We Love You, Bunny functions as both a prequel and a sequel to Awad’s 2019 novel, Bunny, due to its complex narrative structure. The present-day plot of We Love You, Bunny begins with Samantha’s return to the unnamed town where Warren University is located. The reference to a “town named after God and fate” (15) alludes to Providence, Rhode Island, where Awad completed her own MFA at Brown University. In the present-day plot, it has been several years since Samantha and the four Bunnies graduated from their MFA program (their graduation ceremony was depicted at the end of Bunny). The references to the novel Samantha has written and published introduce a metafictional component to We Love You, Bunny: Samantha’s novel has the same plot and contents as Awad’s real-life novel. Readers who are familiar with the first book in the Bunny universe, therefore, are familiar with what Samantha has written and her version of the events that took place during their MFA program.

The Bunnies quickly make it clear that they are unhappy with Samantha’s version of events, complaining, “you got it wrong. So fucking wrong. About us” (8), and introducing the theme of Authorial Control and Agency Over Narratives. Rather than recounting the same events that Samantha has already relayed, the Bunnies decide to tell the story of the events that took place during their first year in the MFA program (before Samantha’s narrative begins). Most of We Love You, Bunny is thus a retrospective narrative, in which characters recount events that have taken place in the past.

Retrospective narration often lends itself to unreliable narrators because characters will cast past events through the lens of subsequent developments, and they often have strong motivations to conceal or misrepresent their past actions. While the Bunnies accuse Samantha of having been biased and inconsistent in her narrative, they are also depicted as unreliable narrators, not least because they squabble amongst themselves and accuse each other of getting parts of the story wrong. For example, Coraline is the first to speak, but Kyra eventually cuts her off with the comment that “she also decided to be just a little bit of a fucking liar, apparently” (51).

The Bunnies initially address Samantha collectively, functioning like a chorus in a Classical drama to convey key plot context at the start of the novel. They initially use “we” to speak collectively, before splintering into their four individual narratives. The Bunnies refer to each other and to Samantha as “Bunny,” blurring the boundaries between the group and the individual, reinforcing the notion that they function as a unit. Their collective narrative reveals that Samantha has been drugged, abducted, and is now being held captive in the attic of Kyra’s apartment building.

The attic is a key setting in both Bunny and We Love You, Bunny, functioning as the site where the Bunnies engage in their gruesome rituals of transforming rabbits into men. An attic is a liminal space that is part of the typically feminized, domestic space of a home, but also secret: In their groundbreaking work of literary criticism, The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar situate the attic as a place associated with subversion and feminine creative power, alluding in turn to the attic in Jane Eyre where Bertha Mason is held captive. The attic setting reveals how Awad uses deep layers of intertextuality and allusion.

As with Bunny, We Love You, Bunny subverts tropes of performative femininity to explore violence and the grotesque. The narrative is often darkly funny, such as when the Bunnies comment to Sam, “You can’t raise your glass? Oh, because of the restraints, that’s right” (5). The choppy sentences mirror the cadence of spoken word, capturing the effect of direct speech and the saccharine, “mean girl” sweetness that is characteristic of the Bunnies. The context of an abduction, captivity, and Samantha being threatened with an axe creates a juxtaposition between violence and the Bunnies’ claim that they are seeking healing and closure. The nickname of “Bunny” evokes something diminutive, cutesy, feminine, and childish, but the four female characters are presented as sinister and powerful in the complete control they wield over Samantha and the story they are now going to tell.

When the Bunnies begin recounting their experiences during their first semester at Warren (the name of the school is an allusion to the dens where rabbits live), they evoke the archetypal setting of a New England liberal arts college that has often been utilized in the campus novel and dark academia genres, such as The Secret History. The seemingly postcard-perfect setting of the campus creates a juxtaposition with the dark secrets that might lie there.

The theme of Disappointment Over Failed Role Models is introduced via the grief the Bunnies feel when they learn Ursula won’t be teaching their fall workshop, the class in which they will share and critique each other’s work, which is typically a cornerstone of an MFA program. Ursula Radcliffe’s name alludes to the character of Ursula from the Disney film The Little Mermaid (a powerful but malevolent sea witch with transformative powers) as well as to Radcliffe College (a historically significant American women’s college).

The Bunnies are immediately mistrustful of Allan, perceiving a man as being incapable of providing them with the feminized nurturing of their talent that they hoped to receive. They also become increasingly suspicious of Sam, whose abbreviated name implies that she may be aligned with Allan and the forces of masculinity. The Bunnies reveal the impact of internalized misogyny by assuming that Samantha is engaging in a sexual relationship with Allan, commenting that “she’s probably sucking him off right now” (64). They are thus quick to revert to demeaning stereotypes and assumptions about women themselves instead of questioning those assumptions.

The complex gender politics are reflected in Coraline’s comment, “I hate her [Sam] […] almost more than him” (64). The Bunnies resent Samantha for what they perceive as complicity in structures of patriarchal power; however, they fail to see how problematic it is that they immediately resent and mistrust Allan because of his gender. The Bunnies’ attitude toward Allan significantly colors the way in which they receive his feedback. Coraline’s description of receiving Allan’s feedback uses metaphors of physical and phallic violence, referencing how “I felt [his words]. Like daggers to my wrists” (40) and “his line notes, a.k.a stab wounds” (40). Later, Elsinore will suggest that the critique amounted to “an assault […] you were violated” (63), using language more typically associated with sexual assault.

The Bunnies’ misguided sense of victimization leads them to intense collective bonding, while excluding Samantha. It also sets the stage for their transformative creativity, as they glimpse the strange, blue-eyed rabbit for the first time immediately after Allan’s first critique. The fusion of the Bunnies into a sort of collective unconscious “hive mind” introduces aspects of magical realism into the novel, as does the strange ritual in which the rabbit explodes. The gruesome explosion introduces an exploration of how creativity can often only be achieved via suffering and destruction. At first, the Bunnies don’t realize what they have made, only what they have destroyed.