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4.42 AVERAGE
4.42 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
5 stars just for making this non sports person have goosebumps about hockey
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is my new favorite book!
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I initially wasn’t going to read this because I didn’t feel that Beartown needed a sequel. I’d still argue that it doesn’t, however this book wonderfully rounds off the stories of the characters. It doesn’t quite deliver as much as Beartown in terms of plot; rather than one explosive incident, there’s several scattered throughout the book. Similarly to Beartown, it takes a couple hundred pages to warm up. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m glad I read it. I got emotional at the end and the characters are well drawn. Touching and important.
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
El inicio fue muy introductorio y poco interesante pero estos personajes tienen todo mi corazón ♥️
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
- The continuation of the story of the characters we met in Beartown in this book was just perfection! We get the introduction of new characters and new developments with old characters that adds so much to the story. We follow so many characters (main characters and side characters) and yet they’re all so unique and you know who is who.
- Benji, Maya, Ana and Leo felt like real people and their experiences made me feel their emotions. Everything from their emotions to the tragedies/adversity that these characters face just felt real and I could understand them.
- Seeing Maya work through her trauma felt very realistic. Trauma doesn’t just go away and even though Kevin left town, that doesn’t mean Maya’s trauma leaves too (especially given the context of how the town reacted and treated her).
- The discussion of social issues was handled so well. The conversations surrounding Elisabeth Zackell being the new hockey coach and Benji’s sexuality demonstrated how society (all though not everyone) reacts. Elisabeth Zackell being coach demonstrated the difficulties of being a woman in a heavily (or completely) male dominated space. Benji being outed and involved in hockey (but also being such an important player for the Beartown team) made everything that much more volatile. Both of this situations demonstrated how much harder people in the minority have to work.
“Because he knew I’d always have to be twice as good as the men to be accepted. The same thing applies to you now. You’ll be judged differently. The people who hate me might let me coach a team, but only if we win. And they’ll let you play, but only if you’re the best. Just being good isn’t enough for you anymore.” “It’s fucking unfair,” Benji whispers. “Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness,” Zackell says.
- Everything felt realistic and demonstrated how the very thing that brings a town together can also be the thing to tear them apart (as we saw in Beartown and continue to see in this one). I just love these characters and this town and the depiction of it all. Fredrik Backman does such a good job of depicting that everything is much more complicated than just black and white.
Sometimes good people do bad things out of good intentions, and sometimes the reverse happens.
“Do you think it’s possible to become a different person?” She shakes her head, biting her bottom lip, and blinks so hard she can’t see the road in front of her. “No. But it’s possible to become a better person.”
The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent upon them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots. You who stand in front of us in every line, who can’t drive properly, who like bad television shows and talk too loud in restaurants and whose kids infect our kids with the winter vomiting bug at preschool. You who park badly and steal our jobs and vote for the wrong party. You also influence our lives, every second.
He’s twelve years old, and this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.
Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.
It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.
Power is the ability to get other people to do what you want. Every adult man in that locker room could have rendered the eighteen-year-old powerless by remaining seated on the benches. But he gives them thirty seconds, and when he walks back to the ice, they get up and follow him. That’s not when he becomes their team captain. That’s just when they all—including him—realize that he already is.
Anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free.
Perhaps one day he’ll find words for that feeling of being different. How physical it is. Exclusion is a form of exhaustion that eats its way into your skeleton. People who are like everyone else, who belong to the norm, the majority, can’t possibly understand it. How can they?
“Don’t let the bastards see you cry, Benji.” Benji stops, his eyes wide open. “I can’t bear it… how do you do it?” Maya’s voice is weaker than her words. “You just go in. With your head held high and your back straight, and you look every single bastard in the eye until they look away. We’re not the ones there’s something wrong with, Benji.” Benji hears himself crack as he asks, “How did you bear it? Back in the spring, after… everything… how did you cope?” The look in her eyes is hard, her voice brittle. “I refuse to be a victim. I’m a survivor.”
It’s so easy to get people to hate one another. That’s what makes love so impossible to understand. Hate is so simple that it always ought to win. It’s an uneven fight.