This was the first of Fredrik Backman's books I read that I felt... so-so about. I can't decide whether to give this 5 stars or 1 star so I'm settling for 2.5 First the good: Fredrik Backman knows just as well as always how to draw you in and creates multi-faceted, real people with complex motives. Some of them you like, some of them you don't, some of them you root for, some of them you're annoyed with, but it's never black and white with his characters. The story itself also started in quite an interesting way. I know nothing about Hockey but Backman managed to make it interesting for me! But then the twist happened and now we get to what I didn't enjoy. I did not enjoy the whole plotline that took up the second half of the book. I won't say what it is as to not spoil anything but I didn't know that this would happen in the book (maybe I should've read the content warnings) and while I don't have any personal problems with this topic, I didn't care for it and I didn't particularly want to read about it. This book left me feeling angry, frustrated and unsatisfied. And I know that's life, I know it's exactly this way for so many people out there. But it wasn't what I expected (so maybe that's a me-problem). I want it to be known that this book is very new territory for Backman, it's way more intense, it's darker and more serious and I think he's proven that he can write about serious topics just as well and handle them in a delicate and appropriate matter. I just didn't enjoy it and I think I'll stick to his more light-hearted books. In between interesting chapters, I was also very bored with the book. This was the first time I thought a book by Fredrik Backman was too long, which is a sad thing to say. Lastly, I didn't enjoy the ending at all. I felt all the hints about what might happen to other characters were just thrown in there to get people to read the next book in the series. I looked up how long the other two books are and decided they were not worth my time. Then I read up on some spoilers for the rest of the trilogy and now I'm SO glad I didn't decide to read those books because I do not think I would've enjoyed them.