I love Fredrik Backmans writing. It flows easily and is lovely to read but I do prefer his earlier books. I still highly recommend him.

I adored the first Beartown book and found this equally moving and powerful.
Beartown is a town that is fractured, a town that must be reset before it can begin to heal. Whilst standing strong in the face of adversity, the residents have a vulnerability about them that makes them easy to take advantage of.
This book lays relationships bare, leaving them raw and exposed in all their beauty but also in their cruelty. It shows how people can be simultaneously the closest to you and yet so far away, it deals with both honour and dishonour, sacrifice, devotion and love. We see how as humankind, we can build people up but just as easily bring them down. The characters are fully formed, complex and so relatable; we see that each person is in no way 2 dimensional and that what we see on the surface may only scratch the surface of the person below.
This is a book about a town, about hockey, but it is so much more : It is about humankind, in all its guises and I loved it!

This is a tale of love, loss and loyalty. I can't remember ever reading a book that moved me so much. The writing is incredibly powerful. The characters develop slowly until we know them so well. The tension builds so the reader is tense, waiting for the next disaster to happen: then there are some unpredictable twists. I think it is important to have read Beartown (also published as The Scandal) first. I can not recommend this book highly enough; it is absolutely brilliant.

Gave up on this book but then I did make the mistake of reading it before Beartown. I will go back and read them in order. I hope to revisit it again in the near future

I absolutely loved Beartown and was both delighted and surprised to hear that there was going to be a follow up novel. I didn't really see how the story of the Beartown inhabitants could be furthered or improved on, so it was with slight trepidation that I started reading Us Against You. I shouldn't have worried! Backman examines the fallout of the events of the first novel and the ongoing repercussions to the community fantastically well with well -placed hints and indicators of further turmoil to come. I read most of the book with my heart in my mouth and I couldn't put it down. We revisit original characters as well as getting to know some brilliantly drawn new ones. If you've read Beartown read this now, if you haven't - read them both!

I could not get into this at all. I did not understand the small town setting where everything depends on an ice hockey team - really? It was full of testosterone; fighting, the Pack, rape. There were no sympathetic characters. The style of writing was annoying; present tense throughout; action implied and hinted at rather than told directly. To be honest, after the beginning I just skimmed it to see how it would turn out.

As always with Backman, there is some wonderful writing here. He has a huge talent for putting a deep, complex concept into a deceptively-simple phrase. But for me, his lightness of writing crossed into almost-mawkish territory on occasion in this book. There is a continuous intensity, with fewer light moments and I think this, along with a lack of focus on a small group of characters, meant that this failed to emotionally capture me in the way that his previous books have. I got a definite "middle book in a trilogy" feeling - the first book reels you in, the second book fills things out but doesn't quite live up to the same standard, and then - you hope - the final book makes the whole thing worthwhile. Having read everything else by Backman that has been published in English (with one exception - The Deal of a Lifetime, which appears to have a xmas-y theme so I'm keeping it for a more seasonal moment), and having given every other book at least 4 stars, I'll definitely be reading the third in this trilogy as soon as I can get my hands on it, and I'm remaining optimistic that it will leave me satisfied!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Penguin UK - Michael Joseph for an advance copy of Us Against You, the second novel set in Beartown.

With the loss of their main sponsors and best players to the rival ice hockey team in the neighbouring town of Hed the Beartown team is facing bankruptcy and closure. Fortunately a solution is found, but at what cost?

I thoroughly enjoyed Us Against You which tells the story of a dying town over the course of one winter season. I would recommend that readers read the preceding novel, Beartown (or The Scandal, its original title in the UK) before embarking on this one, because, while all the salient events of Beartown are recapped, it will have more impact if the reader is familiar with the characters and events which cast long shadows in Us Against Them.

This is a very unusual novel for a "mystery and thriller" as it is billed because although there is some crime it is a character driven novel with the collective psyche of the Beartown residents as the protagonist and other residents demonstrating it in different ways. The narrator is an unidentified Beartown resident who relates events as they happen and can't help editorialising as he/she goes along so the reader gets their interpretation and alternatives and snippets of what the future will hold for some of the characters. It gives the book an intimate, folksy feel but, at the same time, a distance from the events. It is a compulsive read which I just had to keep reading until the end. It made, laugh, cry and tear my hair out in turns.

