Well written, but it made for uncomfortable reading, being transported into a town under the influence of group-think, and what it means to stand against a lie. A good drawing of the individual characters, but it wasn't a pleasant read.

I loved this book. I've recommended it to a number of people and I can't wait for the rest of the series.... Go Beartown

Could not get this format correct for my ereader so could not read.

Clever premise and the story builds well, suspense of sorts and lots of characters coming together. Written in a style that reads very easily and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Recommended.

A young girl is raped by the star of the local ice hockey team in a small Swedish town called Beartown, where ice hockey is everything. Future expansion and employment in this depressed area in the middle of the forest depends on the success of their team, which is built mainly around this athlete and the sponsorship provided by his wealthy family.
This is the scandal which threatens the team and the whole town’s future. However, it is how the people react to the rape accusation, who they chose to side with and how differently they treat the victim and their star athlete, which is the real scandal.
The novel begins by stating that late one evening a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead and pulled the trigger. So throughout the story there is a sense of foreboding as the drama unfolds until we eventually learn who the parties were in the shotgun incident and what the consequences were.
It is a well written, engaging story of family, love, teenage angst, bullying and violence. It is a story filled with heart and emotion. Not a lot of action happens in it, yet everything happens in it.

I requested this book from NetGalley because the Swedish author, Fredrik Backman, also wrote “A Man CalleD Ove” which was highly rated.. Unfortunately I should have done some research on that book first to see if this latest novel was likely to be one that I might enjoy.. Sadly it turned out not to be. My Kindle tells me that I’ve read 40%, but I just couldn’t struggle on any more. I came back to it twice after reading other books, but felt as if I was trudging through soft sand.

Principally one should have an interest in and understanding of ice hockey. I have neither. The book is set in a small run down town in a forest in the back of beyond in Sweden. Here the obsession of all the inhabitants is ice hockey and more particularly the town’s team.. There is a large cast of characters, too many I often felt, all hockey players, ex players, managers, coaches, their families, financial backers and just plain supporters. It’s all anyone seems to care about or live for. Secondly the book moves at a very slow pace and nothing seems to be happening.. I know that slow TV is now fashionable and even slow radio, but this is slow reading. To be fair to the author he is gradually building up his characters to show how they all contribute to the situation when it happens - - - - I think, But I just couldn’t wait that long.. Thirdly, and this is nothing to do with the author or his work, the digital copy from NetGalley had a serious fault running right through it, the first time that this has ever happened to me. The letter f was always missing and usually fl. To begin with I treated it as a rather fun guessing game ,but I’m afraid that this soon wore a bit thin and descended into irritation. But this wasn’t the reason that I failed to get even half way through this novel for which I must apologise. It’s down to my personal taste and others may well see qualities in this work that I missed.

A thought provoking book about blame and how we allocate it. The whole town become implicated in a terrible event and have to decide which side of the line to fall- with the glory and reputation of a favourite hockey player, or with a vulnerable young lady who needs their trust. It's easy to identify with most of the characters which makes this a vaguely terrifying read. You long for some characters to see themselves in a different light and celebrate when characters you had little faith in prove you wrong. An honest account of how people are all flawed but ultimately need to stand up and have faith in their choices. What I liked was the fact that the answers were not all black and white and choosing between 'good' and 'evil' was suddenly not just black and white. Heart breaking but often uplifting. Very thoughtful in topic though sometimes a little drawn out.

Recommended for fans of the likes of Jodi Picoult and Lionel Shriver.

Ah man, so so so much to talk about.

Let me start off with saying that this was an emotionally rollercoaster that I didn’t want to get off of.
I have to confess that when I look at movies that are purposely designed to grab your heart by the fist and bounce it against the wall for two and a half hours (Million Dollar Baby, My Sisters Keeper come to mind. The latter of which I didn’t even bother watching, so basing my opinion on the premise alone) are simply not realistic. The writers (both novelist if applicable, and screenplay writers) purposely try affect us as deeply as they can that there simply isn’t anything enjoyable about the experience. Well at least that is my opinion.

Was my heart wrenched at times? Sure. Did I have to endure numerous emotional ups and downs? Loads of times. But most of all was the experience worth every prose, every dialogue, every description, and every single word? HELL YES. This book offers so much. It’s beautifully crafted in an environment that may seem over the top, but is yet made so tangible and so realistic that you feel like one of the community.

