Book Review: Bunny by Mona Awad

Mikayla Leskey | Arts and Entertainment

If you need a new read for this spooky season then look no further; Bunny by Mona Awad has you covered. It’s a complex psychological horror, making you question the book and its character at every turn. It starts off as any other coming-of-age book would, our main character and narrator, Samantha “Sam” Mackey, a scholarship student at a prestigious art academy in New England, is making fun of the “it” girls of her school. 

Yes, even in college, these graduate students have cliques. It’s a small school, meant for the Arts, and where everyone else has “nice and light” ideas about their stories and art, Sam’s dark imagination flares in the otherwise rose-tinted University. As previously mentioned, the “it” girls in the school, or bunnies, as they denominate themselves, is your classic mean girl group and of course, they share a class with our narrator. 

Their class is only the five of them and their teacher. It’s a workshop where they critique each other’s work, yet almost none of them like Sam’s because of the aforementioned dark imagination she has. But one day, they invite her into their clique… that’s when this story takes a turn. What you once thought was just another Disney-like fairy tale, twists into something akin to Frankenstein, if Frankenstein a murderous cult, that is. 

I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say, there’s a reason the Bunnies call themselves Bunnies. Sam gets accepted into their group and starts losing time. Her once dark imagination starts turning brighter and her nicknames for the four bunnies turn to their real names. All the while, we have no idea what’s going on. We’re forced to piece together through the other Bunnies’ dialogue and Sam’s best-friend, Ava, who’s trying to shake Sam out of this weird fugue state that she’s in. 

The imagery of this book is unmatched. “It is a song about nightmares dressed as daydreams, about trading your soul for a kiss. I think not this song, never this song, but my soul is already singing along, riding its swells like an ocean wave, shimmering.” There’s something so haunting in Awad’s imagery, the way she’s able to convey untapped emotions, or feelings we never knew the name of. 

Overall, this book is an absolute whirlwind. From friendship break-ups to becoming amateur detectives, you never know where the book is going next. But once you do, you’ll realize you played perfectly into Mona Awad’s hands. She planned everything meticulously, down to every description and piece of dialogue. It’s a perfect book to start off your spooky season, it’s an intricate weaving of psychological and body horror, and the ending will leave you speechless.