My Friends was one of my most anticipated reads of 2025. I read the first two Beartown novels by Fredrik Backman and immediately fell in love with his storytelling. I'm still too chicken to read book three because of the foreshadowing in previous books, but I will get to it this year.

Just like its predecessors, the writing in My Friends is exquisite. If there is one thing I can assuredly say about Fredrik Backman's writing, is that it's apparent he has a deep understanding of people. Sometimes, I'll come across a passage and feel as if he was somehow able to read my mind because he vividly describes how I would feel in certain situations and I've heard the same sentiment from a few people. I felt that more so with Beartown, but it's also evident here.

This novel will make you feel the nostalgia of our long gone childhood and the innocence and simplicity of our early friendships. Especially during the period of our lives when the only thing we want to do is hang out with our friends all day, every day. The novel also explores themes of found family. After reaching its the end, I felt as if I had received a warm hug from an old friend.

The only critique I have is that there were a few lulls due to its slow pacing.

Well, file this under favourite books of 2025. I am in awe of Fredrik Backman's writing. He is unmatched in his ability to peel back the layers of his characters so tenderly that by the end, I genuinely grieve finishing the book. It feels like saying goodbye to people I've truly come to know.
My Friends starts off slow and steady, with Backman's signature style of dropping little breadcrumbs about who these characters are and what's shaped them. Then suddenly, you realize he's led you to something you didn't even know you needed to understand. My favourite part is the unlikely friendships. I'm always drawn to stories where people connect across differences, and this one delivered in the most surprising and moving way. Loved it!
Thank you Atria Books for the copy through NetGalley!

Master storyteller (favorite author) and #1 NYT bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with another powerful and moving tale—MY FRIENDS —emotional, witty, and heartwarming—Backman's classic signature style and what keeps readers returning to his thoughtful and inspiring stories.

MY FRIENDS is a testament to the enduring, transformative power of friendship and art. It's a story that will inspire and fill you with hope.

Top books of 2025!

About...

Four teens whose friendship creates a bond that changes a stranger's life twenty-five years later.

Louisa, age eighteen, is an aspiring artist (a survivor) who is intrigued by three figures at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. She is determined to find the story behind these three enigmatic figures.

In a nearby seaside town, twenty-five years earlier, a group of teens find refuge from their troubled home life by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier. They bond with one another as they share their secrets and dreams.

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 the origins of the painting and decide what to do with it.

My thoughts...

Find your tribe! More than just finding friends, it's about finding people who truly resonate with you on a deeper level and share your dreams. An ode to friendship, art, creativity, and literature for hope and healing.

A masterpiece! Beautifully rendered, MY FRIENDS is a dazzling coming of age; of friendship, hope, and humor— told in two alternating timelines with the four childhood friends one transformative summer. Their close bond inspires a painting that decades later becomes famous.

Backman's skill lies in creating characters that are not only relatable but also feel like friends. He explores universal themes of friendship, loss, and resilience, infusing his stories with humor and life lessons that resonate deeply with readers.

In the present timeline, Louisa, age eighteen, is grieving the loss of her best friend. She finds her only comfort in the form of a picture postcard with a painting printed on it, a postcard she took from one of the many foster homes where she lived. This painting, which she later discovers is the work of the four childhood friends, becomes a symbol of hope and connection for her.

Then, the original painting and a cross-country journey to solve the mystery, and how the artwork will connect to her life and the teens in the painting.

The past is a story of a young artist, age fourteen, from a rundown town with divorced parents and a gang of friends that a teacher once described as 'a pack of wild animals.' The painting known as 'The One of the Sea,' is a significant piece of art created by the four childhood friends. Despite their troubled backgrounds, they find solace and inspiration in each other's company, and this painting becomes a symbol of their bond and shared experiences.

Joar, Ted, Ali, and the artist (who painted the famous painting).

Despite the challenges they face, the friends' journey is a testament to the human spirit's resilience. Their struggles and triumphs will resonate deeply with you, the reader, leaving you feeling uplifted and inspired.

To them, “Tomorrow” is a promise, a strength they offer each other to get through the evenings—because though their days are filled with sunshine and hanging out and laughing together at a pier in their seaside hometown, their evenings are filled with abuse, anger, frustration, and pain.

I love this part: "Children have two worlds, they have been given and the one they can dream about, but not even the artist had enough imagination to believe it was possible to paint his way out of there."

For Joar, art was love. Grief. A story. A context.

