Telling the truth about their breakup is out of the question, because the cottage is up for sale, and this is the group’s last hurrah. But (surprise!) Wyn is there too, and he and Harriet have to share a (very romantic) room and a bed. She’s ready for a vacation at her happy place-the Maine cottage she and her friends visit every summer. So they keep it a secret from their friends and families-in fact, Harriet barely even admits it to herself, focusing instead on her grueling hours as a surgical resident. They’ve been part of the same boisterous friend group since college, and they know that their breakup will devastate the others and make things more than a little awkward. Wyn Connor and Harriet Kilpatrick were the perfect couple-until Wyn dumped Harriet for reasons she still doesn’t fully understand. There’s also a brief “not all men” message that, given the toxic nature of the narrative, is hard to ignore.Ī moralistic noir masquerading as a heart-warmer.Įxes pretend they’re still together for the sake of their friends on their annual summer vacation. Backman writes with wit and sincerity and is a talented web-spinner, but with a tale this long, the lack of nuance becomes grating. The book is almost 700 pages long and covers only a two-week span. These machinations are not alone in being soppy and unearned. To stoke the conflict between the towns, he includes not only the pregnancy-ending factory accident of a nameless woman (ushering in a suspiciously out-of-place anti-abortion sentiment), but also the murder of a beloved dog. He wants to assure readers that this makes his characters complex, but it really renders them pawns.
Backman repeatedly tells the reader about his characters’ overwhelming love for each other, but their ability to actually care for one another comes and goes with the demands of the unwieldy plot. Beloved characters return, new ones are introduced, tragedy is promised.
Only one can seemingly do well at a time-resourcewise or hockeywise the two are interchangeable-and their residents share a mutual, pathological hatred. Life continues haltingly for the inhabitants of Beartown and its rival borough, Hed.Īs in the two earlier books in this series ( Beartown, 2017 Us Against You, 2018), things are never settled between these two hockey-obsessed towns in the forests of Sweden.
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