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“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”

Release Date: April 25th, 2017

Genre(s): Adult fiction, contemporary

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 432

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis

Beartown follows a very tiny community whose central feature is its ice rink built by the town’s founders years ago. The townspeople have little hope for their home’s future, but when the junior hockey team qualifies for the national semi-finals, the spirit of the town begins to change – and all of their hopes and dreams begin to rest on the shoulders of the team’s players.

Review

The only other novel I’ve read by Backman is A Man Called Ove, and I loved that book. So after finding a copy of Bear Town at a library sale, I knew I had to pick it up.  I didn’t know much about this book other than it being about a hockey team in a small town, so once I started reading I realized just how heavy this book gets. 

The first half of this book is on the slower side, but for good reason. We explore the town, the team, and what these things mean to its residents. We also get detailed backstories of the families and the many impacts of the town’s culture on them. As much as I do enjoy slower paced books, after some time this does start to drag just a little bit. But after the halfway point of the book, the development and understanding of the town’s culture and the sports culture becomes very important to the book’s central conflict. 

While the first half of the book took me some time, I read the second half in almost one sitting. The way that this book captured so much detail regarding rape and rape culture was so well-done. I felt like I couldn’t put the book down because I was feeling so many emotions for the victim, and everything she endured as a result of speaking out and seeking justice for what had been done to her. I was honestly surprised at the amount of detail that went into the aftermath, the victim-blaming, the power of support from loved ones, and the details that go into investigations and medical support, among others. This felt so real, with no details left out of it. The amount of character development that went into the first half benefits the second half as well; their backstories truly impact their reactions and future development as they learn more about what happened. 

Speaking of characters, there were quite a few that were heavily developed in this book. Usually, I find having so many detailed characters difficult in execution, but in Bear Town, this is something that’s written so well. 

I’m not sure if I’ll read the next book right away, but the books following Bear Town are ones I would like to visit in the future. While the pacing of this book varied greatly from the first half to the second, I liked the amount of detail and development that was put into this town, its characters, and the central conflict. I didn’t know what to expect beyond the hockey team when picking this book up, but it definitely took me by surprise in a good way.