'The One of the Sea.' The art he created one day when he called himself a different name. He was shy and broken, and the buyers loved that. He was a loner, and the less he had to give, the more everyone wanted. It was about where it all began.

As with all of Backman's novels, which I adore, they are thought-provoking, insightful, full of wisdom, life lessons, and a bit of hope, dreams, friendship, acceptance, and redemption with unforgettable characters you care about.

Witty, heartfelt, and wise. (I think I have read them all) There is often sadness, loss, grief, the messiness and complexities of life, but there is also hope, joy, friendship, love, and second chances. The novel beautifully explores these themes.

Fredrik Backman and Catherine Ryan Hyde are two of my favorites when it comes to the human spirit, with multi-generational characters and timelines who learn from one another. Backman eloquently captures the young and old. Full of compassionate characters and vivid descriptions. He writes from the heart, and it is reflected in his work.

I also just finished Wally Lamb's The River Is Waiting (also on my top books of 2025 list), and in this book, like MY FRIENDS, there is art that comes from pain (expressed). Still, something beautiful in this book is the characters (with water tubes floating down a river) that he added in a mural, which only certain people noticed and were able to see and remember their loss, creating a beautiful story through art, as seen in this book.

I enjoyed the characters' meeting for a poignant journey of trust and unexpected hope. Their journey is a testament to the power of friendship and the resilience of the human spirit, leaving you feeling hopeful.

I adored the interview and dedication: “To anyone who is young and wants to create something. Do it.” The entire story came out of that.

Deeply philosophical and thought-provoking, this is an ideal book club pick for further discussions. Highly recommend.

Recs...

MY FRIENDS is for all the dreamers out there, as well as super fans of the author, and those who enjoy works by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Elizabeth Berg, Mitch Albom, Kevin Wilson, Richard Paul Evans, and Matt Haig, who are drawn to their humor, emotion, and quirky characters.

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing an advanced review copy in exchange for my honest thoughts. Always an honor to read one of Fredrik Backman's books. This is one for the bookshelf to pull out and reread time and time again.

Audiobook...

I am currently listening to the audiobook I purchased and will add to my review once I have finished, narrated by the talented Marin Ireland!

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My Rating: 5 Stars +
Pub Date: May 6, 2025
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In Backman’s latest novel, My Friends, we meet Louisa. She is spiraling in her shattering grief. She runs away from her foster home on the eve of her eighteenth birthday and finds herself at an art gallery to see her favorite painting. Chaos ensues and through a chance encounter with a stranger she begins to find herself and acknowledge her grief.

It’s about art, humanity, the friendships of youth, and grief. It’s tender and full of heart and humor like all his books, Also, I never thought a book that takes place on a train for most of the story would be as engrossing as it was.

I finished this book over the past weekend and couldn’t seem to write anything down considering everything going on recently. I will say that it did provide slight mental reprieve to read about human connections when the world seems to be seriously lacking empathy and humanity.

I don’t know. Either you love his books or you’re not into them, but for me it was an automatic 5 stars for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for a gifted e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first book by Fredrick Backman and now I understand the hype. He writes these incredibly rounded and well formed characters and has set this highly engaging story. Absolutely a five star read.

HE DOES IT AGAIN!! Backman’s writing and books are truly one of a kind. You’ll be laughing, and then crying, and then heartbroken, only to find yourself laughing again. And this one was so, so special. It did confuse me a bit at first with all the various character POVs and the time jumps, but once he brings all the timelines full circle, you understand why he had to write things the way he did. Overall, I loved the theme of this story. Or at least the theme I took from this story. How friendships are often thicker than blood, how childhood friendships shape the person you become one day, and the fact that you never know the impact you have on another person or the battles they face. Per usual, this book left me in happy tears and felt like one giant hug. I enjoyed this one so much.

