This book follows seven sisters in the forests of western Finland who are left to fend for themselves after the sudden deaths of their parents. Torn between preserving their father’s rugged, off-the-grid ways and yielding to the town’s offers of help, the sisters struggle with independence, identity, and the pull of the outside world. Richly atmospheric and deeply human, the novel explores resilience, sisterhood, and the fragile beauty of life bound to nature.

In this book we come face to face with the 7 daughters and their parents, which their parents die off quietly and leave the daughters to fend for themselves. What they did was to stay in town and then go to the forest in the early part of the year. Anneli has taken the the story to another level of how they did this describing how each of the daughters reacted differently. In this story we learn how the daughters reacted when each of their parents died. Later they found papers that their mother wrote and they found out that she was the one who told all the stories to her brother who told them to every one. Their epilogue tells what each of them was doing at the time the story was written.

“The Bear Hunter’s Daughters” is a new novel by Anneli Jordahl. It draws inspiration from Aleksis Kivi’s classic Finnish novel *Seven Brothers*, written in the late 1800s. This modern-day fairy tale features seven sisters raised in the woods as they struggle for their freedom from the confines of modern society and conformity. The story is a coming-of-age tale reminiscent of *Lord of the Flies* or *Yellowjackets*, exploring themes of survival, autonomy, family, and change.

I found this book captivating. While I didn’t particularly like the characters, I couldn’t put it down. My fascination as a reader seems to resonate with the local community and the broader context of Finland depicted in the story. The daughters form a rough, cult-like group that idolizes their father and his lifestyle, which has kept them isolated from society. They live as hermits, adhering to a strict set of rules he created. The responses of the nearby communities throughout the story also provides insights on human behavior.

I recommend this book to fans of Emma Donoghue’s *Room* or Yorgos Lanthimos’ film *Dogtooth*. It examines the consequences of failing to question our surroundings, authority figures, and the environments we inhabit, prompting us to consider the ways in which we may be complicit in these behaviors in our own lives. Thank you to HarperVia and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.