The small town setting is perfect because it is so unimportant in the wider scheme of globalisation but the emotions and reactions depicted are universal. Mr Backman has an incisive eye for human strength and weakness and uses it to excellent effect in this small corner of the world. His characters are well drawn, not always likeable but very human.

Us Against You is an excellent read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

Another totally absorbing story by Fredrik Backman about Beartown and the hockey team. All of human strengths and frailties laid bare. Very sad in some parts and happy in others but throughout the belief of Beartown shines through. Thoroughly enjoyable read.

Couldn’t wait to start reading this sequel to Beartown and straight away I it was like meeting up with an old friend again. I loved it as much as Beartown despite the subject matter being of no interest to me whatsoever...Ice Hockey! The story is so much more than that and is told in so many layers. The characterisation is wonderful and the messages come across clearly but with no lecturing. If I have to give one criticism it would have to be that you couldn’t enjoy Us against you nearly so much without reading Beartown first. That is a recommendation though rather than a criticism.

What a brilliant book!! As with most of the books I love, I laughed at the start and cried at the finish. I haven't read this in its original Swedish but the amazing thing is that the humour and pathos have survived the translation.

I hadn't read Beartown when I sat down to read this, so was concerned I wouldn't understand what was happening. This is so good that you can read it as a stand-alone novel and then of course read Beartown afterwards.

It is laugh-out-loud funny in its poignant descriptions of parenthood and of, frankly, the mundanity of the everyday thoughts and experiences of the inhabitants of Beartown. There are so many characters because we are, in essence, meeting what feels like the whole town but Backman writes in such a way that the reader never finds it confusing. The characters are so well-drawn and we get sucked into the motivations and worries of each individual. Yes, there is a lot about the game of ice hockey, which people may at first be put off by, but it is used as a device that is able to cleverly convey complex psychological issues from a multitude of perspectives, all within the "world" of hockey. We are constantly reminded that hockey is "only a game", after all. But of course it's not.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Penguin UK - Michael Joseph, Fredrik Backman and translator Neil Smith for a copy of this wonderfully moving ARC in exchange for an honest review.

<i>”The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time”</i>

Fir the first 1/3 of the book I was not convinced that there was a story to tell. It felt as if the author wrote this because the fans demanded to know more. It felt like the book was just stating the obvious aftermath of how Beartown ended. I was worried that either this book is going to be a huge disappointment.

Yet now that I have finished I have to admit that there was indeed another story to tell. And one that was definitely worth the read.

Like with the first book I loved and hated this community in equal measure, I cared for and wanted to thump the characters on the head at the same time.

New characters like Zackell, Vidal and The Pack (what Pack?) breathed life in to the story and old favourites like Benji, Bobo and Amat made my heart constrict a bit.

I am not going to unpack the plot because if you have read Beartown and loved it I am sure you are going to want to read this too.

I loved Beartown and I loved Us Against You. I loved returning to that town and those characters. I loved being part of their lives again - the tragedies, the triumphs, the joys and woes, the love and the hate. And the hockey.
Fredrik Backman is an amazing storyteller. The way he can summon emotion is frightening. Just a turn of phrase and I'm floored. He had me falling in love, tearing my hair out, sobbing with grief, yelling in frustration so easily ... and so enjoyably ... that I can forgive him playing fast and loose with my emotions. And those characters - I love every flawed/perfect one of them. Yes, he's good at inducing the most exquisite ambivalence as well, feelings see-sawing and swinging all over the place. One minute you're disgusted with someone - you hate them like Hed hate Beartown - then the next you're overwhelmed with sympathy and empathy for them. Just like Hed and Beartown. In general, Backman's style is just so effective. The way he peppers the story with teasers, sometimes full-on spoilers, that actually increase the tension and suspense rather than deflate it is something I really enjoy. The little flash forwards, snapshots of future successes and joys (or in a certain case tragedy - sob!) serve as bright spots in what ostensibly seems like quite a grim story. Yes, there's violence but there's also love, loyalty, hope, redemption, renewal and joy. And hockey.
Because it's all about hockey.