"Bunny" by Mona Awad

This book is either hated or loved. Personally, I loved it. No wonder reviewers have trouble articulating what they just read. Think of it as a fever dream where Alice in Wonderland is crossed with Frankenstein. At an elite MFA program creativity is stifled. Cookie cutter rich girls who attend the school are desperately trying to create their ideal boyfriends out of bunnies (Warren is after all a rabbit borrow, so is literally filled with bunnies and Bunnies :-)). But all they are able to produce are handless and dickless Drafts that they can control but who can never be their lovers. 

Our main character Samantha is not a Bunny. She is the quintessential outsider to the prestigious school and her cliquey classmates. Her inspiration is not fed by the bunny filled detached from reality Warren. Rather she draws from the Other, the lovecraftian city that is so unlike the school that is located in it. (And yes, you can easily recognize the city of Lovecraft and Brown U - loved finding all the subtle and not so subtle references). She is inspired by the lonely swan she sees on a pond, by a stag that somehow wanders into campus and even by …. mud. Her transformations are the result of a deep sense of loneliness, she creates not sex partners, but soulmates and friends. Her creations are so real she herself treats them as such. Her propensity to “pretend” and “to lie in order to make things more interesting” make her an unreliable narrator and someone who cannot make connections with others. But it also makes her a great storyteller, the one who at times cannot control her narrative because the narrative takes on a life of its own. 

Ah, I could go on and on. There is so much to unpack here. Warren itself is a character and we could spend some time talking about that. And oh the faculty, the privilege, this compete disconnect from reality (as the janitor wisely points out). I will stop here. I am sure I will keep thinking about this book for days to come.

February 2024 Reading Wrap-up

February was another great reading month! I managed to read 12 books. Two of these were really short. They were: 

• The Lady of Shalott, a poem by Tennyson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, and 
• I Choose Darkness, a short non-fic by Jenny Lawson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Both were excellent and I highly recommend them if you need a break from longer reads.

Let's look at some stats for February:

• I read 3 ARCs and 12 library books - this is really not helping me in terms of all the unread books that are sitting on my shelves
• In terms of format: 5-ebooks, 5 audio books and 2 in paper.

I have separate written reviews for the three ARCs that I read: 

• The Fury by Alex Michaelides ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and
• The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden ⭐️

Another relatively short book was 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. It was a delightful epistolary novel that includes 20 years of correspondence between the author and a bookshop in London. I listened to this on audio and highly recommend this format. It is only about two hours long and I really enjoyed it.

Early in February I finished a carry-over audio book from January Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. This is by far one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. It is a close and personal look at the US prison system and in particular innocent Black people on death row. Stevenson is an attorney who dedicated his life to fighting for justice for people who for all intents in purposes have no voice and who have been profoundly wronged by our society. This had a tremendous impact on me. I think it should be a required reading in school.

I also read a couple of sequels in ongoing series:

• Cocktails & Chloroform by Kelley Armstrong ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ is a novella in her A Rip In Time series about a female detective who somehow ends up time traveling to Victorian Edinburgh. So far I have enjoyed everything I've read by this author and I eagerly wait for the next installment in this series, which should be coming out this year.
• The Secrets of Winterhouse by Ben Guterson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ is the second novel in a middle-grade fantasy series that I enjoy. The main character is a precocious twelve-year old girl who loves books and secret codes. In each novel she solves a mystery of an old hotel that her grandfather owns. 

The three remaining books from my February list were:

• The Narrows by Kate Alice Marshall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. This is a modern gothic novel set in a boarding school. Kate Alice Marshall is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. So far, I have read 3 novels by her and loved all of them. This is a YA book about ghosts. I hear that her YA novels are much better than adult ones. But I will have to see. All three that I read were young adult and they were excellent.
• Beneath the Moon: Fairy Tales, Myths, and Divine Stories from Around the World by Yoshi Yoshitani ⭐️⭐️⭐️ was the most esthetically pleasing book I read this month. Each story was accompanied by a full-page color illustration, which were gorgeous. Many of the stories were familiar to me and some were new. If you like folklore, this is a great one to pick up. 
• Midnight at the Blackbird Café by Heather Webber ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ was a cozy magical realism novel set in a small southern town. It has a bit of everything: family drama, romance, and magic - all of these elements were low key and written in a way that is a bit of a step-up from a Hallmark movie. I listened to it on audio and quite enjoyed that format. If you need something heartwarming to read, look no further.