MY FRIENDS by Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove and many more) will have readers laughing out loud, but it will also make them incredibly sad. There is so much clever wordplay (read the first paragraph!) that I almost gave up highlighting. Yet, there is also a great deal of death and reflection upon carrying on without our friends: "when the love of our life falls asleep for the last time, because when the soul leaves the body, evidently the last thing it does is tie our shoelaces together. In the weeks following the death we trip over thin air. It's the soul's fault." With grief as a companion, Backman builds a friendship between Louisa, a creative young woman aging out of the care system, and Ted, a former high school teacher trying to find renewed purpose. They are an unlikely pair who meet because of a painting (a source of solace for Louisa) and the artist (a dear friend of Ted's) who painted it. Eventually riding together on a cross-country train journey, Ted reaches back twenty-five years to tell Louisa the story of his friendship with the artist, Joar, and Ali, all fourteen-year-old characters in the famous painting. There is quite a bit of physical pain and mental anguish in that story due primarily to the abusive violence exhibited by some of the teens' relatives. Louisa shares some of her own painful stories of life in foster homes and a lost friend, called Fish. Throughout, Backman places a great deal of emphasis on youthful friendships and the healing power of creativity. He writes, "the ultimate expression of love is nagging, we don't nag anyone the way we nag the people we love. All parents know that, and so do all best friends." Ted and Louisa banter, bond, get on each other's nerves, and care for each other as their own friendship develops and the story continues, certain to surprise readers. MY FRIENDS is a LibraryReads Hall of Fame selection for May 2025 and received a starred review from Booklist ("Irrepressible humor, boundless grief, and eternal loyalty coalesce.") As Ted remarks, "what I hate most isn't that people die. What I hate most is that they're dead. That I'm alive, without them."

The strength of a long-lasting friendship shines through this beautiful tale - possibly the best book yet by Fredrik Backman.

I'm not sure if there's any author out there writing today that is better at capturing what it means to be human, than Fredrik Backman. I think I've said the same thing about Anne Tyler, but Backman captures humanity - both what makes us good and what makes us evil - and lays us bare in front of ourselves. We'll usually get a smile along the way.

This story centers around four friends, teenagers twenty-five years ago, and a current teen who becomes becomes part of their group incidentally.

The group of four, unlikely friends include Joar, sharp-humored and fiercely protective; Ali, quick-witted, street smart, and wary of violent men; Ted, introverted, caring, and probably considered boring by most; KimKim, a natural artist uncertain of his own abilities and battling depression. The artists' three friends work to get KimKim's painting into a competition - winning would get him noticed, and perhaps some confidence.

Some twenty years later, KimKim bumps into the awkward girl, Louisa - an artist herself, raised in foster care, who is frustrated with the 'highbrow' approach to KimKim's painting, On The Sea. She knows it's not about "the sea" but probably about the three figures in the painting that most people don't even see. She doesn't think anyone understands it, they just want to own it for status.

KimKim recognizes her spirit as the same as his and his friends' and gets Ted in on a plan - KimKim wills the painting to her and Ted gets to deliver the news (and the painting). Louisa doesn't want to own it, and doesn't want the money she could get from selling it. But the bulk of the story is her journey, learning about KimKim, Ted, and their friends and how she becomes one of them despite the age difference.

Oh my. This is just so beautiful. Love, loss, friendship, family, art, coming of age. It happens differently for all of us, but with shared stories we can recognize what we have in common.

Every book Backman has produced (that I've read) has shown us these same things about people. Like this book, we see that people aren't perfect, but they are capable of great things, even to strangers. I thought A Man Called Ove was a perfect book, but Backman has stepped up and given us one even better.

Looking for a good book? This is not only a good book, it is probably the best book you'll read all year. You must put My Friends by Fredrik Backman on your reading list.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

5⭐️
Oh FB!…how much I love your writing.
This was definitely a unique book, told in such a unique way. I started thiis one on audio but quickly switched to physically reading it so I could make my favorite passages. Even though it took me a good 3 weeks to read (way more me than the book) it was a huge win for me. I teared up more times than I could count reading this and those characters all needed grace and love. I won’t forget this story anytime soon!!

This is an absolutely beautiful, perfect book. It focuses on four childhood friends living hard lives, and how they support and look out after one another. It is told from where they are in adulthood (with a teenager narrator that ends up in the mix), but it flashes back to one pivotal summer that impacted the rest of their lives. This is heartbreaking, and funny, and it will lift you up. Thank you NetGalley and publishers for providing a digital ARC for review.

I've read and loved Backman's works before, so I was happy to go into this one blind.

But this was exhausting for me. I can see a past version (maybe my teen self) of me who'd have liked the book more and who'd have found more meaning and depth in it. The present version of me thought the book was too long-winded. It's a coming-of-age story that has a lot of descriptions of.....sighing.

I liked Joar & Ali but thought "The Artist" & Louisa needed to be developed better. I didn't understand what made the artist so special (apart from his drawings) or what it was that made him so loved by his friends.

