True to form, Mona Awad’s atmospheric and dreamy writing are a delight to read. She is incredible at writing feverish hallucinations and setting the tone of her books. Narratively, this book is not what I expected. I was hoping for a directly connected prequel to Bunny (2019) but the events of this book are mostly in the months before the events of Bunny (2019). It was nice to get additional backstory on the Bunnies and some surprising POVs from characters briefly mentioned in Bunny (2019). Overall, this book feels like a standalone within the Bunny universe as opposed to a direct prequel.

We Love You, Bunny is a wickedly sharp and gloriously unhinged return to the darkly satirical world introduced in Bunny. With her trademark blend of horror, humor, and high-literary camp, Mona Awad flips the narrative on its bloodied head—giving voice to the eerie, hyper-feminine clique that once lured Samantha Heather Mackey into their surreal creative coven.

This time, Samantha isn’t in control of the story. Gagged and tied, she’s forced to listen as the Bunnies take turns recounting their origin story, and the result is nothing short of mesmerizing. What could have felt like a gimmick becomes a layered, intoxicating reexamination of power, authorship, and the myth of the solitary (usually male) genius. The Bunnies are still saccharine and savage, but now we see their pain, hunger, and surprising vulnerability beneath the glitter and gore.

Awad’s language is as lush and intoxicating as ever—full of sugary menace and hallucinatory detail. The novel gleefully mashes genres: dark academia, fairy tale, body horror, metafiction. It’s a love letter to creation and destruction, the wild places imagination can take us, and the price we pay to make something truly original.

Where Bunny explored what it means to be on the outside looking in when We Love You, Bunny dares to step inside the hive mind—and the result is brilliant. Fans of the first book will be thrilled, but new readers could also enter here and still find themselves seduced and unsettled in equal measure.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Plot-Samantha Heather has published her first novel, and done quite well for herself. However, her “friends” from Bunny are not happy with how Sam portrayed them in her book and decide to kidnap her. It’s our turn to hear the Bunnies side of the story.

Positives-I genuinely did not think it could get more fantastical than “Bunny”, but I was proven wrong. The entire book is basically continuous unhinged monologue. Feeling more like fanfic than anything else, readers will have a very different experience for book two. While it wasn’t what I expected when I dived into WLYB, this was a unique experience for me. I have never read a book where it was narrated in entirety this way, and I appreciated experiencing something new. I felt like I was inside Mona Awad’s imagination and creative center more than any other book I have read by her.

Criticism-
I was really excited to read a whole new chapter in Bunny world, rather than narrated fanfic. I felt some of the mysterious magic was taken away in WLYB. This was not a bad book, it just didn’t work for me personally.

This was a wild ride from start to finish. I love Awad’s writing and that will never change. This was funny, dark, and surreal. This novel is more surreal than Bunny but still has the humor I crave from reading her backlist.

While she says this is its own book I don’t think you should read this without reading Bunny first (also who wouldn’t want to read that book in the first place).

This did feel a little long and I preferred a characters POV over some others but that is my preference. Thank you for the ARC, I felt so special.

I love Mona Awad, and I loved Bunny, so this was a very anticipated release for me! I tore through Part 1 and couldn’t get enough, but as the book went on I found it harder to keep myself as engaged with the story unfolding in Part 2 and beyond. Overall though, I really appreciated that the story rounded out the world and the characters in a way that added to the Bunnyverse, if you will, in a meaningful way.

I saw some reviews say that this book could stand alone from Bunny, and I don’t know that I agree with that, but either way it’s a really fun prequel/sequel. If you REALLY loved Bunny this is worth a read.

Rounding up from 3.5. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

!!!!new mona awad book!!!!!
!!!!new mona awad writing style!!!!

oh my god i am in love with anything this woman publishes and i cannot wait to reread this and bunny this fall. master of mind-bending litfic.

THANK YOU to the publisher for the e-arc!

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!

My expectations were high and this didn’t disappoint. I loved the structure of this book, with different POVs - it was cool to hear from other characters. Humorous, weird, creepy, gory, fun, melancholic. What more could I ask for, Bunny?

An absolutely hilarious addition to the Bunny universe. This is a must read if you've attended a liberal arts college and can handle a fair bit of ribbing.

What a fantastic continuation to my favorite universe ever. I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to get beastly access to this. I absolutely love getting all kinds of perspective from characters who are incredibly not perfect themselves. I will never not need more bunny.

I loved this book! This sure to be cult classic follows a heroine that says what we’re all thinking. I really liked the first book in the series but loved this one even more. I loved the way the author wrote, as if I could see into her thought process.

I would recommend this book to friends.

Thank you #netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my review.

BUNNY was such an incredible, weird fever dream, and I wasn't sure what to expect from its standalone prequel/sequel/spin-off. The book's blurb introduces the story, only setting up the first few pages of the book, which would normally annoy me. Here, I'm glad I had no hint or warning about what was to come. Awad, in her trademark acid-trip-gone-wrong prose, takes the reader through a deadly love letter to writing. Hearing from the Bunnies POV was much fun, but it was Aerius who stole the show. Ultimately, WE LOVE YOU, BUNNY is a tender, heart-wrenching, hilarious novel that contains laugh out loud humor side-by-side with poignant or pointed perspectives on love, writing, and self. Awad serves again.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

This was crazy. Maybe even more so than Bunny. I tried to describe this to a friend and I was like “a dude who used to be a bunny is running around trying to kill people named Allan.” Yup.

