Mona Awad’s Bunny meets Stranger Things in this mind-bending and terrifying examination of female friendship and the lengths we’ll go to protect the ones we love, from the Bram Stoker award winning author of Queen of Teeth.
Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower.
Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow.
If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower.
But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves.
Including Olivia.
A Light Most Hateful manages to be simultaneously hard-hitting and uplifting. With a cast of LGBTQ+ characters, well the L and Q at least, it expertly challenges assumptions about identity from the first chapter. Olivia is a runaway, stuck in a small town that doesn’t accept her. Her only consolation is her friendship with—and unrequited love for—Sunflower, who is described through Olivia’s eyes as “Perfect, beautiful”.
Olivia barely remembers her past, while Sunflower clings too tightly to hers, unable to accept that her big sister (like her father) left her behind. The friendship is a central part of the story, and I frequently felt that Sunflower did not deserve Olivia’s worship, and that the latter would be much happier with a friend like the enigmatic, genderqueer Christmas.
There are monsters galore, from the mindless, shuffling, hate-filled locals, to the nightmarish Lizzie with her cavernous head-eating mouth. The story unravels slowly, via plenty of twists and turns, until it is hard to grasp what is real and what is other…
I refuse to spoil this book for you by detailing the truth before you have earned it, but if you enjoy poetic, detailed descriptions mixed with brooding atmosphere and sudden jump scares, you would do well to give this one a chance.
If you want to check out the book or the author, there are some links below for you:
Happy Goat Horror 
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