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I’m disappointed to say that I did not enjoy Us Against You nearly as much as Beartown. Fredrick Backman went waaaay too far with his whimsically worded one-liners and foreshadowing that I found myself rolling my eyes and wishing he would just let the reader live the story instead of talking about what’s about to happen and making it sound like a narrative poem. This is a lengthy read � 435 pages � and so many of those pages are full of expository fluff and line breaks intended to be suspenseful but that instead come across as childishly dramatic.

I was really conflicted while reading this book because I LOVED Beartown and was dying to see what happened next, but I really think that the frilly style of writing in the sequel was way overdone and made it hard for me to appreciate the plot. There was nothing super new or thought-provoking � this sequel felt like a long run-on sentence repeating the same messages from Beartown, throwing in a little action and predictable back-and-forth drama to try and keep it interesting. It kind of dragged.

I really wanted to like Us Against You, but it fell flat compared to the stunning first book of this series. Still impressed with the author and the important politically charged themes that remained prominent, but overall I was not blown away by this one.