This was the finale to the best series ever written. A bit draggy but no one wants to edit this writer!!!

"It’s a terrible moment for all kids when we realize that our parents can’t protect us. That we won’t be able to protect our own. That the whole world can come and take us whenever it likes."

I have loved every book Backman has written. I have loved the Beartown series so very much and I wasn't sure I was prepared to read another book on it and I also wasn't sure I was prepared for it to end. I loved this small town with its broken and violent and struggling and loving people. I both wanted to swallow this book up in one sitting and also savor every single moment I spent with it.

I wanted to go slowly and yet I couldn't stop reading it. These characters are all so real, they jump off the page and they pull you into their lives. You fall in love with each of them in unique and inexplicable ways.

"There ought to be a different word for it once you’ve been married for enough years. When you’ve long since passed the point where it stopped feeling like a choice. I no longer choose you every morning, that was a beautiful thing we said on our wedding day, I just can’t imagine life without you now. We aren’t freshly blooming flowers, we’re two trees with intertwined roots, you’ve grown old within me."

And even though you know the book is going to break your heart, you know it from the first line because Backman tells you, you can't stop hoping that it won't happen. You can't stop falling apart when it does even though he's warned you again and again. Because you're so invested in these characters and you've grown to love them so very much.

Backman has a way of creating characters that are so flawed and yet still so lovable. He has a way of getting to the heart of what makes us each human and pulling out the essence of his characters. Once you've seen their beauty, even in the midst of all the terrible things they do, you can't help but root for them. Every single character in this book is three dimensional, flawed and broken and also extraordinary. They are showing up to life. Facing it head on. You can't help but root for even the most irredeemable ones.

"All children are victims of their parents’ childhoods, because all adults try to give their kids what they themselves enjoyed or lacked. In the end everything is either a revolt against the adults we encountered or an attempt to copy them. That’s why someone who hated their own childhood often has greater empathy than someone who loved theirs. Because someone who had a hard time dreamed of other realities, but someone who had it easy can hardly imagine that things could be any different. We take happiness so easily for granted if we’ve had it from the start."

There's so much in this book, like all of them. So much about parenting, marriage, community, love, friendship, family. So much heart. I loved every single minute I spent with it. I was worried it would be too many pages and in the end it felt like not nearly enough because these characters will stay with me forever.

with gratitude to atria books and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

The Winners is the third installment of the Beartown series. It is 2 years since the events of the first novel occured, and all of Beartown was changed forever. We revisit the original characters and are introduced to some others both from Beartown and the neighboring town of Hed. Every character is expertly drawn, their backstories explained completely. The story is magnificently written in a way that draws you in and has you begging for more. The connections between the events and characters are revealed all in perfect timing. Fans of Fredrik Backman and the Beartown series will not be disappointed.
This is a story that will touch your soul, and leave you changed forever. One where when you get to the last page you will need to pause and breathe. Then you will re-read the last chapter to bask in the beauty of it all.
In the end this is a story about community and connection. It is about hopes and fears, and how we are all interconnected. How we can choose to help each other or hurt each other, but ultimately every decision we make has a consequence, not only to ourselves, but to everyone in our lives. What can appear to be something small and inconsequential to one person can be life changing for another. It is a story about humanity. Everyone who reads it will find a personal connection.
Backman is quite simply a genius. The word that best describes this book is just "wow"!

After binging Beartown and Us Against You, I was ready to dive right into The Winners. As the third in the series, you’re now fully entrenched in the small town of Beartown and neighboring Hed. So I was excited to see what was next for the players.

I decided to start writing my thoughts on this review as I’m reading - usually I wait until the end after I’ve fully digested. But at nearly 700 pages, and 42% of the way through the book, it’s becoming a bit of a slog and I wanted to be sure I noted that. I’m hoping things take off soon. There are so many plot lines and I’m hoping Backman works his magic to make them merge.

