A story of sisterhood and the mystery of animals!

I really enjoyed Bear a novel by Julia Phillips.

Sam and Elena are two sisters and dream of another life. They were born and raised on the island off the coast of Washington. they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works on the ferry while Elena is a bartender. Then one night on the boat, Sam sees a bear swimming in the dark waters of the canal. Where is he going ? How will they react to this enormous beast? What does he want ? Can this unexpected situation change their mind?

"I received a complimentary copy of this book from Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

This book will get a lot of attention for the direction the plot takes at the very end, which is in itself decisive. But the real progression happening is in the two sisters and how we perceive them. It’s not so much that they fundamentally change as their and the reader’s understanding of each changes. The point isn’t so much who is right or wrong, but how we arrive at who we are and what expectations we have for each other, especially family. How unspoken needs and assumptions can fracture a relationship, especially one under a lot of stress. The epically bad communication at work is less remarkable than how naturally it happens. It’s a fairly simple storyline with a lot to reflect on.

This is a story of sisters who live in a quietly beautiful setting with their mother, who is slowly fading away, losing her grip on life a little bit more each day. Their daily lives seem to blend into one another as the days, weeks, months pass, but not much changes. That is, until one night when a bear appears on their doorstep, which changes everything.

Sam, the younger sister, is terrified that this bear will continue to return to their home, while the other sister slowly becomes obsessed with the bear, and spends her days seeking him out. It changes everything, including the relationship between the two sisters.

In the meantime, life and work continue to take up most of the time for Sam who works on a ferry, and barely makes enough money to make it worth her while. There are mild flirtations, and perhaps more, but she isn’t looking for a partner with so much going on at home.

Elena’s interest in the bear becomes an obsession, and then beyond that...it brings about changes which are not easily forgotten.


Pub Date: 25 Jun 2024


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Publishing Group - Random House, Hogarth

Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth was one of my favorite novels of 2019 and her follow up novel Bear is just as beautiful. Her characters Sam and Elena will be on my mind for a long time and the lyricism of Phillips’s prose is worth savoring. I love the ambiguousness of the meaning of the bear and its connection to Elena and her family. Thank you for the opportunity to read this advanced copy! I will highly recommend Bear to all of my friends and students, and I look forward to reading everything Phillips publishes in the future.

This is a story that stays with you. Stylistically, "Bear" is similar to Phillip's first book, "Disappearing Earth," which I loved. The writing and images in both are powerful, transforming the most terrifying and disturbing things into poetry. Highly recommended for readers who appreciate dark fairy tales and literary fiction. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Bear by Julia Phillips left me torn — on the one hand, I did not like it because it made me uncomfortable, but I also appreciate the skill involved in writing something so claustrophobic and disturbing. I also believe I will think about this book a lot over the next few weeks. Elena and Sam live on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington, struggling to make ends meet in the waning days of the pandemic while caring for their dying mother. Written in an almost omniscient second-person voice, the short book remains focused on Sam and the notions we get of Elena and their relationship are through her eyes which may or may not be reliable. While I think Phillips is an excellent writer, something about Bear feels unfinished. Readers of literary fiction will still find a lot to chew on with this book about sisterhood, financial struggles, nature, and being trapped.

The long Epigraph in this book was from a Grimm’s fairy tale which took me down a rabbit hole researching it and looking for similarities while reading. Bad move on my part because it detracted from my reading of this unexpected novel.

The book is told from the point of view of Sam, a twenty-eight year old who worked the concession stand on a ferry between a small island where she lived with her sister, Elena, and her dying mother. As teens and best friends, Sam and Elena planned to leave the island and start new lives. Due to their bedridden mother’s failing health from inhaling nail salon chemicals, the girls needed to care for her, get her to off island doctors and negotiate steep debt. Their plans were on hold. There was constant sense of despair.

One day, Sam noticed a bear swimming alongside the ferry. The bear then showed up outside their rickety house. Sam was terrified. Elena was mesmerized. Seeing the claw marks and ripped siding, Sam notified the authorities. Their family had a distrust of those in power and were informed that a bear could use the island as a route to their final destination.

Elena started becoming more secretive and more annoyed with Sam. Debt was piling up, their mom was getting worse, their relationship was fraying and there were more bear sightings on the island.How was Sam going to convince Elena to leave? How was the author going to deal with these issues? Would she create her own fairytale? Would this book stay in my own consciousness? Yes! Is this a different kind of novel? Yes! Should you read it? Yes!

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this ARC. All opinions are my own,

I very much enjoyed Julia Phillips’ debut novel, Disappearing Earth, so I was eager to read an ARC copy of her forthcoming novel, Bear, to be published in June 2024.

Bear is stylistically similar to Disappearing Earth. The writing is engaging - but on the edgy side, with characters struggling under the weight of crushing circumstances in a lush, atmospheric setting. From the start, there is an underlying cadence of impending doom, and it just grows ever louder until we reach the surprising conclusion. It all comes together brilliantly to make for an absolutely propulsive, riveting read!

This is a story of obsession, love, jealousy, trust – and the claustrophobic reality of having no way out. Until a bear arrives . . . bringing change and upheaval, and a reckoning, of sorts.

Bear is an excellent follow-up to Disappearing Earth. I love Julia Phillips’ writing style and will look forward to her future offerings.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House/Hogarth and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 25, 2024.

5 stars.

