Personally, I really liked this book and mostly because it talks about a town which is being swallowed by nature. I believe that nature element was well constructed in this book. In fact, the title «Beartown» aware us to the idea of a town connected to nature and to strong animals.
Even though I don’t know much about hockey, I liked to read about this sport and how it can be important (as other sports) to bring knowledge and fame to small towns. In fact, I liked how the author developed this idea and how everything lives around the hockey.

I was completely gripped by this story and thought the quality of writing was of a really high standard. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Thank you.

If you love sport you’ll love this book; but even if you don’t you’ll probably still love this book. Backman brings Beartown and its hockey-mad personality to life through a raft of vivid characters. What is most striking is how he captures the intoxicating feeling of team loyalty and love of a sport – how obsession balances on a thin line between being motivation and violence, invigoration and danger. Although I found Backman’s tendency to drop in witty one-liners jarring within the narrative, generally it was fast-paced, and full of tension and raw human emotion.

The Scandal is an expansively written story set in a very small town.
Beartown could well be called Hockeytown, in that that's mostly all the town is about.
The first part of the story sets up the people in the town. Having read and enjoyed this author's other book, Ove, I stuck with it as I thought the story was going nowhere. Nothing seemed to be happening much. Until we got to The Scandal. After that, I realised why we needed so much prelude. I was hooked.

A small town in the forest lives and breathes ice hockey. The junior team has got to the semi finals and everyone is talking about it. A win would mean investment in the town, more jobs, a better school, hope.

The hockey team have a party and the star player is accused of rape. The fallout from the accusation reaches beyond the two families and their best friends, It affects friendships, careers, the town's prospects and causes a lot of moral soul searching.

It took a little time for the book to get going, I was concerned that the story was going to be all about ice hockey. However once the tale gets underway there was no stopping it. I tore through the second half, I felt for the parents and the girl, but also for the friends who were faced with so many dilemmas.

Terrific read!

This is a book about hockey. Only it's not about hockey, it's about everything else.

But it's about hockey.

This book will stay with me for a long while - I'm stunned, obsessed, enthralled. I have, as the teenagers say, all the feels. It is a rare book that can do that these days. This is a rare book.

I adored every single one of the characters. I felt every single one of the gamut of emotions, each one so delicately and devastatingly elicited. I felt every single bodycheck of the mind, soul and spirit like I was on a mental icerink of my own. The writing is so good, so easy and light of touch. The tone is deceptively careless and all the more effective for it. The humour is there too, subtle but a necessary balance to the darkness. The narrative has that unique and gorgeous and indefinable pull, the words so attractive that it is hard for eyes to be wrenched away. And oh, Fredrik, your turn of phrase is perfection. How can you alter my entire world with barely a shift in tone, with just a few words, you clever man.

Heart breaking, hilarious, devastating, uplifting. Hockey.

As near to perfection as a book can get, I doubt I'll read a better one this year .... or ever.

Beartown is a book about the residents of a small town, for whom everything revolves around hockey. But more specifically it is a book about morality, loyalty, sacrifice, courage, friendship, and the overwhelming power of a team (for both good and bad).

We are introduced to a huge cast of characters, and still they all seem important. The story demonstrates how all actions have consequences and small decisions can have lasting effects. Intricate details weave together to create a rich tapestry. I felt like I knew Beartown. I knew its residents and I felt for them. It was emotional and touching, but also difficult to read at times because my heart broke and my goodness did I get angry. It shows how invested I was in this book that it could evoke such genuine, raw emotions. The reason I ended up rounding this down to a 4 star rating was exactly because of those emotions. I was left angry. What happens to Maya, not just the incident but largely people's reactions and treatment of her, was harrowing and I do wish the blurb had given me a content warning so I could've gone in prepared. For those who may appreciate it - warning for rape and victim shaming.

Recommended for everyone looking for a powerful, thought-provoking read. Note the content warning for rape.

This book is in my top five reads. Not read anything else by this author, but devoured this. Definitely recommend and cannot wait to try the authors other titles *****

A fantastic and powerful read. The characters are believable and well developed, and it's full of clever, heart-wrenching detail.

Never would I have though a book based around a small town and ice hockey players would be so enjoyable! I was completely drawn into Beartown and the people who live there. The book builds the characters stories so well and I was disappointed to reach the end.
This is easily the best book I read in 2017.

I don't think I've ever read a book about hockey before, so I wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did! The book captured what a unified love for a sport can do to a town, in terms of the good things and the bad. I got swept up into their passion for hockey, and actually enjoyed the first half of the book more (before a terrible incident divides the town). The characters were developed exceptionally well, and I enjoyed learning about their relationships and back stories as they gradually unfolded. I'll look out for more books by Friedrich Backman in future, as this was a brilliant one.

This book has been published in the UK under the name of ‘The Scandal ‘and in the US under the name of ’Beartown’.
I have been given an ebook by netgally to give an honest review of this book.
I first read this book in August 2017 under the name of ‘The Scandal’ and have again read it for Netgalley.
I have read other books by the author previously and enjoyed them as quirky books to read. This book however is different, whilst it starts off as a slow read , it builds up into the most amazing read. It is at times sad and moving and other times funny and entertaining.
It is a book about ice hockey. Also, a book about moral dilemmas and what is right and what is wrong wrong. It is a book of many parts and facets.
A totally engrossing good read. Highly recommended.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Mixed feelings about Bear Town. This is a tricky book to review, as the first and second halves were totally different experiences.
The first half dragged unbearably, going deep into the minutiae of the characters and the patterns of the town, to no real effect. The pace of the second half picks up considerably, but as a result feels rushed and a little vague.
I’m not sure how much was lost in translation from the original version, but the whole novel feels as though there is something missing, or not quite right. This could be due not totally understanding the dynamics of small-town politics and the importance of hockey in Canadian/Nordic countries.
Nevertheless, the characters are well-rounded and developed, and the book, as a whole, was relatively enjoyable with an interesting climax.

