Bunny: A Novel
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Enter the Bunnyverse with the “wild, audacious . . . unforgettable” (Los Angeles Times) #DarkAcademia novel that started it all – the precursor to We Love You, Bunny
“[A] cult classic.” —People
“[A] viral sensation.” —USA Today
“O Bunny you are sooo genius!” —Margaret Atwood
“We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?”
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. 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 unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.
But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.
The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.
Named a Best Book of the year by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library
Enter the Bunnyverse with the “wild, audacious . . . unforgettable” (Los Angeles Times) #DarkAcademia novel that started it all – the precursor to We Love You, Bunny
“[A] cult classic.” —People
“[A] viral sensation.” —USA Today
“O Bunny you are sooo genius!” —Margaret Atwood
“We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?”
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. 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 unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.
But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.
The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.
Named a Best Book of the year by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library
BUY THE BOOK
These clubs recently read this book...
Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *Bunny* is a wild, surreal novel blending dark humor, horror, and feminist themes with a *Heathers* vibe and magical realism. Many praise ...
This book was the three-est of three stars for me. I didn’t hate all of it. I didn’t love much of it. I don’t think I really even liked most of it, but the parts I liked, I liked just enough to not hate it? Maybe? I don’t know.
I’m glad I finally read it. I’m equally glad it’s over, but I do want to read the sequel (We Love You, Bunny coming in September 2025) because it has Bunny backstories, and they seem infinitely more interesting than sad-sack Samantha who was annoying AF.
I'll have to write a thesis about this book..and my review will be long, so long. But not now.
Let's just say I disliked this book for the first 60 pages. I was about to drop it, but decided otherwise, as you've already guessed.
*** The writing:
My main complaint about this story is the missed opportunities. The way this could be a masterpiece, but is not because of the prose and some writing style choices. To be brief, It is so inconsistent : You'll read the worst metaphors ever said or written and then the most thoughtful, poetic quote you could find. It bares the question of :
- aesthetic control
- deliberate excess vs. accidental clumsiness
-whether incoherence mirrors mental fracture or undermines the text.
***The story:
It is definitely inspired by the Secret History by Dona Tarts. Our narrator in Bunny, Samantha, is the female version of Richard.
The plot is kind of unoriginal, the characters stereotypical. I didn't care for any of them. Samantha is your lone wolf, self-loathing, tortured soul, who's not rich, has no parents, not like the other gitls type, deeply depressed, smokes and drinks like she's a rock star, only speaks in references, she never feels right anywhere or with anyone. She never, ever, speaks her mind,like ever. I've read characters like this a hundred times, and now I'm tired of it.And, I can't help myself but ask :
Why do these narrators persist culturally despite reader fatigue ?
The only redeeming part is that she is self-aware, she knows she's a stereotype, and the book even pokes fun at her for being like that.
Ava and Max, two important characters in Samantha's life, get a pass because...well, that's spoiler territory.
But overall, they are more of a vibe than real people. The whole book is just that - a vibe. BUT, you can see, feel the depth beneath it all, and that's what's frustrating.
***The themes
They go from :
- friendship, loneliness, the longing for a community, for someone to fill in the void
- female sexuality, the trope of women fighting over a men, but here being satirised, not romanticized.
- The spleen, the artists condition, and turmoil : being torn between being conditioned or let loose in his/her creativity.
- Mental illness ( see spoiler below)
- Our human condition as primitive animals who just happened to be able to speak and put some clothes on, doing a bit, acting, lying to ourselves and to the others...
- What is our responsibility for our own creation(s), as artists, as people, what does it mean ?
...I mean, this book asks so many different questions and brings up interesting points, but again, the "vibe" is taking over, too much so.The atmosphere overwrites articulation.
Just to give an example of how the book is clever : The theme, let's say, of the Bunny, is presented at first as just a name for a group of unbearable rich white girls, but in reality it is all just an allegory. And a top-notch one. When you finally understand that it refers to the small animal being used in mafical tricks, appearing out of nowhere, conjured, created, like a piece of art... or here a piece of your imagination brought to life. This book asks the question : What now ? What will happen now that you've brought it to life ?
Reading this book really felt like being at a trendy cafe , tasting the most wonderful piece of desert, and then discovering that it was not homemade but frozen, but you still eat it because the coffee on the other hand is marvelous. I'll probably never eat here again though, because the manager is an asshole and I think I saw a
Let's just say I disliked this book for the first 60 pages. I was about to drop it, but decided otherwise, as you've already guessed.
