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“Because sports isn't reality, and when reality is hell we need stories, because they make us feel that if we can just be best at one thing, perhaps everything else will turn and start to go our way, too.��

It took me two years to pick up this sequel to Beartown. Two years where I had to find the will to be destroyed all over again. Fredrik Backman seems to be scarily good at that.

I want to say that this story is about two things: hockey and Benji. But to say that almost seems unfair to the rest of the characters who are given as much page-time as him, who are just as significant as he is, but there’s something about Benji that stands out. Or rather, that my heart just latches onto more.

It also feels unfair to the rest of the plot. There is so much that surrounds this story, it feels ridiculous to reduce it to just hockey only. But this small-town’s identity relies on hockey in its absolute entirety. And when it tries to get taken away, things become ugly. You see these characters, this town, do everything they can to ensure its survival. Because hockey's survival means their own survival, their identity intact.

No one does character study, people study, like Fredrik Backman. His writing is divine.

It’s also tragic as hell. It took everything out of me to read this till the very end. My emotions have been depleted, because they were consistently on high alert. And now I feel scattered.

Beartown. I love it. I despise it. This town sucks majorly. But the quality of people it has produced, the community it has created is admirable. I don’t know whether I want to be a part of it or not. It has experienced some abhorrent things. You see the town and its people at its worst and very best. They’re complex.

That ending was equally excruciating and heart-warming. The tears were running, because I was both happy and heartbroken. It has left a dent in my soul.

And I think those words sum up this series so far: happy and heartbroken. Moments of joy are few and far in between but when they occur, your heart can’t seem to contain the joy, the goodness. But you know you are on your way to sadness. It’s inevitable. And you need to know that it takes everything out of you, because you grow to care for these characters and their town and everything they represent.

Trigger warnings for homophobia, sexual assault, grief and loss of a child.

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I haven’t even finished Beartown yet, but I’m marking this as ’currently reading��.
Yes, it’s that good.