April 2022 Group Read #1 - Bunny

[Alex]

I ended up enjoying Bunny a lot :) but I think partly because I knew what to expect knowing that it was more dark fantasy.
I can totally see how you wouldn’t like this if you expect a horror novel.

[Joey's deathly tomes of death]

@ LTJ, I really enjoyed the book but the ending was a little bleak.

[LTJ]

@Alex: So glad to hear that and yeah, that makes sense! LoL I wanted more horror but that's awesome you enjoyed it since it had a nice dark fantasy element to it :-)

[LTJ]

@Joey: That's so awesome to hear and I'm glad you really enjoyed it. LoL did you also want a more horrific ending as much as I did?

[Joey's deathly tomes of death]

@ LTJ, yeah that would have been great, though it did leave me with a sort of existential dread. The Bunnies could have been brutally massacred in some horrific way. Maybe Jonah was secretly hiding some dark truth and.... lol

[LTJ]

@Joey: LoL indeed, that is what I was kind of hoping for after a certain delicious scene...

[Rachel]

finally had time to start reading today! i'm only 50 pages in, but i already have theories, lol.

[LTJ]

@Rachel: Yay! LoL enjoy and looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this one :-D

[Katie]

I was really struggled with the writing style and just not being into the story that much in the beginning. I really enjoyed Ava but then there was less of her, and I lost interest. But somewhere in part 2 I found myself looking forward to reading it and was hooked in part 3. I'm now in ch.33 and I have no idea where this is going but I'm embracing the strange ride. 🤷‍♀️

[LTJ]

@Katie: I'm glad it's picking up for you and YES, I also love Ava, she reminds me of a metalhead with how badass she is :-)

Enjoy the strange and bizarre ride! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts as you keep progressing...

[Katie]

LTJ wrote: "@Katie: I'm glad it's picking up for you and YES, I also love Ava, she reminds me of a metalhead with how badass she is :-)

Enjoy the strange and bizarre ride! Looking forward to hearing your thou..."

That's exactly how I've been picturing her! She strongly reminds me of one of my best friends. Such a good character!

[LTJ]

@Katie: Awe, that's so awesome! Yeah, she reminds me of a few of my metalhead friends that used to go to a bunch of concerts many moons ago! LoL down to the way she speaks and always smoking, she's probably my favorite character in Bunny!

[Marina]

I have finally finished! For me, the ending was a little disappointing, and I still don't know what is real and what not, or how I should interpret any of it, but I liked the writing style and that the story kept me guessing all the time,.. the weirdness. The whole part around Max bored me almost to death, though. But all in all, a very interesting experience, I'm glad I read it with you, bunnies!

[LTJ]

@Marina: Very cool you finished it and yeah, the ending I really wanted a crazier thing going down or something insane! I also agree that her writing style is awesome and hopefully in the future, we get even scarier novels by her, Bunny :-)

[Katy]

Waiting for my library copy to come.

[LTJ]

@Katy: Nice!

[Rachel]

i meant to update more as i was reading the book, but i couldn't put it down and finished it in two days, despite the fact i'm very busy with finals and other school-related things. i think that gives an idea of how compelling i found it, ha ha.

i really had no idea what i was getting into when i started tho. for one thing, i wasn't expecting it to have so much satire and commentary, but i absolutely loved that about it. it's kind of what made the bizarre events of the whole thing more palatable. (i don't need plots to be completely explained or logical, but around the part where (view spoiler)[men's heads started exploding and it's revealed that real bunnies are being sacrificed to create sex slaves for the Bunnies, it made the lack of explanations way more tolerable. (hide spoiler)])

(view spoiler)[i loved all the satirical scenes exploring the pretension and ridiculousness that can be found in the literary academic world, e.g. the constant use of inane buzzwords/phrases, "experimentation" over actual substance, etc.
i also got the vibe that the Drafts/Darlings, while clearly a reference to the writing process, were also used as a critique of the typical male depicted in romance novels? like they look nice, but don't have a lot of substance?

satire aside, i also just dug the story so much. watching the whole thing play out was so entertaining, but also incredibly disturbing. i respectfully disagree with anyone who says that this book doesn't count as horror; it's like a sneaky horror. there were a lot of horrific implications for sure, and the more i think about it, the more disturbed i am about it. (but, like, in the best way!)

for example, i found the Bunnies mutilating poor, defenseless rabbits for their pleasure to be very horrific, especially when we know what they do to their creations that don't work out. additionally, i don't remember if this was mentioned explicitly in the book, but i got the vibe that the terrible stuff happening around town (the decapitations and such) were perpetrated by the less stable bunny-men they were releasing into the wild?
to borrow the words of the great ian malcolm, the Bunnies were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think whether they should.

the only reason i wasn't able to give this book 5-stars is because i got really annoyed with samantha's self-imposed helplessness pretty quick. i related to her a bit at first because i've often been the unwilling outsider and been rejected and belittled by other women in the past, but yeesh, she spent too much of this book wallowing and victimizing herself. (especially with the thing with her professor.) (hide spoiler)]

so glad i was able to join in on this read! now, time for me to go back and read everyone's spoilers, lol!

