I have read every book by this author, and this is one of my favorite series ever! The beginning had quite a good synopsis, within the book of the major happenings in books one and two. With it being a pretty long book (approximately 700 pages) I really enjoyed the the chapters were relatively short.

I love that there is a large cast of characters that we get points of view from. The author has a talent for making me love very unlovable characters. That being said, I was so invested in every single character this book followed.

I highly recommend this whole series, they cover tough topics in such a real, raw way. The emotional roller coaster I was on throughout, was more than worth it. It was a very satisfying ending to the series.

Hockey isn’t just a game to the people of Beartown or their rivals in Hed. It’s more than that. Their life revolves around hockey to a degree that makes it not just a priority in their life, but *the* priority. If you’ve read Beartown or Us Against You, you already know that their rivalry is intense, this is not just a ‘sport’ to them, it is more than a way of life, it is life.

With many of the original characters from the first two installments, The Winners introduces some new ones. Much remains the same, but then again, so much will change as this story unfolds. For some, their families will never be the same. Lives will be changed forever, and some will be lost.

What this story brings to the forefront is the aftermath of how little attention we pay to the changes in daily life, the things we brush off until it’s too late. How the desperation to be seen as the best can not only be damaging, but create a toxic atmosphere, in this case for many parties involved. How toxic being seen as the best can be, as well, as it breeds a sense of entitlement that, in this story, has heartbreaking consequences.

Winning is everything in both towns. Loyalty is everything in both towns, as well. There is little room for much more than that for most of the people in each town. Loss, on the other hand, is hard to accept - both in the game and in life. Their teams, their towns are the biggest part of their identity. When a storm forces the two towns to share one rink, tensions rise, and rise again like a balloon carried away by the wind, while we watch and wait for it to either disappear or pop.

There are many lives to follow in this, some with happy endings, and some less than happy, and some that are just…endings. There are people to root for, some less than pleasant ones, and a couple of corrupt ones, but despite the bad things that happen as this story unfolds, this story is also about holding on to who and what you love, as well as winning, losing, and loss - and not just in the game of hockey. And hope. There’s always room for hope.


Pub Date: 27 Sep 2022

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Atria Books!

I loved the character study here, I loved the sense of community in all of the Beartown books. It's like a warm hug! Backman has done it again with this book in the series.

The Winners is the third book in the series that takes place in a small town named Beartown.

With a tragic history that the community attempts to put behind them the community is challenged by individuals with a variety of issues.

It is a novel of love and hate and just what people do to hold their homes together. To remain a community. An understanding of the importance and stability (sometimes in-stability) people bring to each other's life is key to this book.

The Winners is a novel of the loyal followers of two small town hockey teams who live and die by the puck. The novel takes readers behind the stands, so to say, into the lives of the people who have lied and cheated to keep hockey alive for the children and the community. Hidden financial records, rape, alienation, and murder are all part of the story. The Winners is book three of three in the Beartown series can be read as a stand-alone novel, though readers who are unfamiliar with the characters will need the first 40 chapters of this 688 page read to become familiar with the key characters.

Fredrik Backman never fails to deliver! The Winners was really good... the whole Beartown series was great!
I had put off reading this series, but then when The Winners was coming out and I got an ARC to read, I started with the first book, quickly devoured the second one, and loved the third (this one) also.
I loved almost all the characters, I loved watching them grow and change, and the deepening of their relationships. Backman is great with his wording, and has so many great quotable lines in his books.''
As a hockey fan, I could really appreciate the hockey story throughout the three books, but you don't even need to be a hockey fan to love these books, because the story really lies in the people, not the game.
If you have read the first two books in this series, you already know these characters, and this is just a continuation of their story. I think you could read this book as a stand alone, but you will get so much more out of it if you read the first two first.
Benji and Teemu are my favorite characters, they are both bad and good at the same time (Benji mostly good, Teemu maybe more bad...) I was rooting for the whole town of Beartown, and it mostly works out for them in the end. Slight spoiler but not really... the ending is a bit sad. It's not really a spoiler, he alludes to it all through the book, so you already know who is going to die, but it's still interesting to follow how it gets there.
I rated this book a 4, but its really a 4.5, almost as good as it gets!

Backman has done it again! This final installment of the Beartown Series does not disappoint. I finished it a few days ago and am still thinking about it, mulling it over and I'm *still* angry that he killed off my most beloved character...

