Cover Image: Do Not Feed the Bear

Do Not Feed the Bear

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Member Reviews

Do Not Feed the Bear is a heart warming novel by Rachel Elliott about life, love., loss and grief. A character led story which gets under your skin and leaves a mark.

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Sydney Smith’s family were creatures of habit who holidayed every year in St Ives (progressing from caravans to, gasp, a holiday cottage when Sidney was ten) but that all changed after a terrible tragedy. Now Sidney is returning to St Ives (alone and without telling her partner, Ruth, or her father, Howard) and we see her trying, and initially failing, to come to terms with what happened nearly four decades before. Her hobby, free-running, brings her to the attention of the town (who seem to mistake her need to climb onto and jump off buildings as a suicide bid) and to at least one person whose past intersects with hers.

The story moves back and forth in time to the holidays of the past and to the present day and is told from many points of view (including the odd dog). We revisit the first dead body Sidney ever saw – from both his and Sidney’s side – and are later reunited with the dead body’s bereaved fiancé. In fact, all the people we meet seem to be interlinked in some way – perhaps a hint of the fact that, no matter how hard you try, no life fails to impact on many others. Many of the characters we meet have great sadness in their lives but most of them (apart from a couple who, I’m willing to bet, nobody could like) are able to find a way back to at least the start of happiness by the end. An enjoyable lockdown read, with interesting characters and a sense of warmth.

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I heard the author read from this book as part of an Off The Shelf event in Sheffield.
The novel is written as a multiple narrative and with minimal punctuation. I'm not sure if this style was intended to reflect the inner struggle of some of the characters or if it is just the author's preferred style. Terribly sad in parts yet uplifting in others, with a cast of intriguing characters and some lovely moments of empathy, this is a book worth the effort of reading.
I'd give it three and a half stars.
Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for inviting me to download this book.

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I enjoyed the pace of this story and the connections that become evident as the plot unfolds. The intrigue kept me turning those pages – I wanted to find out why the family holiday ended abruptly when Sydney was 6 and what was behind the fracturing of the family.

I think most people will have heard of Parkour but I had no idea how structured and disciplined it was. The philosophy behind it fascinated me – I hadn’t thought about it as a strategy to help the freerunner to overcome emotional health. I love it when I learn something new from reading!

Rachel Elliott uses her experiences to great effect. I thought the observations on life were spot on with snippets of wisdom that made me stop and reflect. I lost my parents in my late teens and learned early that grief is selfish but I hadn’t thought of looking at loss like this … whatever the loss we experience in our lives we always think it’s the other person we miss rather than ourselves. The truth is that we miss the person we were before the loss. And we do.

I loved this:

Indecision is addictive. You get to travel across the board without making a move.

There is humour too. Stuart’s narration (the Schaefer’s family dog) was entertaining as were the handbook titles. I lost a few hours thinking up a few of my own.

Sydney, Ruth, Howard, Belle, Maria and Jon all affected me in some way (not always positively!). A great cast of characters to move the plot to its conclusion and to leave me feeling that all was as it should be.

I have to be honest and say this story affected me deeply. I loved it. Highly recommended.

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Do Not Feed The Bear is a warm and quirky book which I enjoyed reading over a couple of nice days in the garden.

The main protagonist is Sydney Smith, who despite being the central character spends much of the book in a coma! Sydney, a free runner, is injured when she falls from a high building, and her incapacity allows the storyline to focus on the other people in her life. We meet her partner Ruth, a warm and very likeable woman who is almost the antithesis of aloof, spiky Sydney, and her father Howard, a loveable eccentric who is still grieving the death of his wife over 30 years earlier. Through Sydney’s accident we are also introduced to the woman who found her after her fall, dental hygienist Maria who is trapped in a loveless marriage to a domineering bully, and her daughter Belle, a bit of a lost soul who, at 29, is still working out who she is and where she fits in in the world.

That’s a lot of characters (and I haven’t even mentioned the two wonderfully characterised dogs, Stuart and Otto) and the timeline does flit backwards and forward a bit, so some concentration is required until the book finds its feet. As the storyline progresses we find out more about why Sydney appears to be such a cold and withdrawn person and also the tenuous but rather poignant connection between the two families.

It’s one of those books about which adjectives such as “heart warming” and “life affirming” are bound to be used. It’s both of those things but it also manages to avoid being schmaltzy or saccharine, thanks to the (just the right side of) quirky characters and sharp humour.

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There was something about this book that drew me to it from the moment I read the blurb and I had a feeling it was going to be something a little bit special… and wow, was I right!

Do Not Feed The Bear by Rachel Elliott is a beautifully written and moving book about life, love, loss and grief. It tells the story of Sydney Smith, a cartoonist and freerunner who is still struggling to come to terms with a traumatic event that ripped her family apart when she was ten years old. Now, on her forty seventh birthday, she returns alone to St Ives to face up to her guilt and grief. Will Sydney be able to put to rest the events of the past? And if she can, what will that mean for her future? But this trip to St Ives turns into something so much more, as the lives of the people she meets touch and entwine in ways Sydney could never have expected.