[inciminci]

@Rachel, what you say in your spoiler totally makes sense, (view spoiler)[ I was wondering about the murders and assaults that Samantha keeps mentioning and the produced bunnies committing them (hide spoiler)] would be a logical explanation.

I also agree with your take on horror. I would even go as far as to say that in a psychological way, some scenes were so painfully dragged out that they were in a way horror too, but they had a ridiculous or funny side to them too, like all the social situations with her professor, I forgot her name. I think that even normal situations can become horror if they are driven into an extreme level, and that was the case here.

I'm not sure if Samantha's character isn't purposefully the way it is, as in she's a pastiche of the outsider archetype, just another caricature, and not really meant for us to relate, but to follow.

In any case I personally liked this book a lot. I have also read Awad's other book, All's Well, by the way, and it's pretty much the same style, but the story is a little more clear and accessible, if anyone's interested.

[Amy]

I totally want to read the books everyone is talking about. However I am so lost in the threads. What is the best way to find the title and author some of the posts are talking about? I will take any suggestions.

[LTJ]

@Amy: Greetings! Did you mean for the current/future monthly group reads or just in general?

[Michelle]

I finally started this one (it took me longer than expected to finish my last book).
I'm on page 79--starting chapter 11. Not quite sure what to think yet other than (view spoiler)[Ava is a really crappy friend. The bunnies feel very Heathers or Mean Girls so far. (hide spoiler)]

[LTJ]

@Michelle: Happy reading! I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this one...

[Jacqueline]

I just came off a very disappointing read and I’m going to start this tonight. My fingers are crossed for this one.

[LTJ]

*Fingers crossed*

[Jacqueline]

I’m only on chapter 4 but so far I’m hooked. I also feel like it’s the plot to Mean Girls…

[Raif Hoffman]

As one of the bunnies said to another, sometimes a piece of writing isn't opaque because it's mysterious and deep and you just need to try harder. sometimes it's just bad and no one will ever care to decode what's going on in the author's head.
I finished it, which I did not think I would. It was just interesting enough to get me to the finish line (although I thought it was 50 pages shorter, not sure if I would have kept going if I knew it was 300 and not 250 like it was in my head). Thoroughly unrelatable characters, not much happening, and no logic. Oh well, not for me.

[Beth]

Just not my cup of tea. It's such an odd read.

[Nick]

The first third of this book was incredible and a fun easy read. I got lost in the middle and barely found my way back at the end. This just wasn't for me, sadly.

[Jennifer]

This is such a marmite story. People love it or hate it. I bet it's a really interesting book to discuss at a face to face book club, or with people who don't read horror.

[Michelle]

I'm on page 224, and hoping to finish tomorrow. It really is a bit of a fever dream, isn't it?
In theory this is the perfect book for me. I love psychological twists, unreliable narrators, and weird 'what-is-happing' type stories. But every time I set down Bunny I need to talk myself into picking it back up again.
I don't think I'm connecting with any of the characters. They are all very caricaturist. It's not that I dislike anyone; I just don't love anyone. And honestly, (view spoiler)[I don't think anyone is actually real at this point, just figments of Samantha's imagination. (hide spoiler)]

[Michelle]

I finished this morning. I think its a great book for conversation and debate, but I really had to push myself to finish.

I like the weird and ambiguous, but this book just felt pointless. The characters were so cliché and cringy. The boy-obsessed mean-girl trope didn't do it for me at all. The fever dream who's-real-and-who's-not quality didn't either, even though I felt it should.

The author is clearly very talented, though. I'll definitely read more from her in the future.

[Audra]

Just finished yesterday. I mainly got a "what the f*ck did I just read!?" reaction from it.

[Kimberly]

Audra wrote: "Just finished yesterday. I mainly got a "what the f*ck did I just read!?" reaction from it."

I think that's the reaction MOST people got from it! LOL!!

[LTJ]

LoL YES! That's how I felt as well... I wanted to be done with it already but I did love her writing style. Just not for me, I guess!

[Joseph]

Five stars.

