I went into this one pretty blind, but it seemed like something I would enjoy so I gave it a try. I enjoyed it quite a bit, aside from a few annoying writing quirks. It was also pretty funny. Nothing that made me laugh out loud, but for a book about books, it handled meta humor really well and a lot of it was especially witty.
The very beginning made me really think I would hate the protagonist, Samantha. She's a literature student working on her MFA with no friends and no family, and most of the first part of the book is dedicated to her being a loser and judging a group of girls in her cohort known as Bunnies. They're like sorority sisters mixed with T*mblr stereotypes, a little too touchy-feely with each other and easily excited. Samantha and her friend Ava are pretty much textbook NLOGs that hate them and their rituals (at first, anyway). But her NLOG tendencies and the setting of the story were almost uncomfortably relatable. I, too, spent time in a creepy pretentious college town and invested too much energy in hating everyone and everything in it. But because I'm a real person and not a character in a book, I had the self awareness to know that I was jealous that I wasn't rich and couldn't get praise for my pretentious bullshit. I was embarassed for her. Of course, Samantha gets called out several times in the book, though she was ultimately right. But even then, Samantha was definitely also a Bunny all along.
My favorite parts were towards the middle, after Samantha was inducted into the Bunny cult. The creepiness of it all was fun. And I thought the Darlings they created were very entertaining. Samantha decides that she hates the Bunnies in the end, but I think she thoroughly enjoyed being part of the group even knowing that it was all fake. She fit right in.
The plot twist with Ava was done pretty well. I liked that you slowly start to figure out what's going on before Samantha does, so her realization serves as confirmation in a way that's satisfying instead of patronizing. The book doesn't spend too much time going over the logic of things because it isn't necessary. Speaking of Ava, something that I don't think I've seen very often is friendship love, which is different than romantic love or sexual love. But I wonder if it was also self love? I don't think Ava was Samantha's ideal girlfriend, but a taller, more confident and certain, unfiltered Samantha. Sometimes when Samantha and Ava talked, it felt like Samantha arguing with version of herself that knew the answers even if it wasn't ones she liked. Despite Max being Samantha's ideal boyfriend, Samantha was never really jealous or discontent with his relationship with Ava for her own sake. Maybe it's because she knew he wasn't real, but maybe she subconsciously already knew Ava was part of her, too.
One thing that the book stopped mentioning after a point was all of the murders and beheadings that were apparently happening all over town. It was pretty easy to figure out that these were all failed Darlings, but I would have liked to have seen Samantha or the other Bunnies at least make a passing comment about it. I also wanted more background about the individual Bunnies, and especially how they met.
The book's conclusion was good and felt complete. Even the "open for interpretation" parts didn't leave me feeling like my time was wasted. So, I'm honestly not sure why other readers seemed to have been confused by it. The book actively makes fun of how with the arts, confusing is almost synonymous with good. And it's really not a "you need a very high IQ to understand it" type of thing either. Really, it was just nice to see Samantha become less of a lonely, self-obsessed, angry loser and I think that was the whole point.