Ok so I don't know how to rate this book. There's a lot happening in it. I think my biggest struggle with this book is just how much is happening. I mean, the first book had a lot happening, too but I felt like it was better at containing itself. This, I felt, was almost unnecessary. If Backman had limited it to a few less characters, a few less stories, it might be better. There's new characters, new stories, some that last for very few pages that could have been cut. I don't necessarily think that it's a bad book, I just think that it's not that standard that I've come to think of as a Backman novel.