Beartown

I picked this up because I am a cheerleader in one of the groups on Goodreads and so many of the members had read or were excited to read it I felt compelled to give it a shot.

Bearstown is a dying, rural town that has placed all its economic hopes on the town's hockey club. When the star player is accused of raping the daughter of the club's general manager a week before an important championship tournament the town is torn apart and it must decide what its soul is worth.

The plot crawls at first, depending heavily on “clickbait” teasers to keep the reader intrigued. The timeline in fluid, filled with flashbacks. It takes some concentration on the part of the reader to locate oneself correctly in the ensuing fog of time that drifts across the pages. We see the character 10 years in the future. Then the narrative in the next paragraph returns to the present only to jump to a flashback several paragraphs later.

The prose is simple and sparse — like a blog post. At first it felt annoying then it began to feel relentless The characters are strongly defined.