The good news is I did become more invested about 75% of the way through, but I wish it hadn’t taken so long, and worry those with a 100 page rule may not give it a chance.

Having finished the book now, the “big moment” that was foreshadowed definitely took until the very end. The characters were ultimately all weaved together and while the ending hurt a bit, it held true to many of the characters.

Most importantly, I have never been so satisfied with the final few chapters of any book. Backman gave us the full stories, start to finish of all of the characters. You aren’t left wondering what path they took following the books conclusion. In this specific scenario I found that satisfying, but could see how others may want to leave that up to their imagination.

And of course, through this series we’ve been taught a plethora of valuable lessons through the challenges and events encountered in Beartown and Hed.

The Winners was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022, and am so grateful to have had the opportunity to read it early. I can't go too far into the plot without leaving spoilers, however there was am event that the entire story lead up to which I felt came too late in the book. I'm not sure I was able to properly process my feelings about it since it didn't happen in the first 600 or so pages.

As always, Backman's writing was stunning, and I was in no way displeased with the length because more of a good thing is always a good thing, in my opinion. However, I think the pacing and timeline layout could have been improved. All that to say, I may have gone in with astronomical expectations since Beartown and Us Against You are two of my favourite books of all time.

5 stars

A huge thank you to Ariele Fredman, NetGalley and Atria Books for reaching out to me and offering this advanced reading copy! I am a huge fan of Fredrik Backman since I have read Beartown and I was over the moon to be able to read this story!
The downside is that the publishing house is asking not to quote parts of the book before checking with a finished copy. And yet I highlighted so many quotes while reading!
Backman is a magician with words and, I’ll say it again, the translator did an outstanding job!

I took my time reading it because I really wanted to savor the story.
Once again, Backman’s prose is efficient and as sharp as a knife. In just a few sentences, he makes you care for a character that will only have a half page in that story. You can feel that people fascinate Fredrik Backman and that he has a keen sense of observation of human nature. I’d call it a razor sharp prose. Terribly efficient and conveying tons of feeling and wisdom.
You will never be able to hate any character, even the villains, as Fredrik Backman will make you care for each of them in making you see through their eyes and heart.

I also knew right from the start that I would have my heart shredded to pieces. And I did. Oh I did! And I cried so hard!

What is The Winners about?

The Winners is once more a character driven story. It is the third book in the Beartown series.
As before, the community is a central theme of The Winners as well as family and friendship. They can be your stepping stone as well as drag you down. And we’ll also see that sometimes, a bad choice, one small decision, will have catastrophic consequences.
Taking place two years after Us Against You, the catalysts of the book will be a huge storm hitting Beartown and Hed but also someone who will be laid to rest. Both events will be the start of a chain reaction, giving us the famous Butterfly Effect that we had in Beartown and Us Against You.


Written in the third person, the story will follow many protagonists and I must say that all were captivating, the old ones and the new ones:
-Maya who is studying music will go back home for the funeral as well as Benji who had left town to wander to Asia and try to find happiness. How have they changed? Do they still feel like forest folk? Is Beartown still their home? Are they happy? Rape has not stopped for Maya, she still is living with it every day of her life.
-A couple from Hed, Hannah the midwife, Johnny the firefighter and their three children will become new very important characters in the Beartown saga. They are from Hed and as beloved and respected as their Beartown counterpart Peter and Kira. When the tensions between both towns are growing and everyone feels like sitting on a powder keg, will they help bring peace or pull the trigger?
-Kira and Peter’s marriage is at risk. Both are harboring so many unresolved feelings since what happened to Maya that it physically hurt seeing them drifting apart, living with the weight of silence upon their shoulder. What is a marriage really? Is love enough to salvage one?
-Ana. Savage, strong Ana. Running towards a fire and not from a fire. Always ready to protect her best friend Maya. Always there to care for her drunk of a father. Her courage will be tested and she will find her calling.
- Amat and Bobo will have their own questioning, their own choices to make that will decide their whole future.
…
Someone will arrive in town, set on unearthing secrets and having someone pay for it. That coupled with another character wanting to have his revenge against some of the hockey players will make for a rising tension throughout the book.

