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!