The highly-anticipated follow up to the viral sensation Bunny, a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud funny, dark and delirious novel set in the Bunny-verse – a world that Margaret Atwood declared ‘soooo genius’.
Read on for an extract …
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracised and then seduced by a clique of her saccharine sweet, rich girl cohort (who call one another ‘Bunny’). An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus Workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with wondrous yet deadly consequences.
When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers — and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny. Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete standalone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to a dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever dream, Mona Awad.
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EXTRACT
Hi, Bunny.
It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?
We missed you, we really did. So much.
And look at you now, wow. All gothed out again. Back to wearing your scary-bleak clothes and your dark hair still hanging in front of your eye, how funny. You’ve been busy since we last saw you, haven’t you? Very busy, apparently, scribble-scribbling in the dark. Publishing your little novel. About us, so fun. And it’s enjoyed a somewhat moderate success. Good for you!
Amazing, really, what people will read nowadays. That’s why we brought you up here, in fact, to Kyra’s attic (remember this attic?) for a little congratulatory toast among old friends. A cozy reunion of sorts with your former MFA cohort, those you’ve left in the literary dust, so to speak, ha ha ha. Not that we’re bitter, Bunny, oh my god, not at all. We’re raising our glasses to you, aren’t we?
What’s that, Bunny? You can’t raise your glass?
Oh, because of the restraints, that’s right.
Sorry about those.
Well, we’ll toast for you, how’s that? We could use a bit of a tipple, frankly, under the circumstances. A little Light and Sunny, remember those? Oh, we wouldn’t squirm in that chair so much, Bunny, not if we were you. It’s just going to cause more bruises on those wrists, that neck, so like a swan’s. . . .
But we digress.
Sorry again we had to tie you up a little. But it’s just so very lovely to catch up like this, isn’t it, just the five of us here in the dark? You all cozy in your chair, and the four of us standing close and adorable in our rabbit masks, making a semicircle of such love and understanding all around you, our dresses shining prettily by the light of the hunter’s moon. It’s a hunter’s moon tonight, Bunny, oh yes. Look at it full and glowing through the window (on All Hallows’ Eve, no less!), and the night so beautifully full of screaming. Your screaming included. Probably you’ve dreamed of this moment, haven’t you? We have too, trust. And when we saw on the Warren student listserv that our very own former peer was coming back to town, on tour for her debut novel, the first among our cohort to publish, we thought, Why not make those dreams a reality? Why not support our old friend Sam Mackey? Or Samantha Heather Mackey, as you so very inventively called yourself in your little novel (going for autofiction, were you?).
We did enjoy that wink to the ’80s film, by the way, that softening touch to a name otherwise so evocative of your own boyish will. Despite the way you left things, Samantha, despite the unpleasantness, we really felt support was the grown-up thing to do. Our therapist even said it might be good for our Healing Journeys. Put the past behind us and such. Be a good literary citizen and such. Buy a copy of her book and read it, very adultlike, not at all screaming bitch, not at all vomiting. Fly back to this New England town, the town of our old alma mater, and attend her reading at the Warren University Bookstore, we all had this idea, it seems! The hive mind is not entirely dead, it seems. Awakened, perhaps, by your betrayal.
So funny, your face, when you saw us in the audience, by the way. How we were applauding you, not with our hands so much, but with our eyes. You
sort of froze for a minute, didn’t you, at your podium, at the sight of us sitting there in the very back row, each of us in a different colored dress so that together we made such a happy rainbow, we embodied the holy elements of earth, air, water, and fire. So smiling at you. So supporting. You sort of cried
a little when you first made eye contact, didn’t you? We did too, Bunny.
They were joy tears, promise.
Your reading was so amazing, we meant to tell you. And funny! So funny how you made us into ax-wielding monsters. So very hilarious how you divulged our most tender secrets. We laughed until we cried, we really did. What’s that you’re saying, Bunny? We’re having just a little bit of a hard time understanding you through the gag we put in your mouth. Or maybe it’s the drugs making you drool like that. We mixed just a sprinkling into your bookstore wine earlier, which we bought you out of mercy, really (you were so nervous!). And though you accepted with some hesitancy, Bunny, you did drink. Drank it all down, in fact, didn’t you? Perhaps out of the stress of the situation, which we totally get. Sometimes it’s stressful to see old friends, we agree. Or maybe it’s being back here in the attic, where it all began.
