This book is about hockey without really being about hockey; more about what it means to have a club in a small town that no one cares about but at the same time everyone cares about. It's about love and hate and passion and resentment and friends and enemies and politics. Essentially, it's a story about how a whole town turns into a cauldron that slowly but surely starts to boil over and hurts a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

Backman's characters feel dimensional and real, the writing is melancholic and heartwarming, builds tension and pulls the reader into the wintery Beartown with its snowy forests and ice cold nights.

/spoiler-ish He re-used quite a few metaphors and repeated meaningful character moments, which lessened their impact for me (for example, how Peter is 'afraid' of milk). I know it's difficult to build on these moments if their last mention was longer ago, but as someone who read the books back to back, it felt repetitive.

I also didn't enjoy the part between the teacher and the student. I'm glad Backman didn't focus the story on their relationship, but that leads to the question why it needed to be a teacher in the first place. He could've still moved away at the end if he had any other profession. The topic is very important to me so others might not care as much, but it made me extremely uncomfortable and I just wish he wasn't a teacher.

The ending for this book felt open, but conclusive at the same time. I'm excited to see what Backman will do with the last book in the trilogy and I'm looking forward to meeting the characters again!