Thanks to Netgalley & Atria Books for the e-copy.

2.5/5

Oh, Mr. Backman, you've done it again! Thank you. . .now we can add Louisa, Ted, Ali, Joar, and The Artist. . .along with that unforgettable painting. . .to our collection of Backman memorable characters (in with Ove, Parvaneh, Britta, the citizens of Beartown, etc) and quirky communities.

Even though the story ranged over 25 years, really it sits most at either end of this rainbow of friendship, trials, and hard choices. That wonderful summer for the original four, and then later, Louisa who is a generation later, and gathers them up together with a now aging Ted who is feeling low and left behind, but has a job to do. Louisa has none of it, and demands her stories - it is through the stories, the memories, the histories of each that they rise up to live that summer once again. And do not forget that incredibly famous painting. Who knew that one of them would be Someone?!? The Artist has connected them, if only it will take. . .

My Friends is a darker flavor than the author's earlier books, in that the reader is plunged into difficult family situations, life and death issues, abuse and challenging life circumstances (no home, no funds, no support). Shadows gather and suggest a bittersweet parting is in the offing, but I encourage all who get that far in to stay the course. . .Backman's point remains consistent throughout his works. . .midnight is ever followed by dawn. . .

I toss up my 5 allotted stars, who as they go about putting the universe to bed are all bidding goodnight to the ghosts (with a little smile). . .(a happy habit I've picked up since reading: "good night, GR ghosts. . .we miss every one of you.")

*A sincere thank you to Fredrik Backman, Atria Books, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.*

I’m an outlier on this one. I was interested (some of the time) and it felt like it took forever to get through. Didn't connect with the characters but stayed with it to see how it played out.

Stories like this one are rare, the way they dredge up emotions you never knew you had or that you lost somewhere along the way through your own journey. This is one for the heartstrings! You will find your heart swimming off the pier in a summer sunset right along with those of the characters you won’t be able to resist falling in love with. Backman reminds us of the timeless anchor of childhood friendship and what it means to truly believe in someone. Told through humorous memories, witty banter, melancholy trials and obstacles, and a real rawness rarely seen in characters and their deep relationships, readers will remember this story for many years to come. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for gifting me an ARC of this title. These opinions are my own.

I am just a girl, standing in front of Fredrik Backman, asking him to stop emotionally devastating her with his books.

Backman is king of writing of the complexity of young friendships (such as laughing at farts) and how time changes some things but preserve others totally. I love this man and will read anything he writes from now until the end of time.

TW/CW: domestic abuse, child abuse, grief, drug abuse, addiction, cancer, terminal illness, death of loved ones, bullying, suicide, abandonment, homophobia, self harm, toxic relationship, rape, classism

Backman does it again! I loved this book and how it explored the power of art. As always, the author knows how to reach your emotions and tug at your heartstrings. I enjoyed the unique characters throughout.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — Deeply Moving and Unforgettable

My Friends by Fredrik Backman is an absolute masterpiece. From the very first page, I felt completely connected to the characters—real, flawed, and deeply human. Backman has such a gift for capturing the quiet moments of life that carry so much weight, and this story is no exception.

It's a sad book in many ways, but also incredibly thought-provoking. It made me reflect on friendship, loneliness, and what it means to truly show up for the people we care about. The emotional depth of the story stayed with me long after I finished, and I found myself thinking about the characters as if they were real people.

This is one of those rare books that breaks your heart a little but leaves you feeling more whole because of it. I absolutely loved it.

Fredrik Backman has a way with words that forces you to feel things. He knows exactly how to describe a feeling and to help the audience to experience emotions right along with the characters. Once again, his beautiful writing takes the reader on a journey that is not always easy but is worth it. He also had me believing it would end one way, but he surprised me. He is such a gifted writer and I fell in love with these characters, wanting to read about their lives even after the book was over.

3.75, I wanted to love this so much. The actual story is so good but it feels like 200 pages too long. There was so many parts that just made the book drag. BUT I adored Louisa and being able to see her story play out. I also really loved getting to see the artist as a child and to see how alive he was as an adult.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for this ARC!

There are no words for how beautiful and heartbreaking, yet also hopeful, this new book by Fredrik Backman is, and I will be recommending it to everyone I know. The narrative goes back & forth between events from when the four friends were fourteen years old and the present in a smooth and seamless fashion. This author continues to amaze me with his heart, insight, and exceptional writing. Very highly recommended.