I’m very familiar with St Ives, a beautiful part of Cornwall I visit often, but the St Ives of this story isn’t quite the same as the one I know and love, but still has that same magical feel to it that washes over me every time I visit. It’s the place I’m at my happiest, so the fact it features so prominently in this story only adds to the beauty of it for me.

There isn’t anything I didn’t love about this book. It’s quirky, funny, at times moving and with characters that are brought so vividly to life you feel like you know them. My heart broke on more than one occasion for these characters I’d fallen in love with, moving me beyond words. As different from each other as they all were, there was something about them that drew me in and made me feel connected to them in a way that doesn’t happen very often. Maybe it’s because I could see so much of myself in them? That fear that so many of us hold inside that makes it difficult for us to truly fly and live our lives to the full. I could see my own fears and insecurities reflecting back at me from within the pages of this book and the effect it had on me was profound.

There’s Sydney, of course, who in some ways is such a free spirit, but is so worn down by the guilt and grief she feels. Then we have Maria and Belle, mother and daughter whose lives become so entwined with Sydney’s. There’s Howard, Sydney’s father, who tugged at my heartstrings so much throughout this book, his grief and loss palpable from the outset. And then there’s Stuart. How can anyone not fall in love with Stuart? A surprising character who I adored from the moment he was introduced.

Written in a distinctive and unique style, Do Not Feed The Bear is one of those rare books that come along when you least expect it. It’s a book that gets under your skin from the moment you start reading, leaving you feeling bereft as you turn the final page. A character driven story that touches your heart, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. A mesmerizing and unforgettable book that I feel privileged to have been able to read.

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I would like to thank the author, the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book. Unfortunately it was not my kind of book, it was well written but I didn't really enjoy it.

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With its rather unusual title and an eye-catching cover, this is one of those books that begs to be picked up and read.

Told from varying points of view – even that of adored dog Stuart – this is a poignant story about loneliness, loss, melancholy, and a reminder that those who have left us are never really gone if we keep their memory alive.

It’s Sydney’s birthday. She’s 47, and not very happy about it. So she decides to take a solo holiday to the small town of St. Ives where her family’s life veered off its axis when she was just 10 years old. Her partner Ruth cannot understand Sydney’s desperate need for solitude, her obsession for freerunning (I didn’t know what that was, by the way!), and her constant distance from everything and everyone in her life. In fact, Ruth finds that she has a much closer relationship with Sydney’s father Howard, who himself is a damaged, desolate soul.

In St. Ives Maria, a dental hygienist, lives with her ghastly husband Jon. He calls himself an artist, but his biggest hobby is making his wife miserable. Maria knows this probably isn’t the life she’s meant to live. She rebels against Jon’s cruelty in her head, and on paper in the copious diaries she writes (the books must only have blue covers – any shade of blue, as long as they’re blue). Their 29-year-old daughter Belle lives with them. She works at the local book shop with Dexter and they’re both similar in that they’re a bit quirky and quite frankly … well, most people would probably refer to them as oddities! As they say though: familiarity breeds contempt and these two spend their days arguing very deliberately and specifically with each other, about everything! Belle is quite content to still be living at home, not doing much with her life, remaining single. She’s never been interested in what others her age are doing, i.e. getting married and having kids. She’s never considered any kind of future other than the life she’s living now.

When circumstances bring the two families (and Dexter) together, both groups experience a shift in what they thought was to be their fixed reality. Could change really be possible? Could there truly be something else that the universe has in store for each of them, other than what they expected?

Rachel Elliot has created a beautiful, touching story about ‘others’. Those individuals who tend to be overlooked, who are seen as a bit different and who live outside the norm; people who are often perceived as invisible because they are atypical. How sad that by doing so, we miss out on the warmth that lies behind the shields they have put up to protect themselves from the unkindness they have come to expect from the outside world. Yes, her characters are a bit strange, possibly even prickly, and they’re not easily likable. But if you take the time to delve beneath the surface (both of the characters and the book itself), you will discover true gems.

This is a 4-star heart-warming read. It might break your heart a little bit first, but eventually it will put it back together and wrap it in a comforting snuggly blanket.

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A lovely read, although not always easy to read it rewards you for your effort. A wonderful tale about self acceptance, finding yourself and the courage to accept this and being able to move on. Well written, with lovely relatable characters, both heartwarming and sad at times. A thoroughly enjoyable read.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

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I very much enjoyed the beginning of this book,when Sydney was a child,with her family.
It never quite got that good again.
Though it was an enjoyable enough read,it didn't quite live up to my expectations.

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I loved every single character in this well written and wonderfully heart-warming novel.
The story is at times incredibly sad but speckled throughout are delightful snippets of humour, I had quite a few laugh-out-loud moments.
It is full of endearing characters who capture extremely well how ‘sometimes the way we see ourselves is not necessarily the way others see us’.
It is a story about letting go, learning to accept yourself and finding the courage to move on.
I particularly loved Maria and Howard, it was delightful to watch how they changed as the story progressed. Highly recommended.

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