We Love You, Bunny Book Review

The first novel follows Sam, an alienated and unhappy creative writing student, and her love-hate relationship with her classmates- a cabal of four rich girls who insist on calling one another “Bunny”, eating everything in miniature form, and hugging whenever they’re in arm’s reach. Their ultra-feminine, sickly-sweet affections make it hard for Sam to take them seriously, even as she secretly yearns to be included. When they finally notice her though, she quickly regrets attracting their attention. Beneath the pastel surface lies a strange hive-mind cult, part Stepford Wives and part fever-dream. By day, the Bunnies eat their mini cupcakes, watch The Bachelorette, and write experimental “proems” (poems etched on glass); by night they perform demonic rituals that turn rabbits into boys– sometimes exploding them in the process. Eventually, Sam turns the tables, creating a man so perfect and lifelike that he tears their hive-mind apart in a frenzy of jealousy and possessiveness.

In We Love You, Bunny comes the Awad twist: Bunny is, within the world of this sequel, a metafiction- a story within a story and Sam’s bestselling account of her time on campus. Naturally, the Bunnies don’t take these thinly-veiled slights lightly. They kidnap Sam mid-book tour, binding and gagging her in the same attic where they forged their bunnymen. Here, she’s forced to listen as they retell events from their own twisted perspectives. Thus, Awad’s metafictional approach lets the reader inhabit this zany, terrifying world twice over: first through Sam’s perspective in Bunny, and then through the eyes of the Bunnies themselves.

It’s a concept that’s both fascinating and grotesque. A kind of literary revenge ritual/parody of their old creative workshops. The girls even pass around an axe like a talking stick. Though their recollections take place before the events of Bunny layering their self-serving narratives over Sam’s version of events adds texture to the mythology. In Bunny, the four girls largely functioned as a single entity- Sam rarely shares their names. Here, we’re treated to each of their voices in turn, as they explain how they met, became the Bunnies, and learned the dark art of turning rabbits into boys. It is a fascinating concept, the kind of narrative experiment that is often born from writing exercises in a workshop.

Awad also continues to experiment with voice and prose, using the Bunnies’ varied narration to poke and prod at the elite education system. For example, when the “Duchess” (one of the Bunnies), begins her version of events, the tone instantly becomes more “literary”– or rather, performatively so. She capitalises her nouns for no apparent reason, her syntax is overly elaborate, and her prose reads as though she’s devoured a thesaurus. It’s the kind of overwrought writing familiar to anyone who’s taken a creative writing workshop, where all too often authors will defend self-conscious stylisations as expert rulebreaking.

At Warren, creativity and “experimental” approaches like this are seemingly valued above all else, including at times, the quality of the work. Awad’s satire lands because it is instantly recognisable: the huge egos, the fragile attachment to “voice”, their insistence that every arbitrary stylistic choice simply feels “right”. And of course, the symbolism of vaginas is visible throughout the book, from the O’Keefe-inspired flowers on the cover of a writing journal to the dark “cave” room where they deliver feedback, and the figure of “Mother”. Much of the novel’s dark humour lies in this exaggerated world of artistic eccentricity and posturing, from the rituals that birth the bunnymen to the bitter rivalry between the fiction writing class and the poets in their battle for superiority.

At the same time, Awad skewers the creative world’s obsession with publication and recognition, and the desperate need for greatness. The hippie-ish figure of Mother embodies this hypocrisy perfectly. She claims to nurture her all-female cohort, praising their sensitivity and talent even as she resents them, becomes jealous of their work, and schemes to claim ownership of things that don’t belong to her. Everyone at Warren is, it seems, either a fraud, a narcissist or a blocked writer– sometimes all three.

At the heart of this novel is the workshop’s obsession with literally “killing your darlings”, a surreal and often hilarious exaggeration of the creative process. Awad peppers the narrative with sly nods to recognisable touchstones from literature and pop culture- the girls are obsessed with Stevie Nicks and Sylvia Plath, and it’s impossible not to miss the winks towards Tartt’s The Secret History, from the characters discussing Bennington (the real-life college Hampden is based on) to the frequent references to fatal flaws. Layered over this are a chorus of unreliable narrators. Each Bunny’s account rewrites the last, producing a kaleidoscope of fact and fiction. Even Sam does not escape from this. In WLYB we learn that the names she uses for the Bunnies are not their real names (they’ve been changed to disguise their identities for publishing). It’s a small lie, but it’s enough to make you remember that in this world, Sam’s Bunny is an edited, published version of events and as such things have been changed to adapt to her audience.

Set against the ultra-violence and poverty beyond Warren’s ivory towers, this contrast in fact and fiction feels sharp and deliberate.

The result is, as the cover describes, “Frankenstein by way of The Heathers“, though I’d argue there’s more than a splash of Bret Easton Ellis’ glossy nihilism in there too. 

I did love Aerius’ narration though, it’s a sudden shift of voice that feels so refreshing after being trapped in the Bunnies’ suffocating sweetness. His writing style is unique and amusing for its weird quirks, and I loved his arc.

That said, We Love You, Bunny isn’t without its flaws. Its structure, while ambitious, can become repetitive, and in trying to individualise the Bunnies, Awad sometimes renders them flatter– less archetypal, but also less magnetic and more mean girl bitchiness instead. The novel’s timeline also stretches credulity: the sheer level of violence and absurdity on display makes it difficult to imagine these events unfolding before Bunny, especially as Sam seems completely oblivious to any of it. 

Still, for all its excesses, Awad’s sequel remains a strange and intoxicating descent. It’s self-aware, funny, and just as unhinged as the world it depicts.