Let me again be honest. When provided with the end point as an opening stanza and working your way back to that end point seemed exceptionally ominous to me at the start. I felt I had this heavy overpowering shadow cast over me as I started reading the book, feeling that I couldn’t invest totally in the characters or the story, or fully enjoy happy moment, as I knew that the rug was going to be swept out from under my feet at the end. Somewhere along the line though the writing takes over and although it was always in the back of mind it didn’t hinder the experience at all, and in fact it only exemplified the enjoyment nearing the completion.

The characters were rich. The community ethos, palpable. The emotions felt like my own. Every chapter was a heart transplant (quote plagiarised from Backman )
The book definitely had me crying at times (which was normally on the train home), and smiling like an idiot at other times.

That was (insert the answer to ‘What is the second best thing in the world?’) incredible.

Great book. Brilliant plot and main characters. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Very enjoyable.

Great read, really got into the story, even learnt a bit about hockey.

Bit predictable and took a while to get going. Once the event happened things really got going. Great character insights. Excellent book.

Beartown. Deep in the Swedish forest, beyond the regional town of Hed. Beartown lives for ice hockey. Every child grows up learning the sport; the best go on to play for the Juniors and the A Team. The local businessmen come together to sponsor the team; the former heroes get coaching jobs. It is the only social scene in town, and without it, Beartown will die. On the other hand, there’s a new hockey academy being set up, and if Beartown can get a good enough run in the hockey cup, the academy might just be located in the town…

The opening of the novel brings us gunshots in the forest. The novel will tell us how we got there.

What follows is a study of a one industry small town. In this case, it is the ice hockey club, but it could just as easily have been a pharmaceutical factory, a naval base or a university. It is about the corruption that comes when a town becomes so dependent on one thing that it is willing to set aside personal morality for the greater good of that club/industry/employer.

The Scandal brings multiple narrators and perspectives as we move from house to house, room to room, following a huge cast of characters. Some of them are in the elite – the group directly linked to the club – whether the General Manager, a coach, a senior-team player or a sponsor. Then there are the characters at the next remove – the parents, the kids who will probably not make the grade. And then there are the bottom feeders – those with no direct connection to the club, but whose economic survival is tied to supporting those who do – the publican, the former player, the policeman, the teacher. This is a volatile hierarchy. It is hard to climb, but easy to slip down through transgressing against the majority. Pretty much everyone, though, is despicable in some way. It is a violent, competitive, greedy society that brings out – and rewards – the very worst in people.

Right now, as the Juniors are putting together a good cup run, there is a level of excitement that is reaching fever pitch. Any semblance of sanity is set aside as the club players and officials strut around like cocks of the walk. The second half of the novel deals with the fallout as this hubris meets reality head on. The outcome is in genuine doubt.

The Scandal does some things very well. The sense of place, of isolation and confinement is done well. The passion and brutality of the sport is brought to graphic life. The overall concept is subtle and well done.

But on the debit side, the novel is slow, repetitive and some of the characters are insufficiently delineated. In particular, Peter and David (GM and coach) are too similar despite being positioned as personal opponents; some of the hockey players blend into one; and I swear there is one generic wife (a lawyer called Kira or Kia depending on context) who is shared by everyone. The other major debit, and it is a big one, is that the ending seems to be deliberately enigmatic even though the bulk of the novel is grounded in complete realism. Given that the whole novel is set out to depict events leading up to the gunshots, it would be nice to find out in the end who had wielded the gun and who or what had been shot – because the beginning and the end don’t appear to match.

This is a classic 3½ star novel. Better than average, promising to be great but just not quite getting there.

I loved this book. So emotional and hard hitting! I would wholeheartedly recommend. It dealt with a really hard issue so sensitively and saw everyone come through changed in some way.

I could not put it down - literally!

A simply stunning book. This is not just a story about hockey. It's much, much more than that. This is Beartown, a town that's down on it's luck. Business is slow, times are hard and pretty much the only thing that unites the town is their love of ice hockey. But one night the star of the junior team commits a crime that impacts on everyone and the townsfolk have to decide where their loyalties lie. We meet the coaches and their wives and families, the players and their families, and the bar owner and her clients. The writing is just amazing - sharp, sparse and beautiful. There were moments as a reader when I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. You feel the humanity and struggles of every character (yes each and everyone one because they are all an integral part of the story). The ending offers hope for the future, that the town will move and that in 10 years time people will recover and be stronger. Unmissable.

