Review: Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett

If I could gush about this book for hours I absolutely would! Rabbit Cake follows Elvis and her family as they cope with the death of her mom. Hartnett’s understanding of grief is startling and honest. There’s a clever balance of dark humor and grief with these light (sometimes laugh out loud) funny moments. It’s quirky, funny, and an absolute delight! (Oh, and I saw Hartnett at a reading at Brookline Booksmith earlier this month and she’s just great. See her pic below of a rabbit cake tin!)

Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn’t yet know―like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother’s silk bathrobe around the house. Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother’s death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama. As hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss.”