For those who grew up loving the work of Gary Paulsen and Jean Craighead George, The Bear is a comfortable and touching read. The dystopian despair one would expect in a tale of the last humans on earth is replaced by a sense of acceptance and the “rightness” of a return to the earth and its cycles.

Krivak combines a survivalist coming of age tale with elements of folklore and fantasy to deftly convey the belief of Bellevue Literary Press that “science and the humanities are natural companions for understanding the human experience.”

I SO wanted to enjoy this book but it missed the mark for me. I enjoyed the story well enough and I liked the descriptive writing style but found it to move a bit slowly. I very much wanted it to come around to a big ah-ha moment at the end which it just didn't.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bellevue Literary Press for allowing me to read an advance copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Available today, February 11th!

The Bear is a stunning post apocalyptic fiction about a a father, daughter, and their tale of survival. I found some similarities to The Road, without the feeling of hopelessness. The Bear is a tale of nature and beauty in the natural, unencumbered environment.

The book did leave me with questions of how and why they are the only two left. However, it's still a satisfying story of a father daughter relationship,

4.5 stars - "The trees are the great and true keepers of the forest, he said, and have been since the beginning…each one carries the memory inside of every living thing that has ever touched it or passed beneath the shade of its limbs and leaves, trunk and branches. Every living thing that has ever walked the earth…

The two were quiet then for a long time until the girl put her hand on the pack she always had next to her and said, So they will remember us, won’t they?

For as long as they stand in the forest. Of that I am certain." – Andrew Krivak, The Bear
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There's something about reading while it snows. It lends an extra layer of magic to whatever story you happen to have open on your lap at the time. Already enchanting, The Bear became even more so as I read through our first real snow of the season.

I loved this novel from first page to last. Part wilderness survival story, part love letter to family and nature, I'd characterize it as a gentler,quieter, less dark version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. A definite character-driven slow burn, it follows the last two people on earth, a girl and her father, as they go about living their lives.

It felt almost cinematic - gorgeous mental imagery captured with beautifully simple prose - this was a pure pleasure to read.

Highly recommended for fans of quiet stories, characters you want to wrap your arms around, and magical realism. Best paired with a snowstorm.

***Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review***

Trigger warnings for death, animal death, blood.

This book is a lot. Overall, I really enjoyed it, though!

Bad things: These are just personal opinions, and I’m a highly opinionated person haha. For both of these, I understand the stylistic choices behind them, but I still didn’t like them. I wish we didn’t knew the characters names, and I wish the dialogue had quotation marks (even though this especially made sense in the second half of the book).

Good things: This was a super quick read with action, adventure, a hint of magical realism, and a lot of being in touch with nature. It’s a story of love and loss and survival and it was written so poetically and wonderfully and I loved it.

That being said, because of the style of the book, I think you need to be in the right mood to read it, and luckily, I was.

This was a very beautiful story, an amazing tale of love, loss, and the last remaining humans on earth.

Thank you so much for allowing me to receive an arc of this book.

I can't wait to read more by this author.

This book was not what I was expecting, but it was so beautiful, both in descriptions and in writing. This story tells the tale of the last two people on earth, a father and daughter, and their story of survival, resilience, and family. Located at the base of a mountain the book travels through the years as the daughter grows up, learning to identify plants, how to hunt, and how to survive in a world where there is no one else.

This was a shorter read, but every page made an impact and was filled with beautiful descriptions of the characters, their experiences, and the land that they lived in. When something devastating happens the girl is left alone and with the help of The Bear is able to learn to survive.

I almost wish it was longer and that I could have had more of this story as I wanted to know more about what happened.

A modern day fable about our connection to the environment (or, perhaps, a warning about how we've distanced ourselves from it) Andrew Krivak's The Bear is written in the style of a Brothers Grimm story. Describing the life of a girl raised in the wilderness, it asks timeless questions about our impact on the world - and its impact on us. It also includes tiny, brilliant moments of description that reminded me of 1" x 1" paintings. My only critique is that the formatting of the book made the dialogue a bit hard to separate from the overall narration at times.

This book was beautifully written and I can see how many people would love this book and the storyline. However, it was not for me. This is nothing on the author, its just my book preference. Which is why I am giving it a 4 because I can appreciate what went into writing this book and like I previously said I believe it was beautifully written. I would suggest reading it.

In a distant future, a man and his daughter may be the last surviving humans on Earth.

Together, they spend their days hunting and fishing, a father passing on his wisdom to his daughter. The secrets of the seasons, the oceans, the stars. The lessons of a long ago civilization, ancient stories and myths of hunters honoring their prey and animals coming to the aid humanity. The father knows he won’t live forever and he wants to prepare his daughter for life without him, in harmony with the world around her.

The first half of Andrew Krivak’s short novel, The Bear reads like a gentler version of Cormack McCarthy’s The Road, mixed with the reality TV series Survivorman. And it’s heartbreaking. In the first chapter, the father’s answer to his daughter’s question of why she has no mother had me nearly sobbing, reading in the mall’s food court on my lunch break.

But halfway through the book, everything changes. Hopefully it won’t spoil too much to say that the father dies. He and his daughter have taken a journey to collect salt from the ocean, and now she must find her way home, heartsick and alone. The tone of the tale switches. It is no longer a compassionate story of survival. Now magic enters the world and the daughter’s realistic story turns fable. To aid the daughter back to her home, nature becomes personified, continuing the father’s lessons in a way that may be a distraught girl’s fantasy, a mystical reality, a pure allegory, or some combination of all three.

