Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Bunny

wow. just wow. this is the first mona awad novel i’ve read and i was not disappointed. it’s gory and absurd and downright disturbing. i loved it. i never had any clue what was going to happen next, and i was always pleasantly surprised at what she had in store. there was so much symbolism and so many metaphors and i’m sure i didn’t even catch them all. the characters were so full-fledged and yet so empty? since we were seeing everyone and everything through samantha’s eyes, there was this veil of blissful ignorance draped over everything. i would have loved to get a peek into what the bunnies saw.

Spoiler

my favorite part of the whole book has to be max’s whole “performance piece” with the bunnies in the cave. watching their perfect, carefully curated, fake identities collapse was so satisfying and mildly humorous.

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anoushka05's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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justmys's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I don't feel like this book was for me.

I had to keep reminding myself that it was set in a university and not a high school campus, that the characters were grown adults and not wildly troubled teenagers. Everything just felt a little off, which was mayve intentional but left me unable to click with the story or writing.

But, I'm also conflicted as I listened to the audio book version and found myself having to play it at double speed so as not to fall asleep from boredom with the way it was read. So, I'm unsure if I may have enjoyed the book more had I read a physical copy.

Either way, an interesting book and premise, scary and challenging but not for me.

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bitchigo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny inspiring reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

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quinkell98's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It was a slow start because the language was heavy and flowery, but I did enjoy how the author used the language of the book to portray the mindset of the main character. Also it was quite the twist. I definitely did not see it coming.

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campbellio's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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maidinnah's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Demented, feverish, and just plain strange, Bunny forcibly blends Mean Girls with Jennifer's Body into a bloody, satirical tale about cults, cliques, academia, repression, and internalized misogyny. You can either reject the novel because of its excessive animal symbolism and juvenile main character or tumble down the rabbit hole in a blurry, imaginative frenzy that leaves you dazed long after you read it.

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conspystery's review

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dark funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Bunny is a very, very strange book, from its concept to its characters to its themes. I’m still not sure whether I even liked it. What I can say with certainty, though, is that this book’s ending is very good-- for me, it justified the rest of it, which I really didn’t find myself enjoying most of the time.

This novel starts slow, with a poisonous pessimistic fog cast over every word. This renders almost none of the characters likeable, which I think is the point, but that doesn’t make it any easier to sit through. The tone tries so hard to be darkly funny that it reaches into being bleakly sinister as it goes on; there are moments of humor arising from the overtly satirical depictions of the Bunnies and their work, but especially towards the beginning of the novel, they are few and far between. Bunny commits to its main character Samantha’s deeply depressed, almost conspiratorial attitude in order to set up contrast later, which is a deliberate, near-ironic decision-- I just personally found it difficult to remain engaged with. Another thing to note is I listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator completely sells Samantha’s personality. It’s an amazing performance. But I think that might’ve made the initial overbearing bleakness of her character even more difficult to care about.

When the book picks up, though, it rapidly becomes entrancing, aside from some pacing issues between sections. Without spoiling too much, there’s a pretty jarring content and tonal shift in the book’s narration mid-way through. It’s almost completely worth the setup-- the contrast between the different versions of Samantha as her character develops is really interesting, in a nightmarish, fever-dream kind of way. Bunny just keeps spiraling; every time I thought, “surely this is the most climactic point in the book,” it blindsided me with another tailspin into dark absurdity. Behind the obviously disturbing nature of most of the book’s events are subtle layers of dark humor and tragic compassion and all sorts of unexpected pathos that are really interesting to experience. The second quarter of the book does this best, I think, and I can say with confidence that as a general rule, Bunny gets infinitely better as it goes on.

The ending of the book, spoiler territory,

Spoiler

bumped up my rating of the novel as a whole by one star. If it hadn’t been for the twist about Ava being fabricated, too, I would not have enjoyed this book nearly as much as I did. The setup is just subtle enough to be surprising, but with hints thrown in along the way that make total sense in retrospect. Ava is too perfect-- she fits too well with Sam. At first I thought this was just poor writing. It isn’t. It makes total, tragic sense in the context of her being Sam’s creation, and really adds to the book’s themes in the end. It’s a perfectly-fitting twist for this novel.

I do have a few complaints: I don’t think I like how this book equates stereotypical femininity with inherent badness right off the bat. I understand it’s satirical, and there definitely is something to be said about stereotypically feminine women looking down upon those like Sam who don’t perform femininity in that same socially-acceptable way, but the way Bunny presents it feels more like a condemnation of stereotypical femininity itself rather than its use as a weapon against atypical expressions of femininity. There are ways to discuss that issue without implying anyone who wears pink is evil because of it, you know? The badness is in demeaning people, not in the affinity for overly cutesy dresses. I think to a certain extent, the book is aware of this-- Sam and Ava are deeply flawed characters, and I don’t think the narrative always looks kindly on their pessimism about the Bunnies. Sam’s narration of the book is absolutely drenched in satire. But I feel like more could have been done to communicate the book’s ideas about femininity in a more nuanced way than it was.

Also, I didn’t like the subplot with the Lion (and I also hated that nickname for him) whatsoever-- I’m not totally sure what it added to the book, how it was necessary. I guess as a subversion of how those plots typically go and as another perspective from which the Bunnies judge Sam, it makes sense, but I don’t know. It just felt uninspired to me. And, a smaller complaint: the audiobook narrator’s voice for Creepydoll was DIFFICULT to listen to. I know that’s the point, but it was still grating.

Overall, though, this book was pretty solid, even if it took a while to get there and was a bit clumsy in doing so. The plot itself is disturbingly fascinating, the characters aren’t likeable but they are fun to read, and the satire is often genuinely hilarious-- the Duchess’s “diamond proems” are maybe my favorite bit of satire about pretentious college writing ever. The continued references to rabbits, also, were extremely clever; the school is called Warren, for goodness’s sake. There are moments in the writing’s pessimism that ring harshly true, and moments where the writing transcends its typical gray bleakness and shines. I had a few issues with the novel, but the ending mostly saved it for me. Bunny has a lot to say about the ordeal of creation, loneliness and otherness, competitive femininity and heteronormativity, and what it’s like to discover and even fabricate one’s own identity. I still don’t know if I liked it-- I spent a lot of time shaking my head as though disbelieving a particularly disturbing nightmare while reading it-- but I do know it’ll probably stick with me, for better or for worse, for a long time to come.

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