Anyways, I felt like the first part of the story was slow and then it picked up a lot. I liked the second two thirds of the book much more than the first. Really enjoyable … but also insane.

We Love You, Bunny is technically a sequel to Mona Awad’s Bunny, but it reads more like a companion novel—with elements of prequel and sequel blended into one deeply bizarre and unsettling fever dream. As someone who has read Bunny three times and found new interpretations with each pass, this latest entry into the Bunny-verse both answered some lingering questions and opened the door to even more mysteries.

This book dives deeper into the origins of the Bunny gang, revealing their side of the story in a way that’s as strange and disorienting as you'd expect—and maybe even more so. Seeing the contrast between how Samantha portrayed them and who they actually are was fascinating (and often laugh-out-loud funny), especially as the Bunnies themselves call out those distinctions.

One of the most unexpected and wild elements was the deep dive into the axe murderer mentioned in the first book. What I initially thought would be a minor thread turned into a major focus, and it added a chaotic, surreal twist that only Mona Awad could pull off.

Awad has a signature style: part psychological horror, part absurdist satire, and wholly original. Her writing exists on that razor's edge between creepy and whimsical, like the pink elephant sequence in Dumbo—you’re never quite sure what’s real, what’s metaphor, and what’s just full-on hallucination. And that’s exactly what makes her work so intoxicating.

This was easily one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and I’m beyond grateful to NetGalley and Simon Element | S&S / Marysue Rico Books for the advanced copy. I’m certain that, like Bunny, I’ll return to We Love You, Bunny again and uncover new layers. It’s a book that refuses to be pinned down—and that’s what makes it so unforgettable.

I love weird girl fiction and no one does it better than Mona, loved this so much, captivating writing that sucks you in from the very beginning

I read Bunny at the end of last year and loved it, so I was pumped to get this ARC.

However, this one was kind of a letdown 😭 I found a lot of it to be very long-winded, like, it could have been a lot shorter and still got the point across. It made it hard to keep reading at times without getting distracted. And while I loved the surrealism in Bunny, it almost felt like overkill in this one.

Now, I still loved the themes and it definitely set a nice background for the first book, so I can’t say I hated it. There were even some parts I enjoyed, and the ending was lowkey wild.

But yeah, I think I just expected a lot more after how great the first one was. It did at times feel like it was a chore to continue reading 😫

I can't explain why I'm drawn to Awad's Bunny books, but I am. This is a captivating tale that sucks you in so much you won't be able to do much else until you finish it and have a few days to process the story! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I was never going to give this less than 5 stars, okay? Bunny is one of my favorite novels and Mona Awad could have just published her grocery list, called it the sequel/prequel to Bunny, and I would have given it 5 stars. That said, this was such a good time, oh my god. The story follows our bunnies from the original novel, not super-pleased with their depiction at the hands of Sam, the narrator from Bunny, who has just published her account of her time spent in an MFA program, surrounded by the titular bunnies. The bunnies kidnap Sam and force her to hear “their side” of the story, from the beginninging. A tagline to this describes it as “Heathers meets Frankenstein” and I agree with that! I really don’t think anyone but Awad could write this story. It’s deranged and weird zany but with a cupcake pink veneer that feels like such a thin line to straddle and she does it seamlessly. Parts of the story are told by one singular bunny, then followed up with the collective group speaking, which I thought would be grating, but again, it worked for me. I loved this! Loved it. Already looking forward to reading again. Bunny forever.

Forget the star system, 5/5 🐰 for this masterpiece!!
If you loved or liked Bunny, you will LOVE this follow up.
Have you ever wondered what the Bunnies thought of Sam's published version of events? What's their side of the story? Have you ever wondered what the Boy Bunnies thought of everything?
The writing is (as always) phenomenal and each character truly has their own voice.
We Love You, Bunny is absolutely twisted and *impossible* to put down.
I cannot recommend it enough!
Thank you, Bunny, for another incredible read 🐰🐰

Mona Awad has done it again. We Love You, Bunny is a razor-sharp, pitch-black descent back into the Bunny-verse—equal parts horror story, artistic manifesto, and psychosexual fever dream.

Both a prequel and sequel to Bunny, this novel hands the narrative over to the girls themselves. What starts as a revenge plot quickly mutates into something stranger and more compelling: a fractured origin story of friendship, power, and monstrous creativity. With Sam gagged and bound, the Bunnies recount their own version of events—uncensored, unhinged, and far more unsettling than anything Sam ever imagined.

Awad’s prose is as viciously precise as ever, swinging between academic satire and hallucinatory horror without missing a beat. The result is a novel that’s wickedly smart, deeply unnerving, and somehow still laugh-out-loud funny.

We Love You, Bunny is a masterclass in narrative inversion and a brutal meditation on the cost of making something—anything—real. Awad remains one of the most fearless writers working today.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Overall, I really liked this title. I thought the parts with Aerius dragged a little and I wish there a part explaining what happened after "Bunny" and this title. The ending was also a little rushed. It was very funny though and the cover is giving!