PLEASE NO ONE SHOUT AT ME 😅

I enjoyed this book just enough, and I'm more furious about that than anyone else can be. I think the problem is that this story has been stretched over a trilogy and this book could have been literally half the length. The entirety if the first two books is in this one. You could just skip to read this one. For the reader that has heard all this before many, many times its a frustrating reading experience.

I did switch to audio half way through and that was better - though, I listened to it going about my day then kept crying so, swings and roundabouts.

That is what is brilliant about this book though, the thing that kept me reading - god does it pull at my heart. I needed to know what happened to the handsome boy with a wild heart and he did not let me down. The book really shows the way in which these fantastically realised characters love each other, support each other, grieve each other. We know all the ways in which they are connected and will carry each other in their hearts for the rest of their lives like touch points for their sanity and emotions.

I just wish this had been published as a duology. Much as I appreciate that Backman achieves so much, particularly in making the reader truly reflect on all the ways people are connected and change each others lives, much as I ADORE these characters beyond belief, it's just far, far too long for what it offers the reader of the full trilogy.

Benji Ovich, the bravest bastard around ❤️

an excellent read and conclusion to the Beartown trilogy. It’s actually not that easy going and a lot of dark subject matter is covered but it’s worth getting through it for the payoff.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this book in exchange for my review.

I love books by this author but did not realise this was part of a trilogy so though I liked it I reserve some judgement until I have read the other in the series

"We have nothing but stories here."
"The stories will eventually become so intertwined that if you tug at one tiny thread at one end, you tear open the stitches holding all our wounds together at the other end."

The Winners is the final installment in the Beartown trilogy and through his storytelling, Fredrik Backman has weaved his magic once again. The residents of rival towns Beartown and Hed are once again revisited and we see how their lives carry on, two years later.

Backman really knows how to tell a story, so much so that this book was just under 700 pages long and took me a fair while to read. There were times when I honestly did find it tedious, but it was all worth it in the end. The climax was heartbreaking and left me a complete emotional mess.

Backman writes with sheer brilliance. He knows how to grab the reader and fully immerse them into his writing. He brings the characters to life effortlessly and leaves the reader with a profound impact.

Well, the maestro has struck again. What a fitting finale to one of the most brilliant piece of literature that has even been created!

Honestly, how can our poor hearts cope with Backman's writing? I found it impossible to handle this kind of heart-rendering storytelling💔.

Instead of synopsis, I prefer to describe the multiple threads we follow here - the main one of course is hockey and the towns of Beartown and Hed, the other threads being the two clubs' survival, the role of the council and its investigation by journalists and finally the character portrayals of Kira, Peter, Maya, Amat, Benji, Ana, Tails and the new addition of Johnny and Hannah's family from Hed.

For Beartown and Hed, the obsession with hockey and the animosity it generates between then is unparalleled. Hockey is their heartbeat, the basic way of life. It is this deep-seated hatred, after a two year cooling period combined with the question of their very existence, town politics and a disturbed teenage boy, that give rise to most of what happens in this story.

There are also a few background sub-stories that add to this intricate and multi-layered plot. The descriptions of Benji and Ana’s homecoming, the circumstances surrounding them, Kira and Peter’s struggle, the test of loyalties, the violence, the moral dilemmas, the hope, loss, grief and ultimately the triumph of unity in diversity will all squeeze our hearts and never let go.

There is a certain complexity to Backman's writing, yet at the same time a beautiful simplicity. The way he lays before us the crux of life involving love, family, friendships and relationships is just otherworldly.

In my opinion, we can only appreciate the depth of his understanding of human behaviour and psychology, as well as his keen observation, if we’ve read his other books. So much of what he says are highly relevant to all our everyday lives and I found myself just nodding to the simple yet profound wisdom.

In other words, no book lover must miss this series.

Thanks NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK for the ARC!

Backman has managed to give a very beautifully written finale to the Beartown trilogy. This story will make you feel bot fulfilled and empty.

I’d say that this is a must pick if you’ve enjoyed Backman’s previous books, but can also be read as a stand alone for the first time. The beginning of the book gives a great overview in terms of what happened in Beartown and its characters, whilst also introducing some new ones.

I believe that it’s important to mention that this is not an easy read and I would strongly recommend checking the trigger warnings before diving into it.

