This was a cute follow up to the series! His writing is sarcastic, funny, but also deeply heart wrenching. I love this town!

This book.
I adore Backman, and this series, and it ended perfectly and I will not be able to read anything else for some time just absorbing it all.
I loved it. So so much.

I really enjoyed this closing to Backman's Beartown Trilogy. I certainly wasn't overly thrilled with it, but his stories always have a great cozy quality to them.

I tried to like this book, I really did. It was just not for me though. The story was too long, too drawn out. I am such a fan of Backman, but this story was just not for me.

What a wonderful and heartbreaking conclusion. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s the conclusion. This is a very difficult read but also so powerful. Backman is truly a magician with words and tells stories so well and in such a uniquely riveting manner. I can’t believe I almost didn’t read this series.
content warnings: gun violence, death, rape

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for a copy of Fredrik Backman’s The Winners.

The Winners is the third installment in Backman’s Beartown trilogy, taking us back to the small, hockey obsessed, rival towns in Northern Sweden. This time, a severe snow storm has hit Beartown and Hed, destroying one of the hockey arenas. The rivalry between the two towns in alternatively suspended as they help save lives, but also restored when old wounds and biases resurface.

I absolutely love Backman. He is one of my favorite authors and I will read anything he writes, but that said, I’m not sure if I needed this to be a trilogy. The Winners was little long and slow-paced, yet I held on because of Backman’s wonderful characters. He also teased the death of a major character throughout the entire story, saving the reveal for near the end and writing as though any number of beloved characters could have been on the chopping block. This made me anxious, yet it kept me turning pages.

Without giving a spoiler, the death made me cry, but other aspects of the story made me cry even more. Backman excels at sentimental situations. He always manages to have his tough-as-nails characters be hit with a tender moment: cue the tears. I think this works so well, because Backman also infuses his stories with a fair bit of dark humor, allowing his readers to experience a range of emotions. It’s always complex.

The Winners is the weakest in the trilogy, but it is still excellent and absolutely a must-read if you are a Backman fan. Only Backman could make a non-sports fan like me, love a trilogy centered around hockey fanatics!

Such a good end to a series. Heartwrentching. Backman is a master at character depth and crafting character driven works. You can't help but come to love his characters and i end almost every book in some form of tears. There were some repetitive elements that i noticed in this that i thought we could do without three books in, but still really good.

Maya Andersson and Benji Ovich, two young people who left Beartown after the events that happened in the books Beartown and Us Against You, come home after tragedy strikes their forest town. It has been two years, yet it seems that time has stood still. Beartown and Hed still suffer because of their rivalry, not just on the hockey ice, but also in the larger world. When a big summer storm creates more discord, will the two towns ever be able to come together?

The Winners suffers from repetitiveness, just like Us Against You. The author takes the reader on a journey through the towns and their competitive natures, yet only those new to the series would find this interesting. The tragic ending is shown to readers early on, though the exact way it happens does not materialize until the conclusion.

The last few pages were written so well, with the emotion and heart that mainly the rest of the book lacked. I was glad that I hung in there, though I struggled. The punch of the ending would have reverberated throughout the book had it been tightened up. As a big fan of the author and his previous works, I was pretty disappointed. I would recommend readers to this book if they read the two other books in the series.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy by NetGalley and the publisher. The decision to read and review this book was entirely my own.

Sorry it took me so long to write a review. OMG!! I read this on my kindle and at times I was wondering how long this book was going to be but it did not bother me too much because of the characters, especially Benji. The characters had me for this book and the plot from the middle to the end. And oh my gosh, the ending of this book!!! You had me at my full attention at the end!

I will read any book by this author, he is that good. But I feel like with this book, it is a good time to end the Beartown series because of how it ended. Highly recommended author.

Thanks to Fredrik Backman, Netgalley and Atria Book for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Already available!

I have yet to read a Fredrik Backman book that I didn't like, and The Winners is no exception. I've grown to love the characters in the Beartown series. I'm not a hockey fan in the slightest but I was hooked from the beginning of the series to the end. Absolute perfection!

Fredrik Backman can just take all of my money. I am a lifetime devotee of Beartown and of anything Backman puts his mind to.

The Winners is the perfect conclusion to a perfect trilogy. I laughed, I cried, I paused reading when my mind was blown away by a casual yet life altering sentence casually tossed into a harrowing, page turning journey. I will forever love Benji. He's beautifully flawed perfection.

One moment can change the lives of so many. On person's decision can create a before and after for hundreds. the weight of this is heavy yet carried by every human daily.

Anything Fredrik Backman writes is gold. This is a perfect conclusion to the Beartown series!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!

When I first requested this book, my thoughts were how was Backman going to top the first and second books, it's not possible. I knew the second book was setting up for a third, but I was nervous about how it was going to be executed. I had no reason to be nervous, because this was a masterpiece--just like the first and second of this series. Without giving anything away, I cried multiple times and was in shock reading the last 50 pages or so. Yet, I wouldn't change anything about the ending.

WOW. A new favorite. Recently I've been feeling like there's a trade-off between strong character development and engaging plot-- my picker has just been off. I'm glad I got it right here.

Also I'm not a parent but I adored the way he wrote about parenthood in this installment of Beartown.

Love this author and just loved this book! If you have been in the Fredrik Backman arena for a while, you know how heartfelt and deep his books go. His main characters journey and the secondary peeps we meet along the way, bring it all home!

With The Winners , author Fredrik Backman revisits fictive setting Beartown, bringing some storylines to a close, and showing a slice of life in the rural sports centered township. Originally released in Swedish, this English language translation from Simon & Schuster on their Atria imprint is 688 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback format due out in late 3rd quarter 2023 from the same publisher. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a *massive* book. It's a slice of life drama, focused on a small-town and its inhabitants. The awful events from the first book (violence, sexual abuse, assault, etc) are still rippling through the inhabitants and overshadowing daily life. For fans of the first book in the series, this is a great deal of the same. It's beautifully written, but there's a lot of repetition. At 688 pages, that's a lot of material to get through. For readers who haven't yet read the earlier books, this book can be read alone, but it will spoil the heck out of the earlier plot turns.

The translation work is seamless, and it really doesn't read like literature in translation. I compared random passages in the original and translation and didn't find any errors; stylistically the word choices are impressively close and very well made.

Four and a half stars. An important book. A huge and well written book. Probably longer than it needed to be. Full of drama and difficult to read/heartbreaking in places.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

5+ Stars!

This book was perfection. I thought the first book could have been a standalone book when I first ready it, but I’m so glad this story kept going. Flawless!!!! I have no words, only tears… this book is the #1 book of my year!

Fredrick Backman is my favorite author, and this series will hold a special place in my heart. I loved how the series was wrapped up. The book is long, but it never felt long, and honestly- I didn't want it to end.

Read. This. Series!!!!

Backman is one of my all-time favorite authors and this third book in the Beartown trilogy was no exception to his fine body of work. The way he's kept me interested in this small town of characters and hockey when this isn't a subject I'm typically interested in is astounding. He writes characters that are complex, relatable, and abhorrent/lovable all at the same time. Kudos.

You cannot go wrong with The Beantown series! I never would have thought I would be this invested in a hockey town book! Thank you for the opportunity to read and review.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!