A masterfully written novel about a small town and how one event can break the community apart. Beautiful and deeply meaningful story evoking many, many emotions. I'd definitely recommend.

The Scandal, or Beartown as it is published in the United States, is one of those books that have been everywhere these last few months - seemingly universal rave reviews have been following the book, both before and after its international release dates, and for good reason. The Scandal is very apt in its timing, coinciding with the ‘locker room talk’ of the current President of the United States and the #metoo movement, as it examines rape culture and the toxic masculinity surrounding sport; showing a culture in which sport stars are told that they deserve everything because of their success on the rink.
Unfortunately, because of this, the first third of the book was rather grating (which is the primary reason for The Scandal not receiving a 5*) as Backman explains again and again the large role that ice hockey plays in the town and, as someone who has never personally felt such fervour towards a sport (I mean, outside of looking forward to rugby days primarily for the excuse to drink cider during the day), this quickly became monotonous and boring.
Thankfully, the intensity and examinations of the majority of the book made up for the sport-orientated world-building of its beginning, as it shows how easy it is for the town to dehumanise and villainize the victim of sexual assault and how hard it is for victims to come forward, I mean, jesus christ! The greek chorus of the town, most of who have kidded themselves into thinking that they are good people, reveal their true colours to be well and truly awful and honestly, and the main character is so damn brave coming forward and facing their horrifically misplaced wrath.
The Scandal is so, so, so important, masterful in its handling of the trauma surrounding sexual assault, and one which everyone needs to read in this society where sexual violence (and its minimisation) seems to be becoming more and more commonplace.

This book was something else. And not in a good way. I suspect that if you were a fan of Fredrik Backman before and have read his other novels, you'd be a little more keyed into how his books work and his individual writing style. Whereas, this was my first time reading one of his books and it kind of threw me. I received an e-arc of this book very kindly from Netgalley and Michael Joseph, and I genuinely did want to like it, but it just didn't work. Sometimes people and books just aren't compatible and this just happened to be one of them.

I will admit, the concept of this book was interesting. It takes place in a small town- Beartown- where Hockey is king and essentially dictates the entire society. There are a whole host of characters, a huge amount that are very easily confused, and the story is focused around an event that happens that throws the entire town into turmoil. I will put a trigger warning here for sexual assault and rape.

A personal thing for me is that I don't like books that use sexual assault and/or rape as a plot device. It plays to this stereotype of teenage girls and the way the men act in this book was enough to make me feel a little sick. I understand that Backman was trying to capture the culture of masculine sports, but all it did was make me want to not keep reading this book. It was a real struggle to get through, which was disappointing because I did want to like. Moreover, Backman's prose is long-winded and takes forever to get to the point. It took 200 pages for anything to actually happen, and even the most basic action required an entire paragraph to describe, particularly connoting to their feelings.

I think a certain kind of reader would enjoy this book. Someone who likes small town dramas, who likes novels with many character perspectives. I am not that reader, and that makes me sad, because I had heard so many good things about this one. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I didn't have a good time reading this book. Rather than making me cry, as some people seem to have done here, it just made me feel indifferent.

Really readable. I didn't think I would enjoy it when I read the blurb as I thought the ice hockey would be dull, but it is a very well written and immersive novel

I requested this from NetGalley quite a few months ago. I promptly forgot about it until I read some rave reviews recently by some blogging friends and picked it up in anticipation of a great read. Unfortunately for me the writing style, and possibly the translation, definitely made this just an okay read for me.

Like other readers I managed to get through the hockey dominated first half by telling myself that it would improve and pick up speed. It didn't get fast enough for me and was something of a let down, with only the mystery of who pulled the trigger as mentioned in the synopsis) making me keep reading until the end.

I'd recommend this if you enjoy novels set around hockey and sports.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin UK - Michael Joseph for my digital copy.

Trigger warnings: abuse, sexual assault, racism, homophobia.

This book was unbelievable.

Backman’s writing is purely stunning. It felt very prologue-y. By that, I mean it had that very beautiful, almost detached omniscience seen mostly in book prologues but in Beartown, it was carried through the entire book. While it made it very breathtaking, sometimes I really just needed to actually, you know… breathe from it. This meant it took a lot longer for me to read this than it usually would for a 400 page book.

However, I don’t think taking your time with this one is a bad idea. As you can see from the trigger warnings, this book packs so much into its pages. From poverty and the politics of small town life, to rape culture and racism, this book covered so many issues. While heavy, I just think it was so important and beneficial to me to read. Though I don’t live somewhere like Beartown, I could relate with a lot of the characters, and see others in the people in my life. They were all so real, which made it all the more immersive.

The characters weren’t the only immersive aspect of the book. The setting itself of Beartown was just perfect. It almost seemed like a character itself. It has to be one of the most fleshed out, real locations of a non-fantasy book I’ve ever read. There was no need for a map or illustrations; the descriptions were just that good. It wasn’t done in an info-dumpy way either. The details were scattered throughout the entire book until I had such a vivid image and feel of the place. It had its own emotions and atmosphere.

I hope one day my writing can be as good as Fredrik Backman. For now, I’ll just content myself with reading every book he’s ever published.

Also known as Beartown, the Scandal is a deep and profound novel about a rundown small town that has big dreams, about ice hockey. When a young girl is the victim of a violent act, the town plunges into turmoil. This is a literary thriller that will engross the reader, compelling characters and an atmospheric setting that will linger long after the last page has been turned.