These folk love with passion and hate with as great a fervor. There is no half hearted feelings with these forest people. Prompt to hate and prompt to love. What is certain is that when you live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods and glacial temperatures, your community is essential for your survival. Alone, you’ll never make it.

The Winners talks about corruption, about politics, about family, about friendship, first love, hockey.
Here again, the plot is not what’s important in the book. It’s the people. Their feelings. Their reactions. Their joy and their pain. Their secrets. Their love. Their hate. And above all else their resilience.
It talks about revenge. About forgiving sons for the sins they do and warning girls about the length of their skirt and their behavior. It’s about extreme acts committed when all your life you have suffered in silence, as an outcast, excluded of that community. It’s about lost kids and found friends. It’s about the fierce love of a mother and a father, the protective love of a wife but also the damage parental neglect can do to kids. It’s about courage and cowardice.
It's about life in all its passion and imperfection.

And it’s just one of Fredrik Backman’s best works if not THE best work!

Now I want more. I want maybe Alyssa’s story? When she’ll be grown up? And will look back? Or Ana’s story? Or…? I simply don’t have enough of Beartown stories.

Who needs an organized closet when you've got Fredrik Backman; his books bring me joy! The Winners wraps up the Beartown trilogy. As with the other books in this series, it centers on the people who live in a forest town in Sweden called Beartown. Backman utilizes the townsfolks' love and ardent support for the game of hockey, in particular their local hockey club The Bears, as a foundation to explore relationships, love and passion, and sense of community pride. He also relies on Beartown's hatred for the neighboring town Hed and their hockey club to depict how tribalism and distrust lead to disastrous outcomes.

As with much of Backman's work, this is a character-driven story. We revisit the primary characters from the series and are introduced to some new voices that play important roles. Like all his other work, The Winners is impeccably written. The book is long. It takes time to wrap up the various storyline's as well as that of each individual character. But it is well worth your time to read The Winners (and all his other novels if you haven't already).

I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for my review. Thanks to Atria Books, Netgalley and Frederick Backman.

I absolutely adored the two previous books in this series but this one I found slow going. It started really well with the accident in the storm and I was dragged in thinking whao this is going to be so good. But somewhere along the line it fell short and sadly I lost interest. Possibly too much hockey.involved. But I am sure I will still be waiting with baited breath for this author’s next book.

⭐️Mini Review⭐️
The Winners by @backmansk
Out late September @atriabooks
•
I won’t say much. Too many people love these characters and shall receive no spoilers from me. 🤐

But I will say. Backman, as always, is a master of words. Truly. Is this my favorite in the series? Nope— that goes to book 2. But was this a heart wrenching wrap up to a heart wrenching series? Yes.

If you’ve loved the previous #Beartown books, don’t forget to preorder this one as soon as you’re done reading this review! 5⭐️

Moving from the heated division between Beartown and Hed depicted in Us Against You, there are forces that may just unite them explored within Fredrik Backman’s The Winners.

Two years have passed since the events people don’t want to think or talk about have happened; an effort to move on beyond the events and their consequences was made, but there’s still some deeply ingrained resistance to fully emerging from the aftermath of everything that took place. As the locals of Beartown struggle with overcoming the town’s past, there’s immense change on the way and already beginning that’s underscored by a massive storm that seems to set things in motion: a couple young people are coming home after years away to remember and honor another who passed as they’re laid to rest on the same day as another lost, and seemingly forgotten, soul, some marriages undergo tests of their limits, some will fall in love, and some will succumb to hate and violence, raising questions for just how far the residents of Beartown, and Hed, are willing to go to protect their children and their hockey-loving community at large.