It has been nearly two months since I finished The Bear and I’m still ruminating on its melancholy yet somehow hopeful ode to the beauty the natural world has to offer.

The Bear by Andrew Krivak was an enchanting read.  It reminded me a bit of being a child and being told stories around the campfire. I had been expecting a book that was a bit more dystopian, but was pleasantly surprised that most of the story could have easily occured in the wilderness of a non-dystopian world.  Part realistic fiction, part fable or folktale, this story of a girl and her father had a beautiful simplicity to it.  I really enjoyed its focus on human nature and survival.  My only wish is that I hadn't waited so long to get to this arc.

An interesting tale with a setting perhaps in a post apocalyptic world where there I only two humans: a father and his daughter (the mother passing away some time ago)..

The father teaches his daughter survival skills and how to fish and hunt. He tells her a story of a bear that helped the people of a village long ago. Eve

Every solstice he gives her a special gift (something useful).

When she is 12 he dies from an animal bite and she is alone in the world. The bear comes to her bringing her fish to cook and eat . She cremates her father and keeps his bones and ashes to bury on the mountain top near her home in the Spring where her other is buried.

She and the bear set out on a journey.
When the bear hibernates for the winter he has to forage for food: oftentimes eating only berries and nuts.

After falling through the ice on a river she is rescued by puma who returns her to the cave where the bear is.

The puma provides her with fresh kill which after eating she uses for supplies and clothing. From trees she makes snowshoes.

She lives off the land catching fish and hunting: if she has enough for food she leaves some for the wild animals.

In Spring she returns home and thee bear leaves her.

She lives to be an old woman and after she dies the bear returns and buries her on the mountaintop alongside her parents.

An interesting story.

I struggle with how to describe this one. A dystopian fairy tale full of hope? It's dark and dreamy and the length is perfect. I would love to read more by this author.

Father teaches daughter how to survive in the wilderness and then, sadly, father is gone and daughter is on her own. Except she's not- she's aided and guided by animals, especially the bear. I'm not sure how to categorize this slim volume- it's not dystopian really (even though they might be - or not- the last people in the world), it's got a fairy tale in it, it's cautionary, it's allegoric. It's also got great descriptions of nature. You will find yourself rooting for daughter, even though there isn't a lot of character development. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

A girl and her father are alone in the wilderness, perhaps the last of humankind. An accident occurs on their trek to the ocean for salt and the girl must find her way back alone. Alone, that is, save for the help of a talking bear.

I put this one off for longer than I should have...it was a surprisingly great read. There is so much packed in this short book. It was a mix of dystopian and magical realism that I would place at a young adult level. The writing style is very accessible and I felt like I really got to know the girl, despite the fact that I never knew her name. There is a LOT of very specific outdoors and survival information that fits compactly, but smoothly in the narrative.

I would've liked more backstory...more information regarding the world and the circumstances that has led to the apparently dystopian society as well as the history of the girl's parents in particular. As it was, I was still entirely wrapped up in this tale, finding it both intriguing and educational from beginning to end.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC of The Bear by Andrew Krivak in exchange for an honest review

The Bear is the first novel by Andrew Krivak that I have read. It is a beautifully woven story filled with rich descriptions of the natural world. It has the elements of the fable. The novel is about a father and daughter the only remaining people alive after a post apocalyptic event. Although a short piece, it had moment of repetition that mad the reading of it a bit slow paced.

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for a review.

I ended up mostly listening to this so also thanks to Libro.fm for the advance listening copy.

This was a bit of a fairytale about a young girl who lives in the wild and relies on herself for everything. She ends up meeting up with a bear who helps her out.

This is short but felt quite repetitive. I was pretty bored with the story.

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Andrew Krivak has a gift for describing Nature. <u> The Bear</u> tells the story of the last humans on earth. Loss and loneliness are just a fragment of what you will feel as you read about the father and daughter's journey together, then her life alone, when he too is gone. As she grieves for her father, a bear, which they had seen earlier on their travels, reappears and speaks to her, encouraging her to live and continue with her journey on earth. He tells her that she has many years left to her before the earth ceases to hear the last human footfall. The bear (and later a puma) and indeed the rest of Nature conspire to keep the girl alive well into old age. Now that she is alone, the girl relearns the language that was once shared by all life forms on earth. According to the bear, we humans somehow lost our ability to hear any voices other than our own.

On their journey back to the girl's home, her companion, the bear, tells her many things, just as her father had before his death.

“The bear… told her that the voices of the trees were the voice of the forest, and that when they spoke, they spoke with such indifference to time that it would take the girl several moons to hear one of their conversations, the better part of one just to hear a single word. But to them it was no different from any story told to any other around a fire in the night, a word spoken in a moment, or in a lifetime."

The girl endured and lived on, and found comfort in Nature, overcoming the loss and loneliness after her father's passing. This is a very whimsical, lyrical fable. Highly recommended.

The Bear is a beautiful story and is unlike one that I normally would choose to read, yet I am so happy that I did. It reminds me of a fable, a story that is told to families while huddled together in a cabin, before a fire, night after night until the ending has been reached and told. I can see this novel becoming a movie, and imagine both the novel and movie winning many awards.

This book reads like a fable. And, like in most fables, character and world building are not important. What is important is what you take away from it. It seems readers either love this book or dislike it and each group takes different things from the reading of this book.

If you can suspend the need for character development and the need to know why the father and daughter are the last humans, you’ll find a beautifully written story of love and survival. You’ll read a carefully crafted story of how nature intersects with humans and how if you listen, you’ll hear nature talking to you.

My thanks to Bellevue and NetGalley for an eARC.