The return to Beartown and the concluding book of this series. I have been waiting, for what feels like a long time to return. A quick google tells me it is five years since Us Against You was published and six since Beartown was published. The Winners opens in the immediately, familiar location. There is a lot of recounting the stories of before and reintroducing of characters. I welcomed this has it been five years since I had read of the residents of this fictional Swedish town however if you have read the preceding
two books more recently, this may be a little tedious.

The Winners comes in at under just 700 pages. However, while it's easy to read, it is perhaps a smidgen too long. After becoming reacquainted with the characters from the previous books and the introduction of some new ones, the book pinballs from one character to the next, weaving their stories, sharing their dramas, peppered with Backman's wisdom and highlighting the beauty of ordinary life. The book opens with a storm ravaging Beartown and the book circles and swirls towards a tragedy at the end (this is not a spoiler as its mentioned throughout).

I enjoyed The Winners. I liked meeting the characters of Beartown again and seeing their lives progressing and all the mentions of their future lives. There is excellent storytelling within centering on family, community, rivalry, ice hockey, loss, hope and love, all written with heart. It is obvious the author deeply cares about these characters and much like I am prone to doing myself when talking about my children, there is perhaps too much detail at times that doesn't necessarily further the story. Two thirds in the book faltered a little for me but fought its way back to a deeply satisfying and fitting conclusion to which, overall is very much a trilogy worth reading.
Perhaps my expectations were too high, but The Winners is not as good a book as Beartown and Us Against You, it veered a little too far into over sentimentality and lacked some of the darker elements which worked so well to balance the beauty in the other books. The ending soared back to make this a 4 star read for me.

It's a official! Backman can't write a bad book. This was a befitting continuation and even though it's been a while since I read the last one, I got pulled back into the world immediately. What an experience!

Another marvel of a book from this author, and a truly fitting end to an immensely emotional, impactful and outstanding series!

This Beartown series has been a truly emotional rollercoaster of a read! The author has an amazing gift of making you part of the community that you're reading about so you feel every punch to the gut of all that the inhabitants go through - and in Beartown they go through a lot!!

Picking up 2 years after the last book, this throws you straight back in to witness yet more trauma for the locals, having to deal with a major storm, the death of a much loved member of the community and the aftershocks still of the events from Book 1. And still at the heart of the book are the goings on of the ice hockey teams that unite and divide so many people. It festers amongst those who were at the centre of it all, and the ripples effect everyone and it's just so devastating and dramatic to read the goings on via the viewpoints of a number of characters. How they try to move on but the scars are never too far away and how it has changed them all. All of their lives have changed for ever and this book captures in stunning detail just how so.

Sport still plays a huge part of their lives and adding corruption to the mix is never going to end well for anybody. It also shows how it can unite at times, and there's also that sense of characters doing what they can to survive - either by shouting loudly or staying quiet for their own sanity sake. So many characters in this book have such strong storylines that you're left gasping for breath sometimes by the constant turmoil that so many have to face and combat.

I have adored this series despite it making me sob uncontrollably and feel anger at the injustices that many have faced, but then pride at their bravery and spirit. A masterclass in writing and I will continue to rave about this series forever!! Thankyou Fredrik Backman!!

I love this series and the world of Beartown, and this is a beautiful finale to the series. Backman has so many fantastic one-liners sprinkled throughout the book – although some did seem to feel a little repetitive in this title. One of my favourite things Backman does is to really zoom into the lives of ordinary people – someone may be on the sidelines in one scene and then later you know their entire lives. And his way of depicting the ordinary & extraordinary love of partners, friends, family – it's beautiful.

I've never cared much about ice hockey but this book could easily change my mind!!

The Winners is the perfect final book in a searingly brilliant trilogy. Fredrik Backman is again flawless as he describes ordinary people’s foibles, passions and behaviour. He made me cry, high-five and laugh out loud. Rarely have I enjoyed a book (and the previous two in the Beartown trilogy) at such a gut level. I fiercely loved so many of the characters (oh, Benji!) and they will all live with me forever.
Although ostensibly a book about ice hockey, in a town obsessed with the sport, it’s about so, so much more. If you’re totally uninterested in the sport, please don’t make the mistake of letting that put you off. Hockey is merely an analogy for life and business and community, so this is not a story about the sport, but about the very essence of being human.
The Winners continues the story of a small Swedish community, surrounded by forest, and the lengths they will go to to protect their town, lifestyle and families. It’s partly an indictment of society and partly a celebration of family and community.
The writing is poetic, poignant, insightful, sometimes funny and always authentic. Backman tackles serious themes, but ever so gently. His writing is understated, but powerful and profound. He uses so many brilliant devices, such as having the Beartown community comment on events, or working the epilogue into the story to introduce a feeling of dread, or let us know how things are going to turn out way into the future.
Brilliantly translated by Neil Smith, this is a highly recommended five star read.

