Book 13 Bunny

 

Bunny by Mona Awad fulfilled the category “Dark Academia” for the PopSugar 2021 Reading Challenge. The novel takes place at Warren University (pun intended, I’m sure) where Samantha Mackey is a graduate student working on her MFA in fiction.

Okay, so what did I just read? This story confused and confounded me. I wasn’t even sure what genre we were diving into. At first, it seemed a coming-of-age book—dealing with classes (literally and socially) and Samantha’s finding a place in the world. Then the novel went dark, very dark. Since I picked it for the Dark Academia prompt, it should have. And the story totally fell down the rabbit hole (pun intended). The book is full of Alice references. More on that later.

So basic plot: Samantha is attending a very elite, excellent school to get a master’s in fine arts. She’s a victim of huge losses in her short life. Her mother died when she was a young teen, her father is in hiding because of his criminal activity, and she broke and friendless. Samantha has built many walls so that she has a hard time making friends and understanding kindness. She follows all the wrong rabbits and ends up in a grad class with four picture-perfect “bunnies.” The women in her group whom she must work with are cardboard cutouts. They are rich, perfect, and pretentious (more on that later too.) Samantha hates them but wants to be a part of the group. All goes wrong when she falls into their club (cult).

I don’t want to give too much away on this story in case you want to take this ride too. To solve her problems, Samantha must find out who she really is, what she really wants, and how to get it. But it’s all in a dark, sad, Alice in Wonderland way. It’s not the literary nonsense of Lewis Carroll. Things make sense, to a point. But it’s easy to see how the author plays on the themes Carroll uses in his books—absurdism, non-logic, and rabbits everywhere. (A neat YA read that totally gets Carroll’s style is Heartless by Marissa Meyer. It was on point. Anyway… ) Ms. Awad uses the bunnies/rabbits to show how deep Samantha is down the rabbit hole and how she must find her way through Wonderland (Warren) to find a way home. Sam’s best friend even has a Drink Me flask and the women are always eating mini foods, especially cupcakes. I found these allusions helped ground me in the story because the references gave me some handholds to get through the tale.

Absurdism and Dark Academia behind, I have to admit part of this book annoyed me, a writer, not a reader. I do not have an MFA, nor do I plan to get one because… snobbery. The pretentiousness of this novel made me crazy. The Bunnies—the four women in Samantha’s group—wrote very bold, snobby, overly done things. One woman etched her work into glass (more Wonderland). Our heroine was annoyed and disgusted by their airs. But she had her own. As I listened to the vocabulary, images, and structure of Samantha’s words (she narrates), she was just as snooty. I’m a writer of tales for the average person. I don’t believe in some of the high-handedness of literature and its writers. Classics are great, in moderation. (I’ve got one for you next week.) But please don’t throw your pretty words at me and think you are better than average. Honestly, it was obnoxious with all the flowery images and deep anxiety prose. Sigh, snore, move on.

So with all that, Bunny isn’t that bad. I wish I had a book group to talk about it with!

I give Bunny by Mona Awad Three and a half Pink Fluffy Bunnies. Wait, ew! Okay, four.

 

 

 

Book 12 The Queen of Nothing

 

The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black fulfilled the category “Book with Something Broken on the Cover” for the PopSugar 2021 Reading Challenge. The novel has a broken crown on the cover. This crown has been featured on all the stories and only cracked in half on the third.

Yes, this is another Young Adult book. I apologize for two in a row. I had a different romance read for this week, but then I would have two LGBTQIA books in a row. Since The Queen of Nothing was in a different genre (or arguably in another sub-genre of romance), I went with it.

And yes, it’s the third installment in a trilogy. Kinda a tough sell to give you the last novel as a review, but hopefully, it will inspire your reading choices. Plus, we all know I’ve done it before. LOL

The Queen of Nothing is about a faerie kingdom that lives parallel to our world. Humans and faeries cross over all the time for good or bad. Jude Duarte finds out her mother had lived in Faerie for many years and her older sister was of the folk. She discovers this when Vivi’s father, Madoc, comes back for her. He kills Jude’s parents and kidnaps her, her twin, and Vivi back to Faerie. Jude grows up there and lives the life of a noblewoman, except she’s human. She must protect herself at all times from the folk who trick and coerce but never lie. Jude becomes entrenched in a political plot in the first two books that leaves her (spoiler) the Queen of Faerie but exiled to the human world.

I love a good fantasy book, especially one with a romantic subplot. But… faeries, man. They are cruel. (The first story was The Cruel Prince, so there ya go.) Every tale I read with them, they are just jerks the entire time—always, every installation I’ve seen of them. And yes, I get this is the folklore around faeries but geez. It’s tiresome to never know if you can trust a character. Even at the happy ending, I still didn’t trust those faeries. To me, that’s not romantic to fall for the faerie prince because he’s going to trick you, cheat on you, and then outlive you by a billion years.

Another problem I’ve had with recent Young Adult Fantasy/Sci-Fi is the scope of these books. It seems sometimes these authors have bitten off more than they can chew. It seems to stem from a realization that royalty actually has to rule. The authors add political sub-plots, complicated government, and high-stakes concepts. Jude must fight for the true king of Faerie to be put on the throne. Cinder must rule over an entire moon of her people. Harry must battle the most powerful dark wizard since Slytherin. (Of course, in Harry’s case, there wasn’t as much political stuff he had to deal with.) Readers don’t want the simple “princess woken with a kiss” and then happily ever after anymore. But these fairy tales are morphing into political games. Not my cup of tea. It’s too big of a story for one young woman to stumble into.

I say all this, and you probably think I didn’t love these books. I do. But with some hesitation. Holly Black is a fantastic writer. She’s written all over the genre, and I adore her stories. Some days, I long for that young woman just to get her shoe back and be the princess. And no more mean fairies. They make me sad.

I give The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black Four Ragweed Ponies for a ride over the ocean.