We are both so excited and so nervous to dive into this weird and wonderful novel for the podcast. ‘Bunny’ by Mona Awad is our second pick for this season and what a novel!

This has been on our radar for a little while already, but the love and buzz it’s been receiving from BookTok recently has pushed it higher and higher up our priority list. It sounds like the perfect read for ‘The Dark Academicals’.

We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.

Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort - a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny'.

But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.

Blending sharp satire with fairytale horror, Bunny is a spellbinding trip of a novel from one of fiction's most original new voices.

It seems to tick boxes already: a secret society? Check. A fancy MFA program? Check. An elite university? Check. An outsider protagonist? Check. But is that all it takes to be dark academia? We dove in and found out.

In this episode we discuss:

• How genre classification shapes the reading of a novel

• To what degree does self-conscious satire allow for anything to be excused

• Unreliable narrators

• ‘Bunny’ by Mona Awad

• ‘Monstrous Cute: An Interview with Mona Awad’ (The Paris Review)

• ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt

• ‘If We Were Villains’ by ML Rio

• ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ advert (Alan! Alan! Steve!)

If you fancy getting involved with the Bunnies and grabbing yourself a copy of the novel, we’d love it if you considered using our bookshop.org link below which helps up fund ‘The Dark Academicals’ and gives back to independent bookshops at no extra cost to you.

You can also sign up to The Dark Academicals Book Club mailer to be entered for exclusive book club content and giveaways!