The Winners (Beartown #3) by Fredrik Backman

The Winners (Beartown #3) 

By Fredrik Backman 

Published by Atria Books 

Description: 

Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there’s something about this place that prevents it. The residents continue to grapple with life’s big questions: What is a family? What is a community? And what, if anything, are we willing to sacrifice in order to protect them? 

As the locals of Beartown struggle to overcome the past, great change is on the horizon. Someone is coming home after a long time away. Someone will be laid to rest. Someone will fall in love, someone will try to fix their marriage, and someone will do anything to save their children. Someone will submit to hate, someone will fight, and someone will grab a gun and walk towards the ice rink. 

So what are the residents of Beartown willing to sacrifice for their home? 

 Everything. 

The long-awaited conclusion to the beloved New York Times bestselling and “engrossing” (People) Beartown series—which inspired an HBO series of the same name—follows the small hockey town’s residents as they grapple with change, pain, hope, and redemption. 

Review: 

With as much as I have loved Fredik Backman's previous books (both the ones in this series and all of his other books), there was a lot of pressure going into this one--would I love it as much? Would it meet my expectations? Would it rip me apart and put me back together again as much as his other books? So I was definitely on tenterhooks heading into this one....and I have to say, the first little bit didn't capture me as much as I was hoping. The foreshadowing and hinting and me being so nervous about what was going to happen was bugging me (which isn't necessarily a reflection of the writing but of my emotional investment in these characters!)--but there was no way I wasn't going to finish it. And just like with his other books, Backman broke my heart and made me smile (several times but perhaps no more than with BOBO! Oh my gosh! The cuteness!) and made me think so much about why people would make the choices that they make. That might be what I love most of about Backman's writing--it makes me be empathetic, it makes me see the pieces that make up the people who then make the choices that drive us nuts or hurt us or that heal us and save us. It's really hard to dislike anyone in his books--be disappointed by them? Sure? Want to smack them upside the head sometimes? Absolutely. But actually dislike them? No, because we've seen the glimpses into their who they are and why they are who they and seen ourselves in them, which makes us hope for good things for them--and for ourselves by extension. (There are a couple of characters that are the exception to that, but given more page space, maybe even they would be sympathetic characters.) 

I loved seeing the characters from the previous books as well as meeting new characters in this one, and while I tried to savor this while simultaneously reading quickly because I needed to know what was going to happen, I can't wait to re-read it and to look for the things I missed along the way. (I might have to wait a few months until my heart can handle revisiting it, though!) 

Another fabulous book by Fredrik Backman and definitely one of my favorite books of the year. 

I read an ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.