We Love You, Bunny

We Love You, Bunny is a sequel to Mona Awad’s 2019 novel, Bunny. Since most of We Love You, Bunny is a retrospective narrative, the plot events in this second novel are actually chronologically earlier than the events in the first novel.

Bunny begins in September, at the start of the second year in which Samantha and the Bunnies are working toward their MFA. Bunny is told exclusively from Samantha’s point of view and captures her largely negative perception of the Bunnies. We Love You, Bunny describes the events that took place in the prior academic year. In addition to filling in backstory, We Love You, Bunny allows the four Bunnies to speak both collectively and individually, providing greater depth and insight into their characterization.

In Bunny, Samantha feels alienated from the other four young women who comprise her MFA cohort. They have failed to bond during their first year, and Samantha suspects that they resent her because of the close relationship that developed between her and Allan (referred to as “the Lion”) during their first year. Samantha and the Bunnies are being taught workshop again by Ursula, who is referred to as “Fosco.” Samantha’s use of a different name references the switch in perspective between the two novels: To her, Ursula is a villain, so she uses a nickname alluding to a villain in the Victorian novel The Woman in White. What Samantha perceives as a close relationship between the Bunnies and Fosco/Ursula stems from the power the Bunnies have over Ursula due to events explained in We Love You, Bunny.

Despite her mistrust of the Bunnies, Samantha is also intrigued by them and eagerly accepts the invitation to begin attending their “smut salons” in the autumn of their second year. The Bunnies eventually reveal their secret to Samantha: They transform rabbits into young men. We Love You, Bunny explains the origin of this practice. Entranced by the Bunnies, Samantha stops spending time with her best friend, Ava. Samantha eventually creates her own hybrid, a brooding and dangerous man named Max. All of the Bunnies become enthralled with Max, reflecting their fascination with male love objects, which also appears in We Love You, Bunny.

After the Bunnies kill Samantha’s beloved friend, Ava, she takes her revenge by killing Max. In both novels, characters mysteriously transform into animals when they die: Ava transforms into a swan, and Max transforms into a stag. The Bunnies are wounded in this violent confrontation, and Bunny concludes with the four friends attending their MFA graduation ceremony with assorted injuries. These tense and violent events explain why, in We Love You, Bunny, Samantha is depicted as wary of returning to the college town. She correctly suspects that the Bunnies have violent tendencies and may seek revenge against her.

The plot of Bunny is particularly important to We Love You, Bunny since the second novel utilizes the first as a plot device. At the start of We Love You, Bunny, Samantha is on tour for a novel she has recently published, and this book-within-a-book seems to have the same plot as Bunny. Readers who are familiar with Bunny will understand why the Bunnies feel outraged with the way they have been depicted in Samantha’s novel.