I can't believe that it is 684 pages (kindle edition); I was able to tackle it in about three days. It read so well and kept me very interested. It was definitely a slow burn but I still wanted to know what in the world was happening and how all of the puzzle pieces fit together.

The first 100, 200? pages was Backman wondering the hills of Beartown and Hed. He introduced new characters and left us hanging on to exactly what was happening with each of them and he gave us little glimpses into our favorite characters from the previous books.

This quote near the end stuck with me. I had to take a screenshot so that I'd have it near. POWERFUL! --
"What is life, other than moments? What is laughter, other than a small victory over sorrow? A single moment, just one, when everything inside us isn’t broken. "

Overall, I am so glad that I was able to get an advance copy and savor it. I just preordered a nice hardback to add to my personal library.

I will forever be a Backman fan.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this ARC to review. I truly love Fredrik Backman, but this book was infinitely disappointing. I really don't think Beartown needed two sequels, and while the previous book was okay, this one just drags on and on. It's nearly double the length of the others, and it introduces so many new characters that you can't keep up with it. Also, there was way too much focus on the town politics and money; people read Backman's novels for the characters and their complexity, not the subplots. I didn't even finish reading this ARC because nearly every sentence was a comma splice. I understand this was translated into English, but constant run-on sentences do not make for an easy read. I'm not sure if that will be corrected in the final version, but it was incredibly distracting.

Right off the bat the author brought me back to the characters and the town. I fell in love with this book and really loved his style of writing this time around. The story continues in Beartown and Hed. I don’t want to give any spoilers. All I’ll say, is GO.READ.THIS.BOOK. Way to go! What an amazing book and for it to be book #3, blows my mind 😱

Big thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for my advanced ecopy in exchange for an honest review.

Publish Date: September 27, 2022

The Winners is the third book in this series. If you have not yet read Beartown or Us Against You I can’t recommend them highly enough. Backman’s writing is a piece of art, and you just need to experience it for yourself.

Beartown is the first novel in this series. It’s about a small hockey town grappling with the after math of a sexual assault by one of its own. Until Beartown I always thought I could only read plot driven books but it’s authors like this that make me realize how important the characters in a novel are. You would think that with all the characters in this novel you would be lost but it’s so well written that you can only appreciate each perspective and their contribution to the story. The way Backman has crafted this story over the years has never had me more emotionally invested in my life.

You can’t begin to summarize this trilogy without spoiling it. Just read it! You won’t regret it.

Wow, a thrilling and fitting conclusion to this incredible series. Fredrick Blackman knows how to tug on every heart string. This book may just be the very best in the whole series and now I’m so sad to be leaving these characters behind.

Backman ripped my heart out again. I'm not sure how he is able to write such whimsical, weird, and poignant words again and again, but this series has solidified him as a favorite author. I want to spend more time in Sweden to see all the places he describes as well. Oh, I sobbed reading this.

A stunning conclusion to the Beartown trilogy. Backman does such a beautiful job of connecting us to these characters and building the suspense along the way. This book started out in a very intense way, and the intensity kept up for the entire ride. So, so good!

I'm a huge lover of Backman's writing, and I was very excited (and grateful) to be provided an ARC of the final book in the Beartown trilogy.

From the first chapter of this book, Backman begins foreshadowing the events that are going to happen. While a few years have passed, the communities of Hed and Beartown are still engaged in a bitter rivalry that expands beyond sports and into the community. Yet, Beartown is "on top" now and is finding more success than Hed. As the story twists and turns, the pieces begin to come together allowing the reader to understand the history between these towns and how they are closely intertwined. I enjoyed getting to "catch up" with favorite characters from earlier in the trilogy, and I found the new characters to be just as lovable. Through the book, Backman explores themes of grief, despair, friendship, love, forgiveness, and what it means to be part of a community. The book was long (~700 pages), but I savored the story and Backman's ability to create such relatable characters. Through happy and sad tears, I found this book to be a perfect ending to the trilogy.