Workshop. The bunnies, the boys, the blood, so much blood. The beautiful, sacred thing we allowed you to be a part of, out of the kindness of our fucking hearts. The ax is still here too, look at that. Right here in the corner where we last left it, how serendipitous. Even a few flecks of blood on the blade still. Are they fresh flecks? Oh, we don’t know, Bunny. Maybe they are. God knows what we’ve been up to here, right? Only two springs ago, but it feels like an eternity now, doesn’t it? Since we all graduated from this hell place and went our separate, lonely ways into the cold, wide world?
Feels good in our hands now, though, the ax. Feels like old times. We still know how to strike and to grip, it looks like. Like riding a bicycle, really. Funny how it all comes back.
What have we been up to? Oh, busy. Very busy, just like you, Bunny. Reading your book and screaming, ha ha ha. Dreaming of revenge scenarios, ha ha ha. Sharing these scenarios during therapy, getting carried away sometimes in the colour and wonder of them, until our killjoy therapist says, That’s enough for today. No but seriously, we really do love our therapist; he’s a wonderfully kind and thoughtful human. How he just sits there in his leather chair on Zoom and stares so compassionately at the squares of us, saying, Tell me, tell me. He’s helping us, so much, to reconnect with our creativity. Since you destroyed our souls, we sort of lost our way, sad to say. But we’re working to get it back, working on our own stuff right now, actually.
It’s going so well. Tonight’s really a big part of our Creative Journey, believe it or not. And you, you’re a big part of it too.
Oh, don’t cry, Bunny! We’re not going to kill you, don’t be silly! This isn’t your novel, this is reality, remember? We’re not murderers IRL, despite the very ick brush with which you chose to paint us. No, no, we’re just going to have a little chat, is all, one by one by one by one. Taking turns with you in our telling, doesn’t that sound fun? Sort of like the ultimate Smut Salon. (You remember Smut Salon, don’t you?) As for your novel, well, we have no intention of commenting, don’t worry. About all of that: no comment, as they say. Except that you got it wrong. So fucking wrong. About us.
Ax murderers? Please. (Oh, best not to struggle, Bunny, it will only make the restraints more ouch.)
So what are we going to say? Oh how we’ve thought and thought about this! Our therapist recently put us through something like a writing exercise, remember those? Imagine, he said softly, if you could sit Samantha down and say one thing, what would it be? And he looked at us with his too-blue gaze, which eerily recalled all we had made and lost, and we knew exactly. What we would fucking say. Not that you were a liar. Not that you were a treacherous psychotic whore, no, no. Fuck talking about you.
Instead we thought we’d tell you the story, the lovely little story, Bunny, of us.
How we came together that first year. How, together, we broke reality and basically reinvented the laws of the natural world.
How we, too, made something beautiful once, oh yes. More beautiful than anything you could ever dream in your small, small mind. And real, too. Before. Long before you ever walked into the picture. When you were nothing, in fact, but a small, dark speck in the corner of our minds and eyes.
What’s that you’re trying to say, Bunny? Your publicist is expecting you at your hotel tonight, is she? You have a train to catch in the morning, do you? You have another city, another bookstore to visit on your tour of lies? Oh, we don’t know if you’re going to make that train tomorrow, Bunny. Maybe, maybe not. Depends on a lot. We’ll see how you do as an audience, how’s that? Coraline wants to start, don’t you, Bunny? Cupcake, we believe you called her in your telling.
But your telling is over now.
So sit back, relax, and listen, k?
Because here tonight in the moon-splashed dark, it really is high time for us to make something beautiful again.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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 divides her time between La Jolla and 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. Her next novel, We Love You, Bunny, will be released on September 23, 2025 with Simon & Schuster. It was recently longlisted for the Giller prize.
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