Finished: Us Against You (Backman) This sequel to the much loved book Beartown was another brilliant look into the lives of the Beartown people, picking up right after the events of the first book, and continuing on like a page-turning freight train around and through each character's hopes, dreams, hardships, failures, realities, etc. Beartown left me needing a sequel, and now Us Against You leaves me hoping the author will write another one! This is the beginning of the Amazon description, and I think it's better than anything I could write, so here goes: "A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beatown is home to tough, hardworking people who don't expect life to be easy or fair. No matter how difficult times get, they've always been able to take pride in their local ice hockey team. So it's a cruel blow when they hear that Beartown ice hockey might soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for the rival team in the neighboring town of Hed, take in that fact. As the tension mounts between the two adversaries, a newcomer arrives who gives Beartown hockey a surprising new coach and a chance at a comeback." So, Peter Andersson is still there, and still the general manager of the hockey team in Beartown, but only because this newcomer to town, a manipulative politician named Richard Theo, has supplied an unknown investor who hopes to bring back not only the hockey team, but the factory in Beartown as well. Pete's daughter, Maya, is the teenager who was raped by the star hockey player, Kevin, in the first book. She is still reeling and dealing with the rape. At the end of Beartown, she had found Kevin alone, pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. She wanted him to feel helpless, and he did. The gun wasn't loaded, but he didn't know that, and the experience terrified him and humbled him. At the beginning of Us Against You, even though he originally deserted to Hed to play for that team like most of the other players, he's been unable to function, so his mother takes him and they move away. Our favorite and most loyal hockey players, Benji, Amat and  Bobo, have all stayed to play for Beartown. The new coach, Zeckell, is a no-nonsense person who plans to build a team around them, and around Vidar Rinnius, the teenager brother  of Teemu, the leader of the "pack" in Beartown...the band of "hooligan" brothers who most people in the town fear. Life intervenes, of course, as a lifestyle secret about our beloved Benji comes to light and the entire town implodes. Also, Vidar decides as much as he loves hockey, he wants to stand  in the stands with his brothers in the pack at the much anticipated Hed versus Beartown first game of the season. Beartown is down 4-0 after the first two quarters, when both Vidar and Benji decide they will jump in and play. This isn't arrogance on either of their parts. They are both troubled young men who are not sure if they even fit on the team, much less in this life, but they realize they are needed, so they decide to play. As the author says, though, hockey's a sport, not a fairy tale, and they still lose, 4-3. However, Benji and Vidar stay committed to the team and Beartown wins all their reamaining games, as does Hed. There are so many intricacies to the rivalry and escalating "pranks" that get out of hand, that right before their next meeting, which once again will decide the champ and have lasting implications for whichever team wins, a tragedy occurs involving the death of one of the players on Beartown's team. Lives are once again shattered and when the two teams meet, hockey seems so unimportant at the time that the author doesn't ever even tell us who wins and who loses. It's another amazing book that still leaves Benji as one of my favorite characters in all the books I've read. I so hope there is another sequel so I can see how all these people have moved on!