Continuing the method of revealing the story through the use of roving perspectives of a wide cast of characters, directly or tangentially involved, this installment in the larger Beartown narrative is long with some repeated information of what previously happened, slowly building with simmering tension, and dense with the heaviness of the topics it discussed. From the outset, the text obliquely refers to eventual outcomes while it takes time to build up to it actually making an appearance within the story as it progresses, which was like a tapestry unfolding, with detailed threads depicting the specifics that comprise the intricate whole. There’s an emotional heaviness to the story with losses illustrating a disconnection of tethers that kept Beartown together and that heaviness persists throughout but begins to be accompanied by a slight optimistic note to bring them back together again. A phrase repeated a few times throughout the story aptly describes the overarching feel of this narrative and the role that “almost” and other circumstantial forces drive and shape how you and your life turns out: “two of everything, one we see and one we don’t.” With a title including the term winner, it’s no surprise that the text widely explores what winning means, how it contributes to identity, both in formation and validation, and how winning in games is easy to see but in life it’s far murkier.

Overall, I’d give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

The 3rd book in the Beartown saga brings a conclusion to the characters we read about in Beartown and Us Against You. A new family is introduced (I don't remember Ruth or Matteo being mentioned in the previous books) and the actions of one of them will affect the town and people in it forever.

Nothing I say here will sway Backman fans one way or the other. If you love Beartown or Backman you'll read this book. With that being said, this book took me FOREVER to get through. It just never took off for me. This is the kind of book you can't pick up, read for 10 minutes, and put back down again. There's too much going on to keep track of. It also felt kind too convenient to have Matteo all of a sudden introduced into the story when he wasn't in the first two books. It almost felt like Backman needed to come up with a plot to have a 3rd book and developed this character. I feel like we knew just about everyone in town already.

So, I didn't love this one. The hardcover says it's just under 700 pages which is a big commitment for a book that isn't going to blow me away. I do love Backman's empathetic writing style and how he has a way of expressing peoples' emotions, but felt like he used some of the same phrase over and over again and it was repetitive. His constant one sentence foreshadowing has always bothered me as well. The corruption and political parts were also confusing at times.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley, but this one wasn't for me.

I've been sitting on this book and my thoughts for over a month now. Backman takes us back to Beartown where we see communities bend, break, and change. I had a family member ask me who The Winners focused on, and it's the town. The Winners dives into the town and tells complicated stories that have no easy resolution. The Winners also highlights the beauty in humanity and drives home that even when we're broken we can love and lift. Unsurprisingly this book made me cry, and I'll probably revisit it again later this year. These books are modern masterpieces, and I'm so grateful to Backman for sharing them with us.

Exceptional as always. The third trip to Beartown is delightful. I loved spending time again with these wonderful characters with all their faults, hopes and dreams. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exhange for an honest review.

I don't even know exactly where to start with a review of this book. Maybe I'll start by noting that I had been anticipating this book since the second I finished Us Against You in 2018 - and to have it land in my email inbox a few months before publication was a highlight of my reading year. I quickly reread Beartown and Us Against You on audio (which was SUCH a good idea, I had forgotten a lot of small intricacies in the last few years) and was ready to dive right in and pick up with these beloved characters in Beartown.

Every reader dreams of a favourite book that just never ends. Isn't that what we say about books we're loving? That we don't want them to end? I felt this tenfold while reading this extremely lengthy book. I didn't want it to end, partially because I knew this was the conclusion to a beloved trilogy, and because Backman has a way of tying all the pieces together to build to an elevated conclusion in his books and I was hesitant of the emotional journey. Fortunately, despite my speed-reading-need-to-find-out-what-happens tendencies, this book was very long and the language and way it was written absolutely forced me to savour it more than I usually do with books I'm loving. Backman is a literary genius - the way he can make the reader simultaneously follow and care for 20+ "main characters" is mind-boggling and this book at times felt a bit like a choose your own adventure book with all its paths taken (except the choice was the author's, not ours). There were so many things hinted at throughout the book and as soon as I'd start to wonder about one thing, we were back at another group of people or a different situation. It was intense and flawless in its execution.