I found this disturbing. Spending all that time in Sams head wasn't enjoyable to me - I really didn't like her. Then the ending made me feel sick. I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The relationship between two sisters who have different dreams about how their futures should go, a physical and metaphorical bear and a dying mother. I read through this one quickly wanting to know what would happen. I was shocked by its conclusion. This is a book that will have people talking. Impactful in a short amount of pages. I think it’s a perfect book club read so people can discuss it. . I’m not sure I love it but I will be thinking about it especially that ending for awhile.

In Julia Phillips' sophomore novel (releasing in June 2024) she captures the changing relationship between two sisters and their promises to one another when a third character comes in between them in the most unexpected way. Phillips writes from the perspective of someone in the soul-crushing and tedious world of service industry shift work like she’s had a bit of experience herself! I read this book in three days because I was so entranced by the place that she creates amidst the San Juan Island, on the ferry and in the suffocating house where they wait for their mother to die so they can move on with their life. What was most striking was the illustration of how something unexpected and rationally dangerous can actually awaken you up to life and re-enchant the world that has become tiresome and stale. It’s a riveting work and one that I definitely recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC!

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There is one typo on location 323 or 2915 in digital format (11%).

Written with the same undercurrent of unease and inevitable damage that made Disappearing Earth so compelling, Bear centers around two sisters caring for their terminally ill mother and struggling to make ends meet. Though both are adults, Sam looks up to Elena, and believes they are working toward goals they made as children: never get mired down in a relationship (their mother’s abusive boyfriend haunts them long after he is out of their lives), and get the heck off San Juan Island. But a bear’s arrival disrupts Sam’s fragile, quiet world and confronts her with the reality that Elena has a different perspective. This book is about hurt, and the harmful effects of all its secondary emotions - suspicion, anger, coldness, jealousy, desperation. It’s also about privilege. Who gets to ask for help, and and how do we reconcile the fact that some public resources harass more people than they serve?

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Bear is a haunting story of two adult sisters on San Juan Island caring for their dying mother in their family home. Time and money are both running out. The story is told in the eyes of the younger sister Sam. Her older sister, Elena, is responsible and stoic as she holds her family together. Sam dreams of the two of them selling the home and moving. A bear is spotted on the island, and Elena is both mesmerized and drawn to the creature. This author’s strength is in fully realizing the characters. It’s easy to understand Sam, her wants and limitations. We see all the other characters through Sam’s eyes. Her sister is an enigma. The bond between the sisters is extremely strong, or at least it is on Sam’s part. As Elena draws closer to the bear, the tension rises.

This is a propulsive read. It reminds me of House of Sand and Fog. You are pulling for these characters under crushing circumstances. I highly recommend this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth for the advanced reader copy.

A quiet and disquieting tale of two sisters and a bear - an actual bear, yes, not just a metaphor, although also a metaphor. The meditative prose is unobtrusively lovely and kept me turning pages while events unfolded so slowly and incrementally that the ending (in which things actually Happen) was a welcome shock. I'll be ruminating on this one for a while.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group- Random House/Hogarth for this advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review. Bear is the story about two sisters, Elena and Sam, who dream of a better life and face many battles, ranging from debt to family illness, that stand in the way of these dreams. Then, following a chance sighting, a wild bear shows up in the water near their home and then even closer— sparking two very different reactions from the sisters and setting of a life changing series of events.

The first thing I have to say about this book is just WOW. Wow doesn’t even cover it and I know I’ll be thinking for a while about how to eloquently put my thoughts together on this one. But Julia Phillips really does an unbelievable job in this story and it is just absolutely stunning. In reading the synopsis of the story, I could never have guessed what she would be able to accomplish here, in a mere few hundred pages but, it is just stunning. The introduction of this bear into the story pulls out long standing dreams, frustrations, worries, resentments, and forgotten feelings of joy from the two sisters— for a whole host of reasons. The writing in this story is beautiful, yet not overly complicated, and brought me right into the moment with these characters; relatable emotions written about here, related to loss and hopelessness and frustration, really touched me so deeply and I empathized with the characters greatly. The author made it easy to understand how circumstances in life could cause these characters to shift their motivations, their plans, and to both sharpen/lose sight of reality.

The plot of this story moved along so swiftly and kept me entranced the whole way through— I finished this book in a sitting because I just had to know how it would finish. I could have never guessed the ending and it left me feeling so conflicted and with such a wide range of emotions. I cannot wait until more people have the chance to read this and I look forward to hearing what people think. The author did an excellent job at showcasing many perspectives in this story, leaving you wondering on where you should align (whether that alignment was even reasonable or not), and I am intrigued to hear what other people will think.

I know this book will be a huge hit and I absolutely recommend it to others. This is a fantastic book club pick and I think that literary fiction fans will just love it. I hope to reread this myself at some point in the future!!

Immersive, engaging, and atmospheric. A recommended purchase for collections where litfic is popular.

This novel about two sisters, their dying mother, and the unexpected bear that appears on San Juan Islands is a quick and probing read. It's hard to write a review without giving anything away. Elena, the older sister, loves living on the island and "befriends" the bear. Sam, her younger sister, is afraid of the bear and longs to leave the island. Both young adult sisters work endless shifts trying to care for their mother.. When Sam discovers that Elena is involved with a neighbor, a person who she grew up with next door, and that she has no intentions to sell their mother's house and leave the island, Sam takes out her anger on the bear. It's a novel about sibling and wild life, dreams and loss.