Bunny

Bunny by Mona Awad is a creative and compelling story about friendship, love, grad school, being a writer, and ultimately the stories we tell and inhabit. Samantha is an MFA candidate at Warren, but she isn't like the other women in her cohort. No, those women who call each other “Bunny” a clique to which Samantha does not belong. But in her final year of grad school she is invited to join the Bunny cult, and everything changes. My feelings about this book are mixed. On one hand there's a lot of important, compelling, and interesting ideas about friendship, creativity, gender, education, etc. There's also a lot of cool plot elements which seem to blend dark academia, psychological horror, and maybe even bits of other sub genres. On the other hand I found the book to be a bit confusing. Some parts of the logic and mechanics never seemed to be totally explained, probably intentionally, and Part 3 got really weird really fast. I'm not always the biggest fan of unreliable narrators or works that are intentionally unclear, and maybe that's simply my insecurity with the unpredictable and multifaceted complexity of the human experience...or something, but toward the end this book got a little muddy. The twists and turns and layers were thrilling, but at the end of the book I'm not completely sure I understand what actually happened. I guess that space of uncertainty and invitation to participate in writing my own interpretation of the novel is a valid takeaway, but at the same time I was also left with unsettling ambiguity and a longing for clarity. Maybe that was part of Awad's intention for the book? In any event, this is a good one even if somewhat confusing. Great especially for anyone who's gone through a creative graduate school program. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️