The Winners begins with a huge storm that sweeps through Beartown and Hed, knocking down huge trees and cutting power to almost everyone for at least a few hours. Backman’s books will always hold a special place in my heart, and this latest release is no different. This whole series is about hockey, and even though I could care less about sports, I still felt moved by these books and the characters within them. I didn’t read the middle book titled Us Against You, but its events were quickly summarized in The Winners anyway, so I never felt like I was missing out on anything. This Fall I was sent the third and last installment in that series called The Winners, which took me awhile to read due to its length (670 pages) but I enjoyed once I was able to ‘get into it’ ( a requirement for any larger book). He has a pistol and a plan that will leave Beartown with a loss that is almost more that it can stand.Īs it beautifully captures all the complexities of daily life and explores questions of friendship, loyalty, loss, and identity, this emotion-packed novel asks us to reconsider what it means to win, what it means to lose, and what it means to forgive.Last year I read the bestseller Beartown by Fredrik Backman, the first in the Beartown series which had come out years ago. All the while, a fourteen-year-old boy grows increasingly alienated from this hockey-obsessed community and is determined to take revenge on the people he holds responsible for his beloved sister's death. Simmering tensions between the two towns turn into acts of intimidation and then violence. Maya's parents, Peter and Kira, are caught up in an investigation of the hockey club's murky finances, and Amat-once the star of the Beartown team-has lost his way after an injury and a failed attempt to get drafted into the NHL. The destruction caused by a ferocious late-summer storm reignites the old rivalry between Beartown and the neighboring town of Hed, a rivalry which has always been fought through their ice hockey teams.

Everyone has tried to move on, but there's something about this place that prevents it. Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. There is a new sense of optimism and purpose in the town, embodied in the impressive new ice rink that has been built down by the lake. Maya Andersson and Benji Ovich, two young people who left in search of a life far from the forest town, come home and joyfully reunite with their closest childhood friends. Over the course of two weeks, everything in Beartown will change.

A breathtaking new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove, The Winners returns to the close-knit, resilient community of Beartown for a story about first loves, second chances, and last goodbyes.

Fredrik backman the winners