In regard to the actual content and plot of the story, there is not much I want to say without spoiling any of the story, but as expected, this storyline continues with the heightened tension between the communities of Hed and Beartown, particularly after a disastrous storm causes one of the communities to lose its ice hockey roof and practice in the other rink. We catch up with many of our beloved favourite characters from the first two books including Maya, Amat, Benji, Peter and Kira, Bobo, Zackell, Alicia, Sune, and Anna. Of course, there's some hockey. As usual, there is some political drama and scheming and there are tensions between couples and there are heartwarming moments and heartwrenching moments. I laughed and smiled and cried and choked up and gasped and all of that. It was exactly the experience I expected.

Diehard fans of the series will likely savour every single page of this magnificent conclusion to where we began in Beartown - don't let the length daunt you because this was worth every single second of my reading time and more. I was beyond sad to say goodbye to these characters but also so grateful for my many hours spent with them over the years.

Thank you so much to Arielle Fredman, Atria Books/Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fredrick Backman ended his trilogy in a way I expected, good and bad. This book made me laugh and broke my heart at the same time. These characters came to feel like family, the backstory on them was articulate and complete.

I am sure I am going to be in minority, but I just could not get into to this book. I have LOVED the other books I read from Fredrick Backman and I am not sure why, but this one was not for me.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC for an honest review.

The Winners is the 3rd book in the Beartown trilogy from Fredrik Backman.

"A terrible storm blows through. Some return to Beartown for the funeral of a long-time resident. Violence breaks out between Hed and Beartown parents. Old enemies become allies. Families struggle. The editor of the paper chases corruption. A young man full of hate seeks revenge for his sister. And tragedy strikes"

This is an epic finish to the Beartown story - 688 pages of great characters and story. Backman spends more time in Hed in this book and there's no hockey games. But there's still the sense of how important hockey is to both communities.

There's tragedy but also hope. Backman looks at what happens when two groups are on opposite sides and how it pulls apart community and families.

We get to see what happens to these characters - Maya, Amat, Benji, Bobo and Peter.

Some great observations about love and marriage.

For fans of Beartown and Backman this book is a must. And if you love great characters you definitely want to set aside some time for this one.

I don’t know what to say without giving anything away, except that Fredrik Backman sure knows how to make you care about his characters. I waited years for this book and immediately fell deep into the world of Beartown as soon as I got my hands on it. Worth the wait, but man are my emotions all over the place now. Someone else please get an advanced copy so that I have someone to talk to about this!

Thank you to Netgalley who gave me this book in exchange for an honest review. Little did I know five years ago when I read BEARTOWN that it was the start of a trilogy. I strongly recommend reading the trilogy in order. You will land in a small town. Actually two towns, Beartown and Hed. These towns live for hockey. As soon as children can walk, they find themselves on ice skates. The towns are fierce competitors. Some shocking things take place due to the rivalry. THE WINNERS is a satisfying finale to the saga. I finished the book with a sense of closure. It wasn't exactly happily ever after, but the questions were answered.

The Winners is the third book in the Beartown series. I’d recommend reading the other two books and then read this one as there are several points that refer back to the other two books. The Winners explores social class, community, politics, and family. The book is a little under 700 pages and it took me almost a month to finish. I loved this book and it was a five star read. However, read this book with care. The author discusses a lot of heavy subjects: rape, alcoholism, abuse, suicide, gun violence, death, and so many other subjects. There were quite a few times I had to stop reading because it spurred all sorts of emotions. In terms of the writing style, this is a very character driven book. Sometimes it will feel like a slow build or it will feel repetitive in writing, but this all serves a purpose in the story flow. I really liked the multiple subplots going in within the community and the introduction to new characters interacting with beloved characters from the previous books. For those who love the Beartown series will really enjoy The Winners.