ARC Review The Bear: A Novel Claire Cameron

The Bear: A Novel by Claire Cameron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Anna awakens one night, while camping, to hear her mother screaming. Confused and afraid, Anna and her brother Stick, unknowingly listen as their parents are killed in a bear attack. The two young children leave the island by canoe in the morning spending two days lost in the woods, searching for their parents.

Narrated by six year old Anna, this novel offered a unique perspective on survival and the world according to young children. The first portion of the book, which covers the attack, started off strong. Anna provides a strong background for the family camping trip and excellent descriptions of the events occurring outside the coleman cooler where her and her brother are hiding. Once the children leave the island, the narration becomes more inconsistent, with Anna frequently going off on tangents which muddled the story and made it hard to follow. It was tough to get through this section, but persevere because the ending of this novel is its strong point. The conclusion left me in tears and and boosted my rating to four stars,

The Bear is based on a real bear attack in 1991, which occurred while the author was working as a camp counselor nearby. This gives the story some authenticity and makes it all the more compelling. I highly recommend this unique and compelling story.

I received a copy of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.








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Reveiw Orphan Train Christina Baker Kline

The story of two women who forge an unlikely friendship: a 91-year-old woman, an orphan-train rider in her youth and a teenage girl with a troubled adolescence. 
Nearly eighteen, Molly is months from "aging out" of  her foster home, a family she has a rocky relationship with already. Faced with community service for stealing a library book she accepts a position helping an elderly woman clean out her home. 
Vivian has been living on the coast of Maine recently but in her attic, hidden in trunks, are the remains of her own turbulent youth.  As Molly helps Vivian organize her possessions and memories, she discovers that the two unlikely friends are not that different. Vivian was an Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children and placed for adoption. 
As the two grow closer Molly helps Vivian answer questions about her own past, ultimately helping them both. 

A good read but ultimately disappointing. Orphan Train had so much potential for more - deeper characters, more feeling and more of a history. I often felt like the author was rushing to get through Vivian's life and left out so much that could have enriched her story. I also had a hard time with the age given to Vivian, she was an 8 or 9 year old girl but through much of the book I identified her as  an older teen, this was the authors attempt to make her more mature, but something about it didn't  work. Molly, I found to be stereotypical and and with out a lot of depth. The relationship between the two main characters I also felt was not fully fleshed out - again sort of rushed. This book had so much potential but just didn't get there. 
This is a three star book, an easy entertaining read but it lacks so much.