My Friends

Fredrik Backman has a wonderful way with words. He expertly develops memorable characters, adds levity with his dry humour and sprinkles his stories with many wise tidbits to give you food for thought, all while stirring up your emotions with his unique storytelling ability. 

His latest book, My Friends, is a coming-of-age novel about a group of teenage friends who feel like outcasts but who have found family with each other. Through flashbacks, Backman weaves a story around these misfits that reveals their individual struggles and the support and amazing bonds they build together. There is also a modern storyline that occurs 25 years in the future that involves a famous painting, its connection to the group and how it brings another lost soul into their lives.

This is a poignant tale that explores important themes, including tragedy and how it impacts our lives. His characters are believably and understandably flawed, and Backman shows readers how the bonds we make early in life can continue to help us, mold us and protect us when life gets hard. 

Poignant, nostalgic and thought-provoking, if a bit meandering and slow moving, this is a story that took me a bit to get into but will hit readers in their heads and hearts and will possibly encourage them to reach out to their own teenage friends. 

This book - and its absolutely gorgeous cover - hits stores May 6th from Atria Books.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Atria Books for the complimentary advanced digital copy of this book which was given in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 4 stars

Author: Fredrik Backman

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Type and Source: ebook from publisher via NetGalley

Publisher: Atria Books

First Published: May 6, 2025

Read: April 14 - 27, 2025

Book Description from GoodReads: #1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

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. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an 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 town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.