The story of a guide dog who helps a blind man, but later on gets himself blind, Bear is an inspirational - friendship story that takes the reader to the journey of Bear, a hybrid of Chocolate Labrador and Golden Retriever, who is selected to take care of Patrick, a blind man. Everything in his life goes smooth - until one unlucky day - he suddenly loses his vision and gets first-hand experience of Patrick's condition. He gets scared of losing his place in Patrick's life, and so he, without knowledge of Patrick, gets out on a transformative journey of getting his eyesight back.

I personally loved Bear and Patrick, the main characters of the book. Patrick, although permanently blind, is happy with his life of repairing and servicing vending machines. And he gets more happy when he gets Bear as his guide dog. He takes care of Bear like his own family and Bear is happy with him. When Bear loses his eyesight, he gets help from the raccoons who live underneath Patrick's home. Unknown to Bear, the raccoons play with him and don't help him at all, leaving him in the forest, alone, to survive anger and hunger of the bears. But he gets help in the forest from Stone, one of the bears, who decides to help Bear after getting to know about his helplessness. He saves him from his brothers, who are hell bent on eating Bear. And to help Bear, Stone tells him to rely on his smelling ability to decide distance.

The author has written this book majorly for children, but this book is for all age groups. So inspiring and full of life and energy, this book shines for Bear's never-say-die attitude and fearlessness and for Patrick's never-ending quest of finding Bear. Other characters, like the raccoons, the bear trio and Meg, play their roles comfortably when asked. Bear's fear of losing Patrick makes him face many hurdles, but with the help of Stone and Andromeda (a bat), he faces them and gets injured many times.

But what was unnecessary in this book, according to me that made the book go off-track, was the raccoons part and a collaboration between Stone's brothers and the raccoons. The author has unnecessarily expanded the book by making these two character arcs. Remove them, and one will get minimum ten pages removed and the book will get back on track.

In the end, I have to say that Bear is one of my best children's book reads. It's combination of friendship, inspiration and transformation and shines brightly. I loved the book and will definitely recommend it to other bibliophiles!

Rating -
4/5 - NetGalley
4/5 - Goodreads
9/10 - my blog

*Thank you NetGalley for providing me a copy of this book for a honest review.*