Us Against You was one of my highly-anticipated sequels for 2018, following after the emotionally-wrenching and completely memorable Beartown. After reading it, it's safe to say that for me, it suffered from the sequel-syndrome, where it never quite achieves all that its predecessor did.
Probably the biggest negative for me is that this story took too long to get started. For the majority of this book, we are just reading about the extended fallout from what happened in the first book. It was frustrating to read at length about the townspeople sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that nothing happened, pretty much acting as they had been without learning any lessons.
There is a lot of repetition in the story, such as the same thoughts presented over and over with slightly different words, or the same event seen from half a dozen people's points of view. With so much rehashing, there just wasn't much new in this book that wasn't already in the first book. I had expected more in terms of plot from this book, and it just didn't deliver.
The style of this book also grated on my nerves. Backman writes as if there is an active narrator telling us the story, constantly foreshadowing events for us and making them out to be more horrible than they really turn out to be. The narrator voice also comes across preachy and holier-than-thou, constantly dropping nuggets of wisdom everywhere. It seems if you took the foreshadowing and the preachy passages out of the book, the book could easily be only half the length.
And yet, I have to give Backman credit. When the writing is not grating on my nerves, it's really quite beautiful. He constructs poignant passages and captures the essences and subtleties of emotional moments. Though there were a lot I didn't like about this book, the beautiful writing kept me reading on. But if there were to be a third book, I would probably skip it.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
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