This is not a perfect book but this is a book that talks to your emotions and involves you in a rollercoaster of happiness and sadness.
If you loved Beartown you will surely love The Winners and will be sad to say goodbye.
Backman delivers a compelling novel that talks about something that is common to people everywhere even if the book is set in Sweden.
Take your time and read this series and you will fell in love with the storytelling, the people, and the places.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Fantastic! I’m sure many readers, particular fans of the series, will love this too, even if it did have me in tears, and whilst this is a long read, the pages simply flew by. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Why do I do this to myself. Every single book by this author has tugged my heartstrings and I've ended up sobbing. This is no different so have tissues handy.
We are back in the forest. Things between Beartown and Hed are still strained.
In a faraway place, Benji receives news of a death and packs his bags. Maya receives the same news in the big city and also packs her bags. All roads lead home.
An investigation by the local newspaper into the funding of the Beartown rink causes headaches for Tails, but could implicate other innocent parties.
We meet Johnny, Hannah and their family. Amat has been to the NFL draft, but is back and hasn't been training.
Sune is helping 7 year old Alice with her hockey. Mumbles the goalie feels like he is fitting in.
Matteo stays in the shadows like a wraith, plotting his vengeance.
All the stories run parallel and converge in a terrible conclusion.
The Winners is a winner for me.

As usual, excellent storytelling and great character development. Any good Backman novel is like watching a ball rolling in circles, faster and faster until it reaches its goal with a satisfying finale. However, this one was so freaking long and repetitive (especially after two books in the same series). I honestly felt so relieved when nearing the end that I wonder if we ever really needed a Beartown trilogy...

Two years have passed since the events of Beartown and many things have changed since then. One thing remains the same however, and that’s Ice Hockey is more than just a sport.
Fredrik Backman is a master of the written word and the way he can encapsulate everything worth knowing about a character in a paragraph is simply masterful. He can introduce a new character and within half a page you feel as if you know them intimately. And the characters are what makes this book.
This novel is ostensibly about an Ice Hockey team but it is so much more than that. Backman uses sport to show us about human nature, about how we are a tribal community with all that that entails. Out in the woods you cannot survive on your own and the residents of Beartown know this all too well. They help each other in times of need but when threatened they can become dangerous, to outsiders as well as to each other.
A myriad of themes are explored here; love, sacrifice, forgiveness, family, racism as well as classism and all are touched upon with absolute beauty and insight. No one can write about the human condition like Backman, with laser cut precision which gets right to the heart of things.
As the final book in the trilogy The Winners was perfect. My heart was broken and then stitched back together with threads of joy and hope. Some books remind you of why you fell in love with reading in the first place and this one does just that.

We’ve waited four years for the conclusion to Fredrik Backman’s acclaimed Beartown saga, and what a triumph it is. The Winners is everything I hoped it would be and more: atmospheric, compassionate and reflective; its heartbreaking sadness tempered by moments of the sweetest joy. And all of it swaddled in Backman’s uniquely rich but wholly accessible prose.

We’re back in Beartown, two years after the horrific events that tore it apart. Much has changed. More has stayed the same. The familiar characters are here, many of them still battling their personal demons and each other.

The story opens with a storm, a death and two homecomings. There are political shenanigans, continued friction between Beartown and its neighboring, rival town of Hed, and a prevailing, blood-chilling sense of impending doom. Evil will rear its ugly head once more before these two communities can reach a truce and finally start to heal.

It’s hard to explain just how powerful this story is. Backman makes you live it, breathe the atmosphere, experience the emotion. In his hands, this community and its people rise up from the pages and swallow you whole.

His writing is graceful and fluid with a momentum that carries you forward apace. To read quickly, though, is to risk overlooking this author’s extraordinary wordmanship, which is so meticulous, there are messages in almost every sentence.

For me though, in this novel sparkling with gems, the most exquisite is neither the prose nor the storytelling, but the nameless narrator: the all-seeing, all-knowing voice, whose observations and philosophical reflections are tiny pearls of wisdom to be exclaimed over, picked up and admired.

At its heart, this memorable trilogy is about family and community, the ties that bind and the evil that breaks. I did not want Beartown’s story to end the way it did. Backman prepared me for it, but it still broke me; I still howled in pain. Then he rescued me with a glimpse into a happier, hopeful future.

