unlike the bunnies, who are rich and well-assimilated in the jargony twaddle of MFA programs the world over ( ”I appreciate the uncertainty the piece gestures toward…I just think she could go further into the dream space. Samantha, our narrator and entry into this world, is the fifth person in the workshop, on the awkward periphery of these cooing girls who always seem to be monkey-grooming one another and giggling and sparkling all over the place. This is The Secret History through the looking glass, carroll’s white rabbit split into four excessively co-dependent MFA students twitchy and touchy-feely and calling each other “bunny,” operating symbiotically(?) as a “we ” each maintaining a specifically regimented style of expression in appearance and craft, but otherwise inseparable. you see, it is also compared to The Vegetarian, which i have not read, but now that i’ve looked into that book more, if i HAD read it, i probably would have been less taken aback by what this book actually is. it is ALSO not, although this is frequently true of other books, that it is being misrepresented by overzealous marketing. which is not to say it’s bad AT ALL, it’s just not what i thought i was getting into. seeing this was set “at an elite new england university” with an exclusive clique at its center and seeing it compared to Heathers, i went into it expecting a Megan Abbott-y/ The Secret History-y type of deal full of those dark and toxic currents that define adolescent girlhood, where affection shifts into power struggle at the drop of a hat, but also featuring a bunch of soulless smarty-pants big on ritualistic gatherings and down for some light murder.

Oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for BEST HORROR 2019! what will happen?

A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire. As Samantha plunges deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunnies, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled 'Smut Salon' and finds herself drawn to their front door ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. 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 twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny', and are often found entangled in a group hug. Samantha Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls.

Book bunny mona awad