The wheel of fortune turns again in the conclusion to Fredrik Backman's Beartown trilogy, with Beartown on top and Hed on the bottom. After a devastating storm, the two towns are more dependent on each other than ever. The death of a long-time resident draws characters back to Beartown, but it won't be the only death of a beloved character. Star player Amat has returned from a disastrous trip to the NHL draft and falls into the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Maya come home from music college, still dealing with the rape of two years earlier. Benji travels back to Beartown from his wanderings, still lost. Tess, the daughter of a Hed fireman, falls in love with Bobo, Beartown's assistant coach. Maya's parents may or may not be getting a divorce. Matteo, a lonely neglected teen, wanders the town on his own, primed to do something terrible. Mumble, Beartown's star goalkeeper, is living under a heavy burden of guilt. Add the men in black from Beartown, the trash bandits from Hed, and some crooked politicians and businessmen.. Mix in a scandal that is brewing over Beartown club finances that the editor of the local newspaper is trying to expose. Combine all ingredients and stir briskly but carefully - it's going to be messy.

Filled with regrets, redemption, and an understanding of the hopes, dreams, and fears that we all share as humans, Fredrik Backman has written a wonderful conclusion to his trilogy. So many of the characters are so very young, yet have already suffered so much loss. I cried more than once. I'm sorry to leave my friends in Beartown.

I waited years for this story to finish. As soon as the finale to the Beartown trilogy was announced, I started tracking process, publication, and translation. When I received my ARC from Netgalley, I cried. The tears didn’t stop there.

The first chapter of The Winners is the best I’ve read from any book. Maybe it’s the attachment I have to the residents of Beartown and their beautiful, flawed, and uncomfortably realistic lives, or Backman working his magic with words. Either way, I savored those words, allowing myself two pages at a time, maybe three if I wanted the perfect escape. About a third of a way through The Winners, I couldn’t help myself and didn’t stop until it was over. All of the puzzle pieces began to take shape, but how it unfolds is intense and unlike anything I’ve read. Backman tells you exactly what will happen in the story yet the entire time I read I found myself hoping and wishing that it would end differently. Then I thought that since I knew what was coming, I could prepare myself and take the edge off. Nope.

Plot-wise, we pick up two years after Maya and Kevin’s showdown. We find out where our characters lives took them; Maya is at college, Benji is abroad, and Peter is living a life without hockey. A community-wide loss reunites the residents of Beartown and sparks the chain of events that lead us to the conclusion of this beautiful story. But the events that lead us there started much earlier than this loss. The prior losses, the stories we’ve heard and the stories we haven’t heard set the stage for The Winners. It’s a reminder that all of our lives were shaped to those prior, just as we shape those to come. A reminder, I think, of the responsibility we have to our future communities.

I don’t want to delve too deeply into the plot and ruin anything. I truly believe that this book is an experience that everyone needs. Backman took the human experience and exposed the hardest of our universal themes. Love, betrayal, grief- all the heavy hitters everyone feels but must mask in order just to be, day to day. Friendship and loyalty, anger and hatred, but even worse- emptiness. I felt vulnerable, raw, exposed, heartbroken, and in awe at the end of The Winners. This book rocked my core.

If you haven’t read Beartown and Us Against You, do it. Then read The Winners. Then buy a copy for your friends and have them read it. Spread this message of healing wherever you can.

I have to preface this review with the fact that I did not read the first two books in this series, but I love Fredrick Backman's stories, Anxious People is one of my all-time favorites. This book weaves a detailed picture of a hockey community struggling with the aftermath of trauma when they face more heartache. The characters are rich and the storyline is complex. However, I didn't feel like the narrative was streamlined as it could have been. Knowing this is part of Backman's style, I think if I had read the previous books in the series I probably wouldn't feel that way. Overall I would recommend it.

I can't properly explain the excitement I had to receive a copy of this - I've loved the first two novels in this series and am very invested in these two fictional towns and their inhabitants. Backman does not disappoint in the this third novel; it's quite an investment with the length of the book, but it's worth every minute of your time. Backman can build two entire towns of characters and still leave you wanting more. I think fans of Beartown and Us Against You will love The Winners as much as I did. It's a very satisfying conclusion to this series. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the e-galley!

*I listened to the audiobook of this one.
For me, the Beartown story has gone downhill from the first novel. This installment seemed particularly overwrought, and some of the writing really irritated me. I just didn't feel a connection to any of the characters, and the main conflict alluded to throughout the book was violent and brutal.

Happy to include this title in the September instalment of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)