Everything in tiny, isolated Beartown revolves around the local junior hockey team and their shot at national success - the whole community is affected when a serious incident off the ice jeopardises the town’s dream.

I found this book quietly brilliant - sure, it’s set in a tiny town, but there’s a universality to the community divisions, the wielding of power and privilege, the choices parents make for their children, how we think we’ll respond to a situation vs how we actually do, and the opposingcontradictory attitudes to teenage boy vs girl behaviour. The start was a little slow and repetitive (Beartown is a hockey town, I get it), but then I found myself utterly gripped and couldn’t put the book down. I love Backman’s writing style - dry and yet so deadpan funny at points, and the simplicity of the writing belies the depth of his astute observations on human nature. A shrewdly-written exploration of the consequences of idolising sports stars, the treatment of victims and the division of a community.