When I finished the novel, I already knew I was going to describe it to my bookworm friends as "educated chick lit." It's good prose that conjures good characters. The setting nudges the story along. I have always enjoyed reading female protagonists (at this point in my literary journey I am looking more for characters who are unlike me than those I can fully relate to), and I thought Smackie was just terrific.

I think the contrast between the cold winter setting and the bubbly bunny clan work very well together. They are the champagne of the alcohol family. It's possible to have too much of them, but who knows what the limit is? I cannot recall meeting any Bunnies in my life, but I do not doubt they are out there, penning literary works that speak too much of theme and not enough story. Writings that they spin out to The Paris Review and read over their rejection letters, only to tell themselves they didn't really want to be in that rag anyway.

I only rate a book if I believe it deserves five stars, and that's what this novel gets from me. I read it in two and a half days, including two late nights. I'm looking forward to reading more from this author.

[Joseph]

Michelle wrote: "I finished this morning. I think its a great book for conversation and debate, but I really had to push myself to finish.

I like the weird and ambiguous, but this book just felt pointless. The ch..."

@Michelle -- I think the story also works as a satire of the fiction the Bunnies -- and a lot of other Fine Arts majors -- are trying to write. The style is influenced more by literary works and what is considered "literature" in lieu of genre fiction. I

[Jacqueline]

I just finished and I completely loved it! I do see however how this story might not be for everyone. As far as horror it was little lacking but that didn’t stop my enjoyment of it.

[evangelos]

I didn't write my thoughts on this or give a review yet. I finished it in the first week of April in just a couple of days, so I liked it. I found it very readable. Some scenes were quite memorable and still stayed with me, I liked the beginning of part 2. [spoiller] I wished there was mor of the cult phase, but as the story progressed I realised there were a lot more to happen. Didn't predict some of the twists, but didn't feel out of the blue either. [/end spoiler] Because of the school setting and the pop references, I also felt this had the YA or teen drama feel at first. But it still felt satirical and odd enough. I can imagine this could be a streaming mini-series too.

[Hayley]

I'm going to avoid reading through the discussion because I feel like there will be so many spoilers.

BUT. I'm about halfway through and really loving it so far, Bunny!

[Joey's deathly tomes of death]

@ Evangelos This would definitely make a very interesting mini series, I'd watch it for sure! I'm in the same boat, read it early in the month and haven't yet written a review though you can rest assure it will be full of bunny this and bunny that, okay Bunny? lol

[Joey's deathly tomes of death]

@ Jacquine Passano it was a great book but I agree with you, it definitely was lacking in the horror department. So far May's book is too, feels more like dark fantasy. :(

[Emilie]

Finally getting into this one- my hold finally came in- 3 days before the end of May! Yay! Let's see how this one goes.

[Netanella]

I finished the book this morning and thought it was awesome! I do agree, it's not really what one would expect for horror. So if you're looking for a traditional horror story, you're bound to get disappointed.

[Hayley]

I really enjoyed this. I gave it four stars because I felt a little at sea towards the end. BUT. I started off as a creative writing major and then switched to English lit, and this reminds me so much of pretentious writing majors and academic ivory-tower BS that no one outside of it cares about, and the slow, simmering madness that is grad school... I think I'll go change mine to 5 stars actually.

[evangelos]

Hayley wrote: "I really enjoyed this. I gave it four stars because I felt a little at sea towards the end. BUT. I started off as a creative writing major and then switched to English lit, and this reminds me so m..."

Yes. I studied art, not writing, but those group crit sessions were very similar haha.

[Emilie]

Guys- I really liked this book. I think that because its not a typical horror story- made me like it a little more, because I was left wondering what the hell was happening the whole time, which caused me to read this in a few days. I was just slightly annoyed by the main characters and their dialogue, but that was partly the point. So I can't fault it too much.

[Tom]

I finished this this morning and am totally glad to be moving on to something else. I hated the characters and found the Bunnies' insipid and insincere dialogue as grating as fingernails on chalkboards. The plot was intriguing but God spare me from such people.

I seem to be in the minority so I apologize to those who really enjoyed it.

[Kimberly]

Tom wrote: "I finished this this morning and am totally glad to be moving on to something else. I hated the characters and found the Bunnies' insipid and insincere dialogue as grating as fingernails on chalkbo..."

It was definitely a "different" kind of story...

[LTJ]

@Tom: Nope, I felt the exact same way too, and also gave it a 2!

[Jamie]

Absolutely wacky and fantastic. I loved the premise and all the side characters although I found the main character to be utterly boring. That being said, I do feel the author made her such a sponge that soaks up other characters' personalities on purpose so it makes sense. I wanted more of the bunnies!