Without knowing what kind of idea of your characters personality and just looking at the mechanics of these two subclasses they both have interesting abilities.
The monk has great survivability and a lot of defensive options that take stuff off the table with high mobility so you don't get stuck out of place, able to dodge or dash on a bonus action, reduce ranged damage by a ridiculous amount, continuously lower fall damage, evasion, immune to charm or frightened condition, immune to poison and disease, a pretty solid unarmored AC, and at higher levels proficient in ALL saving throws. Offensively they aren't crazy high DPR but can do solid damage but most importantly they can use their speed to get past the heavier tanky enemies and get back to the squishies in the back and then can impose stuns and open hand monks can do additional effects on flurry of blows like knock them prone etc. Late game if you ever get to it, unlikely but worth mentioning, you get Quivering Palm which is a very very nasty damaging ability.
The Bear Totem is pretty linear at early play the bonus resistances don't do a lot but 5+ it really starts to make a difference making you the second best tank in 5e able to shrug off hits that would crush your teammates. Combat wise they excel at taking damage their damage output isn't crazy nova but they typically are very consistent with a big weapon doing pretty good damage with the rage bonus. With reckless you don't really care if the enemy gets advantage because most likely the hit against you won't matter as long as you get advantage to possibly make GWM strikes or crit hunt for the eventual Brutal Critical. Their 6th level abilities are lackluster but can make a difference with things like doubling party movement in travel situations if you DM keeps time logged. They do get access to a couple spells you can cast as rituals to commune with nature that can be good for information gathering. Their last ability gives you several good options some of which let you consistently do damage on a bonus action which is nice and helps damage output.
Neither have much in terms of abilities out of combat besides the totems couple of nature based spells and how they are played just is determined by good RP.
