We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Like the perfectly terrifying fever-dream you would get after watching both “Frankenstein” and “Alice in Wonderland” while high on cold medicine.
Hi Bunny! You didn’t think we were going to miss the chance to review Mona Awad’s highly anticipated We Love You, Bunny, did you? Well, don’t worry! Whether you loved Mona Awad’s Bunny and are excited to learn more about this companion novel or have never even heard of Bunny, we’re here to tell you all about it.
According to Awad herself, We Love You, Bunny works as a sequel/prequel to Bunny and as a stand-alone novel. We Love You, Bunny takes readers deeper down the rabbit hole as we are reunited with the characters we’ve come to know and love, and fall for new characters who seem to cast a charming sort of spell on just about everyone.
Welcome to the Hive Mind
In Bunny, we follow Samantha Heather Mackey, who spent the entire first year in her MFA program isolated from the other four women in her cohort, a culty group of creepy-close rich girls who call each other “Bunny.” At the start of their second year, Samantha receives an unexpected invitation into their circle. Reality blurs into madness as Samantha is pulled into their violent “Workshops,” where she learns of the Bunnies’ monstrous capabilities to conjure living creations.
In We Love You, Bunny, Sam has just published her first novel, and her book tour has taken her back to the cursed New England town where she attended grad school. Through the distinct hive mind voice of the Bunnies, readers quickly learn that the Bunnies have kidnapped Sam and have her bound and gagged in the very attic they all once used to conjure their creations in the night.
All the Bunnies want is a chance to tell their side of the story, which they believe Sam has falsely portrayed in her novel. They want to set the record straight about all that happened during their MFA program, where they learned to create so much more than just silly written stories. And so begins the origin story of the Bunnies, of one very special bunny in particular, and all that happened before Sam entered the Bunny-verse.
The Haunting Power of the Bunny-verse
Like in Bunny, Mona Awad emphasizes the intoxicating power of creation and of fitting in, this time proving that no one is immune to it. She once again plays with the idea of an unreliable narrator, switching perspectives often and making readers question what the reality of the situation is.
The thing is, no one knows what the reality is. Above all else, Awad creates a genius statement on the thin line between fiction and reality for an artist, working wonderfully in tandem with so many ridiculous stereotypes of the creative world.
Mona Awad writes with a haunting sense of self-awareness, creating a sort of meta bunny-verse. Everything is written with complete intention, allowing the reader in on what feels like inside jokes, making them interact with the story as if they, too, have stuck their head down into a rabbit hole just to see what was inside. It is filled with a ridiculous sense of humor that is so on the nose it is sure to make readers chuckle and shake their heads.
Awad’s Masterful Use of Voice
Awad is a master of writing a distinct voice for each of her characters, making it easy to distinguish tone and perspective. She completely controls the narrative based on which character’s voice is telling the story at any given moment.
This gives the story such an engaging quality while also making it feel even more alive. Reading We Love You, Bunny is like hearing a ton of little voices in your head.
Suffice to say, Mona Awad has done it again with We Love You, Bunny. Its genius is like the perfectly terrifying fever-dream you would get after watching both Frankenstein and Alice in Wonderland while high on cold medicine.
It is a wild story; you’re never quite sure where it is going. It has a plot that is definitely hard to explain, but by the end, you can’t help but understand that, in many ways, it is immensely profound.
Mona Awad is the bestselling author of the novels Rouge, All’s Well, Bunny and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. She is a three-time finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award, the recipient of an Amazon Best First Novel Award, and she was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Bunny was a finalist for a New England Book Award and was named a Best Book of 2019 by Time, Vogue and the New York Public Library. It is currently being developed for film with Bad Robot Productions. Rouge is being adapted for film by Fremantle and Sinestra. Margaret Atwood named Awad her “literary heir” in The New York Times’s T Magazine. She teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Syracuse University and is based in Boston. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s and TIME magazine, among others.
Publish Date: 9/23/2025
Genre: Fiction
Author: Mona Awad
Page Count: 496 pages
Publisher: S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books
ISBN: 9781668059869