This is the first Fredrik Backman book that I have read and I intend to read more from this author. The Scandal was about a small town ice hockey team, a sport that I know nothing about. The build up of the story was interesting for me. There was a lot of likeable characters in this story. A slow build up to a well written story.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Penguin UK for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed A Man Called Ove and hoped that this book would be as good. Maybe it is because I am not into sport. It did not totally draw me in. I like to be totally immersed in a book and feel some empathy with at least a few of the characters. I felt unable to do that with this book.

This is an absolutely fantastic book. It is like Friday Night Lights, but with hockey, but much, much better. There is quite a big cast of characters but you get to know each of them well. No one is left to be a cartoon cutout. It definitely gave a good understanding of life in a small, far Northern town. The tension builds nicely, I read it late into the night several times. It could generate good discussions about right and wrong, parental guilt, friendships, loyalty. I feel bereft to have finished it, the best book I have read in a long time. (and I read a lot of books!).

I have only recently come across Backman’s books by picking up A Man Called Ove (and instantly kicked myself for not doing so sooner). The Scandal is a very different book in many ways, but shows off Backman’s innate skill of portraying human nature in its rawest form. May it be through a lovable curmudgeon like Ove, or through the many varied characters of Beartown, who jump from the pages like flesh and blood people I have known all my life. Absorbed in the story, I no longer felt like a reader, but a participant. I could describe Beartown to you as if I had walked the icy streets in the dark myself, so vividly did it play out in my mind.

If anyone had told me even a week ago that one day I would swoon over a book about hockey, I would have laughed in their face. I am not a sporty person – ask my husband! Whilst he can sit for hours watching the golf (and what is more boring than golf on TV, honestly!), I struggle to point out the difference between football and tennis. The closest I ever came to being sporty was giving birth to one of my children on football grand final day, and neither my husband nor the doctor (who arrived in the birthing suite dressed in his team’s colours and muttering something that sounded suspiciously like: “Couldn’t you at least wait until half-time?”) have ever fully forgiven me. But saying that, whilst hockey features very strongly in Backman’s book, the story is about so much more. The themes that particularly stuck out for me were about the responsibilities of parenthood, of peer pressure, of trying to belong to something. The phrase: “We can’t protect our children” stuck in my head for days – who, as a parent, hasn’t felt that way when your child was hurting and you couldn’t fix it, pave the way for them? Backman has a way of exposing people’s deepest fears that will resonate with readers of all backgrounds and ages, as we see a little bit of us in each character we encounter.

The story is told in many different POVs, and some of the various characters couldn’t be more different. In a book culture which seems to favour unlikeable characters at the moment, Backman’s strength lies in making even the most unlikeable characters sympathetic, even just in the tiniest spark of humanity shown in small acts of kindness or contrition. Despite themes that are troublesome and disturbing, each and every human being has some redeemable characteristics that stop the reader from being able to hate them – even though I wanted to at times! So despite the battle lines being drawn and a town coming to the brink of disaster, the one message that shone through for me was always that of hope, and forgiveness. I loved the way Backman seamlessly switches POV without losing the flow of the narrative, which added a new dimension to the book by exploring different perspectives of situations encountered. Each voice was authentic, and Backman strips his characters bare, exposes their deepest thoughts and feelings for everyone to see. There aren’t many books that can make me cry, but I sobbed unapologetically through this one, which felt strangely cathartic by the time I got to the end.

The Scandal (or “Beartown”) was easiest one of the best books I have read all year, which took me on a gut-wrenching emotional roller coaster ride like only few books can. Whilst hockey features strongly in the story, this book is about so much more than sport. Tapping right into the heart of small town life, the book explores what makes ordinary people tick and strips its characters bare until their raw emotion is exposed for everyone to see. With a variety of POVs and small snippets of wisdom and insight sprinkled among the pages, readers from different walks of life will be able to relate to various aspects of the story. A must read – very highly recommended!

Another book that was painful to finish. There were too many characters and I didn't care about any of them. A Man Called Ove was so much better than this disappointment.

A number of characters in this book suggest if you don't love hockey you wouldn't understand. This is a shame as I have no interest at all in ice hockey and therefore skim read parts of the book which I didn't understand. At its core there is an interesting story of an isolated community and the rifts which occur when a teenage girl accuses a boy of rape but for me this conflict was lost in the telling as it was swathed in hockey and sporting language and references.