The 5 Best Fredrik Backman Books Ranked in Order

1. Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage.

As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

My Rating: ★★★★★

This was the second book I read by Fredrik Backman, and I picked it up as I adored A Man Called Ove when I read it two years ago. I had wanted to read more by Fredrik Backman ever since so I jumped on this once I seen it on the shelf in my local library.

Fredrik Backman writes in such a witty and clever way, but while always touching on important topics and hiding a deeper meaning within his books.

If you’re new to Fredrik Backman, this tops my list of the best Fredrik Backman books and is a great introduction to his work.

2. Beartown (1) by Fredrik Backman

Beartown is a powerful, emotional story about a small town obsessed with its junior ice hockey team. When a violent act shocks the community, long-held secrets come to light, testing friendships, loyalties, and courage.

Full of heart and humanity, it’s a story about the hopes, struggles, and resilience of an entire town, and how one moment can change everything.

My Rating: ★★★★★

Wow. This book was incredible. Fredrik Backman has such a gift for writing about community, people, and all the complicated emotions that come with small-town life.

On the surface, it’s about ice hockey (the first in the Beartown trilogy series), but it’s really about loyalty, secrets, and how a town deals with trauma. It’s emotional, heavy at times, but written so beautifully that you just get swept up in the story. Easily one of the best books I’ve read by him, and one that will stick with me for a long time.

3. Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman

Britt-Marie can’t stand mess. A disorganized cutlery drawer ranks high on her list of unforgivable sins. She is not one to judge others, it’s just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention. But hidden inside the socially awkward, fussy busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams, and a warmer heart that anyone around her realizes.

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg, she finds work as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center.

Britt-Marie soon finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?

My Rating: ★★★★★

If you ever need a book to make you cry with sadness and then cry with happiness, pick up one of Fredrik Backman’s books. The characters, the setting, the plot are always so heartwarming and almost fable-like in a way.

I find Fredrik Backman’s writing always has hidden messages and life lessons, passages to make you stop and think after reading them. If you need to feel hopeful or have your faith in the world restored, look no further than Britt-Marie Was Here.

4. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots – neighbours who can’t reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d’etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents’ Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.

But isn’t it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible…

My Rating: ★★★★

It took me a little while to fully get into A Man Called Ove, but by the end it had me (almost) weeping. The story follows a grumpy old man very set in his ways and rules, who wants to end his life and be with his recently deceased wife.

However, it seems that there is always someone getting in the way before he can actually do it. Nosy neighbours, small children and a cat somehow worm their way into Ove’s grumpy life and over time, change him into a more caring man.

A very wholesome read that makes you see that there’s a better way to live life than to always seeing the negative in everything.

And if you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend watching the movie adaptation with Tom Hanks – it’s great!

5. Us Against You (2) by Fredrik Backman

A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown 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 a 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.

My Rating: ★★★

This is the second instalment in the Beartown book series and while I love Fredrik Backman’s writing and rated the first book in this series 5-stars (Beartown), I found this one to be a lot slower.

We have the same set of characters in book two, which continues on from the fallout in book one. The books in this series are around 400+ pages each, and while it’s full of beautiful paragraphs and statements, the plot itself felt very drawn out.

I love the town, the people and the heartwarming feel of the series, so I’ll definitely by finishing the series out with The Winners (3) soon.

1. My Friends by Fredrik Backman

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it.

2. The Winners (3) by Fredrik Backman

Maya Andersson and Benji Ovich, two young people who left in search of a life far from Beartown, come home and joyfully reunite with their closest childhood friends.

Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there’s something about this place that prevents it.

Maya’s parents, Peter and Kira, are caught up in an investigation of the hockey club’s murky finances, and Amat—once the star of the Beartown team—has lost his way after an injury and a failed attempt to get drafted into the NHL.

Simmering tensions between the neighboring town of Hed turn into acts of intimidation and then violence. All the while, a fourteen-year-old boy grows increasingly alienated from this hockey-obsessed community and is determined to take revenge on the people he holds responsible for his beloved sister’s death.

3. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.