In his acknowledgments Backman writes: “I hope it [the saga] gave you something because I gave it absolutely everything I had.” It did, and thank you.

The Winners starts off reintroducing the reader to all the beloved characters of Beartown, a fictional town in Sweden that is obsessed with ice hockey and its rivals Hed. We meet Hannah and Johnny and their four kids in Hed but we're two years on from the last novel and in true Backman style a sense of doom is prevalent throughout. I don't know any other author that writes as such an omniscient narrator, that can create so much tension and foreboding. We know bad things are going to happen and when they do they have you in tears.

There are quite a few content warnings for this, as in all the books, but I'll add them at the bottom of this review. I was saying to the lovely group I was buddy reading with, that the tears are partly because it's all over. We've known this town for so long that they feel like family and mostly there is hope for the town and characters are given the ending they deserve but there is some tragedy. It had me sobbing because he has such a way with words, he knows how to philosophise about life like no other author I know 💙
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Content warnings: death, death of an animal, murder, imminent birth, accidental injury in a factory, use of offensive words for disabled folk.

The Winners by Fredrik Backman
I give this book 5 stars

‘It’s often said that winners write history, but there are no winners here’
This is a small story about big questions.
It's a story about family, community, life.
It starts with a storm - and a death.
But how does it end?

This is the 3rd book in a series and you could read it without having read the others but the reader would benefit from reading BearTown and Us Against You for a more in depth backstory.
I absolutely LOVED this and didn’t want to put it down (literally) but equally didn’t want it to end! This book like both the others is extremely character driven, the author craft’s these characters so well they come alive between the pages and you feel like you know them personally strengths and flaws and you truly care for them. BearTown and Hed are described so vividly l feel like I want to go visit. Fredrik Backman has a truly unique writing style that connects with the reader and you get to experience the highs and lows of a close knit community,rivalries,friendships,families, hockey,money,revenge and tragedy in a way few authors can create.The observations and quotes sprinkled throughout add that extra touch. It’s 2 years later and Maya and Benji are back. I felt like I went on an emotional journey with this book’s storyline and knowing l would be saying a final goodbye and lm now left bereft. Side note- you don’t have to be a hockey fan to enjoy this incredible series.
With thanks to Netgalley,Fredrik Backman and , Simon & Schuster UK for my chance to read and review this book

I would like to thank Netgalley and Simon & Schuster UK for an advance copy of The Winners, the third novel in the Beartown trilogy, set in the remote Swedish town of Beartown.

I must admit that I baulked when I first opened The Winners as my Kindle was telling me it was a 15+ hour read. It’s not as long as that, but it is still a lengthy, meaty read told in a very idiosyncratic style. The author switches from character to character narrating not just their present, but their past too and offering insights into their future. All done in a folksy tone that passes comment on their actions and animadverts on human behaviour in general. It creates a tremendous sense of intimacy for the reader and helps them identify with a relatively large cast of characters.

I have read the previous novels in the series, but the details have become hazy in my elderly brain so it was almost like starting again with the bonus of familiarity with the writer’s style. Fortunately all the salient details are recapped so the novel could be read as a stand-alone, but, on the other hand, they could not be read in anything but the right order to avoid spoilers.

The background to the novel is the hatred between two small towns in northern Sweden, Beartown and Hed, encapsulated by the rivalry between their ice hockey teams. Tribalism is universal, accentuated in the novel by the relative insignificance of the towns. I should know, I’m from Glasgow. After that it’s all about the politics and corruption (“it isn’t cheating if you don’t get caught”) of this tribalism and the individual stories of a host characters.

To be honest the length and breadth of the novel were too much for me as I’m struggling with my concentration. I read it in bits, sandwiched between easier reads. There are so many characters with stories to be told and it switches constantly between them. It’s not difficult to keep up with events, but it was difficult for me to keep interested, because with so many characters the novel is obviously slow going. It heats up in unexpected ways later on, but I found it a slog to get there. That is not to say that I couldn’t appreciate what the author has done, produced a character based novel that covers not only the characters in depth but their environment and social situation and it’s emotional, running the gamut as the characters deal with their pasts, presents and potential futures. I don’t think I have ever cried so much over a novel as I did at the end of this one, although I should point out that optimism and the future are the overriding conclusions.

In the end The Winners is a book about everything and nothing. It is a bit of a tour de force and I’m sad that my personal circumstances did not allow me to enjoy it more. I will revisit it in the future to savour its full impact.