Beartown
by Fredrik Backman
narrated by Marin Ireland
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
Synopsis:
People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.
Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.
Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
Review:
Beartown is a small community that simply wants their place on the map. What better way to do that than to have a junior ice hockey team win the nationals? The boys on the junior ice hockey team face the pressure of getting their small town noticed. They are looked at as future heroes; the ones who can save the town. Of course, these boys are just teenagers so they play hard and they party hard. One night one of the players takes his partying to a new level and causes severe damage to a local girl. When she won't be quiet and just let it go away the whole town has a decision to make on what is important to them.
I knew very little about this book going in. I knew it was a book set in Scandinavia, and that it was about hockey. I had no interest in it AT ALL however it fit a prompt I needed to fill to complete a challenge so I listened to it on audio book.
This book started off really slow for me, actually it was almost a DNF. However, once the main focus of the story came into play I found myself not wanting to put it down. In this book, a young girl named Maya is raped. We follow her story during the aftermath of the rape. It isn't easy to read, it's actually quite heartbreaking. The writing is emotional, powerful and griping; you can't help but feel Maya's heartache. It broke my heart and made me angry. It's emotional, hard to read, anger inducing and so so powerful. Besides rape, there are other difficult topics discussed in this book as well. I won't get into too much detail but I think Beartown really sheds light on the difficulties that come with being from a small town.
Beartown is an emotional and intense journey that won't be for everybody, but I do recommend at least giving it a try. While I haven't had the chance to listen to the second book, Us Against You, I am hoping to get to it very soon.
Purchase Links:
I loved this book, but I'm a huge Backman fan.
ReplyDeleteThis is the only one I've read by him so far but I will definitely be reading more of his work
DeleteGreat review, I heard great reviews about this book and it does looks and sounds like a hard hitting and very emotional book. I am really glad that you overall enjoyed reading this book. Thank you so much for sharing your awesome post.
ReplyDelete