Bunny
Mona Awad · first published 2019 · ISBN 9780525559757
Samantha is a scholarship student in an elite MFA program surrounded by a clique of women who call themselves Bunny. They're saccharine, disturbing, and hypnotic. Samantha keeps her distance until she's pulled into their circle, and what begins as strange bonding rituals evolves into something unhinged. The line between reality and delusion warps until neither Samantha nor the reader can say what's actually happened.
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Awad refuses to make the book easy. Bunny works as a critique of toxic friendships, dark academia, and artistic ambition, but it also works as a descent into psychological unraveling. The prose style mirrors Samantha's fractured consciousness. It's experimental without being unreadable, and it creates a world of dread that feels more like a fever dream than a traditional plot. For readers tired of the procedural thriller formula.