*** The writing:
My main complaint about this story is the missed opportunities. The way this could be a masterpiece, but is not because of the prose and some writing style choices. To be brief, It is so inconsistent : You'll read the worst metaphors ever said or written and then the most thoughtful, poetic quote you could find. It bares the question of :
- aesthetic control
- deliberate excess vs. accidental clumsiness
-whether incoherence mirrors mental fracture or undermines the text.
***The story:
It is definitely inspired by the Secret History by Dona Tarts. Our narrator in Bunny, Samantha, is the female version of Richard.
The plot is kind of unoriginal, the characters stereotypical. I didn't care for any of them. Samantha is your lone wolf, self-loathing, tortured soul, who's not rich, has no parents, not like the other gitls type, deeply depressed, smokes and drinks like she's a rock star, only speaks in references, she never feels right anywhere or with anyone. She never, ever, speaks her mind,like ever. I've read characters like this a hundred times, and now I'm tired of it.And, I can't help myself but ask :
Why do these narrators persist culturally despite reader fatigue ?
The only redeeming part is that she is self-aware, she knows she's a stereotype, and the book even pokes fun at her for being like that.
Ava and Max, two important characters in Samantha's life, get a pass because...well, that's spoiler territory.
But overall, they are more of a vibe than real people. The whole book is just that - a vibe. BUT, you can see, feel the depth beneath it all, and that's what's frustrating.
***The themes
They go from :
- friendship, loneliness, the longing for a community, for someone to fill in the void
- female sexuality, the trope of women fighting over a men, but here being satirised, not romanticized.
- The spleen, the artists condition, and turmoil : being torn between being conditioned or let loose in his/her creativity.
- Mental illness ( see spoiler below)
- Our human condition as primitive animals who just happened to be able to speak and put some clothes on, doing a bit, acting, lying to ourselves and to the others...
- What is our responsibility for our own creation(s), as artists, as people, what does it mean ?
...I mean, this book asks so many different questions and brings up interesting points, but again, the "vibe" is taking over, too much so.The atmosphere overwrites articulation.
Just to give an example of how the book is clever : The theme, let's say, of the Bunny, is presented at first as just a name for a group of unbearable rich white girls, but in reality it is all just an allegory. And a top-notch one. When you finally understand that it refers to the small animal being used in mafical tricks, appearing out of nowhere, conjured, created, like a piece of art... or here a piece of your imagination brought to life. This book asks the question : What now ? What will happen now that you've brought it to life ?
Reading this book really felt like being at a trendy cafe , tasting the most wonderful piece of desert, and then discovering that it was not homemade but frozen, but you still eat it because the coffee on the other hand is marvelous. I'll probably never eat here again though, because the manager is an asshole and I think I saw a
one of the most enrapturing novels i’ve read in a WHILE. the symbolism? the atmosphere? amazing!! it was so well thought out and grounded that i couldn’t help but feel disappointed at the end, where everything was essentially “just a dream”. ik it wasn’t exactly that, but it had the same alienating affect.
The thing I loved most about this book was that I had no idea what to think of it at the end. Was everything literal? Did the bunnies turn actual bunnies into men or was Samantha imagining it? But then she did actually turn a swan into a human, right? Or was she literally dancing on the roof with a swan? Was the swan there at all?
I started reading other people’s interpretations online, and some reviews here, and I honestly find them pretty disappointing. Everyone seems dedicated to a hard-and-fast explanation, implying that everyone else is missing the point or just doesn’t understand. But isn’t the beautiful thing about books that there are endless potential meanings, endless routes for engaging conversations about what it all means?
Personally, I’m comfortable putting a finished book back on my shelf fully accepting that I have no solid answer for what actually happened. To me, it doesn’t even matter because the writing in this book was magnificent and moving and the premise was so incredibly unique. Yes, Mona! Leave me confused and questioning and dumbfounded! Let my limited understanding turn round and round in my head and leave a lasting mark!
This book is confusing, ending with a twist that is murky and unclear but somehow still a twist. My personal interpretation is that the story is a mix of “none of it was real” and supernatural horror. The line between the two is blurry, I’m not sure which is the majority. But I love that. Because either way, we still explored Samantha’s unbelievably deep love for Ava, her hatred towards the bunnies, her tentative attraction to and fear of Max. I cling to those themes because her feelings are the one thing in the book I know for certain were real, and that’s enough for me.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.