A new female coach, Elisabeth, gives the team a fighting chance with Benji, who is struggling with being secretly gay, at the helm. Meanwhile, Maya’s best friend, Ana, falls for team player, Vidar, and this relationship has lasting consequences. Along with Lifa, Zacharias, 15, is one of Amat’s best friends. Like them, he lives in the underprivileged Hollow of Beartown, and they have hung out together since they were children. Zach prefers…

The center of the team is the 17-year-old star, Kevin, coached by David and managed by Peter. Peter is married to Kira (a lawyer), and they have two children, Maya and Leo. Maya is a teen whose best friend is Ana. Amat, whose mother Fatima is a cleaner, is added to the team for his speed. Benji is Kevin’s best friend, and Ramona runs the local pub. These, and even more characters, round out the complex cast.The book opens with one teenager walking into the woods, pulling out a gun, pointing it at another teenager and pulling the trigger. The rest of the book explains the events leading up to this act. It also made me think – thank God there’s a sequel. I am not ready to say goodbye to some of these characters just yet…

Maya is the daughter of Peter and Kira Andersson and the older sister of Leo. She is 15 years old. Maya is a talented musician whose first love is playing the guitar, and she… Beartown has its heartbreaking moments, but it is so much more than a sad book. It is filled with so many amazing things, like love, family, loyalty, devotion, warmth, small acts of kindness and so much hope – it can make you laugh and cry at the same time. It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who'll risk the future to see justice done. With the town's future at stake, no one can stand by or stay silent. Everyone is on one side or the other. Surrounded by impenetrable forests, it recreates the stifling atmosphere of a dying community. This is a mature, compassionate novel. Sunday Times

Maya Andersson has a crush on Kevin, and Amat has a crush on Maya. While Maya and her best friend, Ana, are goofing around at the rink before the game, Amat approaches them and shyly attempts to ask Maya out, but Kevin smoothly preempts him, inviting Maya to the party at his house that evening. The Bears go on to win the semifinal in spectacular fashion, sending the town into raucous celebration. Their coach, David, has been grooming them since they were seven years old, training them to become the stars they are today. Maya is distraught after the incident and is unable to keep it to herself any longer. She tells her parents, who are enraged and subsequently proceed to report the incident. Kevin is pulled from an upcoming game last minute, which causes the team to lose the match. Whether you're a newbie or an avid reader, here you've found an authentic community dedicated to helping you relax, learn, and embrace a very cozy way of life. I have no words to describe how well written Beartown is. I wanted to cry and scream and burn this book and read it again. It made me angry, and sad, and so frustrated. But is also gave hope and a sense that – everything is going to be alright.

I loved the setting; a snowy small town somewhere very far north. I both loved and hated that the country was never officially named. Loved because it gave me yet another thing to obsess over and hated because I never could get a straight answer.Fatima is Amat’s mother; her husband died in a war before Amat was born, and she and her son emigrated to Sweden from an unnamed country when Amat was a baby. Although she’s barely… Sadly, not everyone survives in this novel of high-stakes competition, and others fall in less deadly, yet still consequential, ways. The game is no less significant in this sequel, and those who remain at the end must solider on as they’ve always done. Beartown is a remote and isolated town that is both overlooked and forgotten, but the only thing on any of the townspeople’s minds is the semi-finals.

The town has so much riding on this. They are hoping that if they win the championship, the government will decide to build their new national training center in Beartown. Along with the training center would come more shopping, restaurants, commerce and JOBS. They NEED this. This is their time. The undefeated junior team just needs to make it through two more games. I also loved how the characters were presented in relation to one another. So you often get two very different people coming to the same conclusion, or two very similar people end up being very different in their essences.It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who'll risk the future to see justice done. At last, it falls to one young man to find the courage to speak the truth that it seems no one else wants to hear. Leo is Peter’s and Kira’s 12-year-old son, and Maya’s brother. Leo doesn’t have a large role in the story, but he is devoted to his older sister and staunchly supports her after… The "ceaselessly brilliant" story of one man who banishes himself to a solitary life in the Arctic Circle, and is saved by good friends, a loyal dog, and a surprise visit that changes everything (Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Orphan Master's Son). Under that heavy burden, the match becomes the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown.