If you’re looking for a full review, I’m sorry but this isn’t that. I wish I could provide a more in-depth review of Mona Awad’s Bunny but it didn’t quite match my expectations and while it was fun for a little bit, my preferences and specified taste in tropes and themes clashed with those found in between these pages.

Bunny is a fun, satirical dark academia read. It’s got some social commentary on privilege, female relationships and perspective wrapped in veils of horror, magic, and rich-girl clique drama. It’s humorous, enlightening and a breath of fresh air with an original plot and direction. Mona Awad has a beautiful writing style and her flow of sentences and action feels natural and easy-going. I would highly recommend it to all to simply gauge for yourselves if this is the kind of read for you.

I didn’t like the book as much as I wished I did and I definitely felt the rose-tinted glasses fall within the first sixty pages or so. Let me make it clear that this says nothing about the author’s incredible writing. She is a wholly capable and engaging writer and I am lining up her other books for my tbr as I write this. It is my preference and taste in dark academia and other such genres that has me DNFing this.

You see, I’m not a fan of the girl vs. girl notion where “complete opposites” hate each other and tear each other down. The name calling, the rude comments, the degradation and dehumanisation of someone because their expression of self and opinions differ from yours. I don’t like the cruelty of it. I also don’t like the two-faced elements that follow such interactions and the lack of a spine promoted in these characters as they do such things. Samantha is not a character I find myself empathising or relating to, nor does she make me want to continue reading. She says one thing and does another, giving into the same thing she would speak of to Ava. She feels spineless to me and I don’t like spineless characters. Again, please consider that I DNFed at around the 120 page mark and maybe things are different later in the book. Maybe I misread something. My views should not prevent or dissuade you from picking up this very popular book and giving it a go.

High school clique behaviour and an inability to stand up for one’s own beliefs and opinions is something I think should stay in the high school years. I can see how elements of it can and likely do work very well for most readers the more they get into the book but I personally found myself coming away from the story, my mind disconnected from the novel due to a lack of interest in the character behaviour.