block
-plus one star and then minus it for the prom scene because it was actually great and it raised my hopes just to dash them
-don't write about MFA programs, it's tacky
-i had to rewind the audiobook a few times just to show my boyfriend particularly egregious writing. E.g. “My smile cracked like a mirror cracking” and “She was a great girl-shaped forest. She was a thing on fire. Her hand was leaves and smoke and snow and flesh all at once.”
-i kept thinking it was going to be self aware and then it never was :'(

Anyway, go read “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” for the disaffected Ivy league experience and anything Angela Carter for the weird fairy tale fiction part. God, I'm so worked up.

first read, august 2023
weird ? and dnf at 70% too much for me to handle

second read, march 2024
five stars ! favorite of all time
- writing process, lack of imagination (flawed Drafts/Darlings, difficulty to separate one bunny to the other, plagiarism...)
- commentary on the ridiculous pretensions at an “elite” art school, saying complex things but without any meaning or sense
- feels like a dream but at some point Samantha can say things that we can rely on so it's even more confusing
- the character of Samantha navigate between loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, fantastic and the terrible power of the imagination (her need to be part of a group/friendship, her emotional attachment to Ava, her questioning the reality...)

This book was insane. Unhinged. But ultimately so enjoyable and fun. My internal monologue was mostly “wtf is going on” but in the best way possible. I really liked it, but it's also the kind of book I can't imagine recommending to anyone I know. It's simply bizarre. So if this sounds like a rabbit hole you'd like to go down into, it will be certainly an exciting experience.

If Mean Girls was directed by Ari Aster. Crazy, sick af, not for everybody, that's for sure. But if you wanna join a wild ride, go ahead.

I thought this book would be cool and edgy, and you can feel the author trying so hard, but in the end, it's a drag. Writing about writing, is there anything more dull?

I originally rated this book at 2.5 stars, but the more time goes on the more I love it??
Its a fking weird book. Don't go into it expecting things to line up.

This felt like a sugary fever dream in a somewhat dark academia setting? Fast paced, this was a quick read and heavily felt like being under some sort of...influence

Well that was something. Sometimes annoying but sufficiently disturbing, for me.

Somehow this story literally involves dudes exploding yet still manages to be extremely boring. Probably 400 pages too long (on the Libby app anyway, where it is 550 pages) and frankly not scary at all??

I definitely understand why people describe this book as a fever dream in many reviews. I think it's actually bit more layered then that and it's not quite as random and trippy as it may seem. It's one of those where if 10 people read it though you're going to get several different interpretations on what is really going on. 

My brief interpretation was that Samantha was suffering from mental illness and a lot of what occurs in this book are a mixture of imagination and auditory/visual hallucination. Take for example on the bus where the grandma is reading the symptoms of schizophrenia and Samantha is responding yes I have that, down said checklist. Or when Rob's head explodes and the next day one of the girls responds with “so that's what you saw” etc.

I can appreciate how this story was told, but overall it's not really the type of writing or story I gravitate to. 3 bunnies out of 5 for it's cleverness though.

I love you, Bunny!

I loved how absurd and unhinged this book was. The writing style was a treat and I enjoyed the satire a great deal. I was a bit afraid of the horror aspects, but I could handle them just fine. If you're not usually into horror, please don't skip this book just because of that!

So much of this book reminds me of Life is Strange, Black Swan, and Mean Girls. But in the best way! When I finished this, I was left with so many questions wanted to do a re-read straight away.

When mean girls meet heathers.

Writing this review just because I feel the need to say that I speed-read the last 170 pages in a day. I don't know what it was, but I felt super captivated to keep reading, to find how much more weird and dark this could get. Loved the different and experimental approach to the writing, feels disorientating, feverish, in a way, which is brilliant and pushes the point of the book even more. Didn't expect this to be so funny even in the most crucial points of the plot, but I had a blast throughout the last part.

So enjoyable.So.Very entertaining, Bunny.Bunny, this was literally such a good surprise.

4,5☆

Reading this book's like you're watching people take lsd and trip while you're being completely sober

I loved the surreal/horror aspects and the writing was great. However, there are a couple major things I can't get past that prevent me from loving it.

Most importantly was that the story is about this group of women manufacturing men–then being torn apart by fighting over a man–without much textual evidence of real life men being dangerous, disappointing, or otherwise lacking felt pretty bad from a feminist perspective, right?? I think it could have worked if the theme leaned into why these women needed to make their drafts/darlings/whatever. It felt close to suggesting that the women only wanted to spend time with men created by other women, that they sought fulfillment in the minds of women and not men, but it didn't follow through on that or have much of a queer reading that would support that.

Secondly, I just couldn't get a mental image of the four “Bunnies.” Maybe it's a generational thing, but I just can't picture literary grad students who love Kate Bush and Sylvia Plath and also love kittens/cupcakes/sparkles. This just didn't compute to me, but maybe it's intentional to be off-putting.

Okay, so this book is heavy. And by heavy, I mean mentally exhausting. At least it was for me. It's one that might horrify you, get under your skin, or worse, do both at the same time. Before I get to the review, which will probably be short, I had a song playing in my head the whole time, one of my favorites, Old Heart Falls by Katatonia. Spin it up; it has a depth of emotion and lyrical prose that I think encapsulates most of the emotions found in this book to a T.

Hmm. Where do I begin? The book follows a writer as she prepares to graduate from a prestigious art school. She does not fit in, has trouble making friends, lives in a grimy apartment, and does better expressing herself through her art than she does with words. The initial pages do a good job setting up the school and its students, but as soon as Sam starts to hang out with the Bunnies (an entitled writing group), it plunges into ghastly horrors that only a nightmare would conjure up.

All I will say about the plot is that it is definitely not for the faint of heart. It deals with some pretty distressing subject matter, but if you stick with it till the end, it makes sense. It uses familiar archetypes that, although extreme at times, have a payoff. I'm not quite sure “payoff” is the correct word to use, but all's well that ends well.

Let's put this another way. Have you seen the movie Saw? You know, the one with the puppet on a bike that traps people in precariously dangerous situations where they must choose to either leave missing limbs or succumb to their fate. Well, this book is kind of like that, but replace the extreme physical torture with more mental torment. I think we all do our best to quell extreme loneliness and the desire to belong, but it always seems to creep in from time to time, and for Sam, she has an interesting way of dealing with it.

Would I recommend this book? Hmm. That's a tough one. Again, it deals with matters that are more horrific than what's on the page. I know that doesn't make any sense, but it would be a major spoiler to bring up what that is or what I think that is. I'd say its very relatable, but if you said that to a friend and they had just read the first half, they may raise some eyebrows at you the next time you interact. Lets just say the author shines a light on a subject that might be close to home for some but oh so foreign to others.

So I started the review with a song, so let's end with one that fits with the ending and is much more uplifting.

–You're Not Alone by Lionville.

3.5/5.

What the fucking hell was this book

2.5 rounded up.

I didn't hate it but I found it to be way too long and repetitive. I really had a hard time getting invested in Samantha after a certain point, so much so that I kept forgetting her name like some of the characters did. By the time the big reveal came it was so predictable it just kinda fell flat.