My Friends by Fredrik Backman is a deeply touching story about friendship, trust, love and the power of having friends believe in you. It follows the difficult lives of four friends across two timelines, showing how trauma and loss shape them and how their connection keeps them going. The story is devastating at times, yet still manages to make you smile because of the way the characters show up for each other, again and again.
It’s also a story about art, how creating and expressing can be a form of survival, especially when words fail. Backman captures all of this while moving between heartbreak and hope in a way that feels natural and true.

Backman writes in such a way that you want to savor every word and every sentence. My Friends is beautifully written. Each character is painted so well you feel that you know them personally. My Friends was evocative of Bears Town for me in so far as the four friends had their fair share of tragedy, poverty, violence yet focused on love, friendship and laughter were they could. Louise was 'one of them" and was a great way of having the past retold. I absolutely loved this story and the way it was narrated always with a frisson of suspense as to the final outcome for each of the four

My Friends is written in that classic Backman style - moving, portentous at times, often capturing real 'human' moments in just a handful of words. I'm unsure what rating to give it - I think the more Backman I read, the more often I see what's coming. Does that mean he's super effective or at times a little too obvious? I just don't know.

But this is a book that made me cry just a few chapters in.

It begins with a girl looking for a famous painting - she's been carrying a postcard of it for years, she's all alone, and it's the only thing that can bring her comfort. She meets the artist, then everything changes. The painting ends up in her possession, but she doesn't have a home to keep it in. So she asks the artist's best friend to take her in. He doesn't want to. He really doesn't want to. But he can't abandon her, either. They annoy the hell out of each other, but he recognises her type. She's 'one of them', like the kids he hung around when he and the artist were young.

This is a book about art, grief and feeling. It's funny, sad, and yes a little on the nose at times. But it's a memorable, wonderful read.

Every time I start a Fredrik Backman book, I kick myself for not having already devoured every last piece of his backlist. He has a beautiful, almost magical way of putting into words the experience of life: its rawness, its absurdity, its staggering beauty. My Friends is no exception. It’s a masterclass in emotional storytelling that reminds me, in equal parts, of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and Stand By Me by Stephen King. Stories drenched in coming-of-age nostalgia, soaked in the bittersweet ache of growing up and growing apart.

At its core, My Friends is about love. Not romantic love, but the quieter, stronger kind: friendship. The dysfunctional, self-sacrificing kind. The kind that looks like found families, unlikely bonds, and people who don’t always say what they feel but are always there. This is a book full of friends who know their place in the world, who don’t strive to take the spotlight but who anchor the people they care about.

The dual timelines, spread across a cast of diverse characters, are handled with remarkable clarity. In a lesser writer’s hands, the story could easily have felt fragmented. But here, the shifts in time and perspective are seamless. Each layer adds depth to the whole. It’s ambitious and sprawling but never messy. Just deeply, deeply human.

Backman’s signature ability to nail an observation you’ve had but never quite articulated is on full display. Some of his lines are so succinct they feel like they were written just for you. I found myself slowing my audiobook speed way down, something I never do, just to savor the rhythm and weight of the prose. This book is quotable in the truest sense. One line in particular knocked the wind out of me:

“He didn’t want to prove to the world how good the artist was; he wanted to prove it to the artist himself.”

That line mirrors a sentiment from Richard Bach’s There’s No Such Place As Far Away—the idea that the value of a life doesn’t lie in applause but in connection. In recognition. And My Friends takes that one step further, offering a quiet but potent critique of the “art world.” It questions who gets to decide what art is worth while honoring the artists who make it anyway, for themselves, for someone they love, for permanence. For a kind of immortality.

That’s one of the most moving parts of this novel: its exploration of why we create. It doesn’t romanticize art-making. It humanizes it. Being "one of us," as the book puts it, means understanding that art isn’t about galleries or gatekeepers. It’s about staying alive through what we leave behind. The book asks, gently but insistently, what does it mean to truly live? What happens when we die? And what, if anything, survives?

The friendships here are based on contrast, opposites who still, somehow, understand each other better than anyone else could. There’s warmth and banter that feels completely natural, the kind that makes your cheeks hurt from smiling. Mine did, by the final three hours, which I listened to all in one stretch, heart racing, laughter caught in my throat.

“The sound of the doors being unlocked inside the boy then should have been heard around the world, the ground should have shaken, that's how much everything changed inside him.”

Fredrik Backman doesn’t just write stories. He writes about emotional architecture. He builds a world, gives you keys, and lets you move in. And when you leave, you’re not quite the same person who opened the first page.

Backman has always asked big questions with simple words, but this one ends with a question that lingers, like a final note in a symphony:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Oh wow, this was emotional. A beautiful story about friendship, love, loss and a famous painting of the sea.
With a dual timeline, Ted shares the story of the painting with Louisa and I found myself laughing and crying throughout.
Fredrik Backman has a unique writing style and this is another wonderful book written by him.
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

I love the cover for this book. I adore Fredrik Backman’s other writings. I really embrace his writing style and feel his writing always flows beautifully, however, I did not love and connect to this book as much as his others. I enjoyed the characters back story seen through dreams and stories and I really felt I knew the characters. I’m not sure if I just didn’t love the plot but something fell flat? Which is weird because I should have loved this book- there’s deep characters and artists. I loved the friendships and all the friend characters but I just felt meh about something. I still did really enjoy this book I just didn’t love it as much as the others.

Fredrik Backman has a very unique way of writing his stories and characters that I really love. I have loved all of his previous books and this one is no different. It took me a little while to get into the book, I think mainly because the content is quite heavy and sad particularly at the beginning of the book. I found as I went on more and more of the humour shone through which helped to lighten the still very hard-hitting and sad subjects a bit. This is a beautiful story about friendship and love and loss. It is beautifully written and I found myself completely absorbed in the writing and world and rooting for a happy ending for all the characters even when I knew that was unlikely. Fredrik Backman does a really good job of highlighting both the best and worst of humanity and the importance of friendship. I really loved this one and fans of his previous work will undoubtedly enjoy this too.

Everything about this book should point to me loving it. I am a big fan of this author having loved all his previous books, especially the Beartown series. I am also a big fan of art - both street and gallery and you can regularly find me either in my local gallery or pounding the streets looking for the next impressive mural or street furniture decoration. I am also friendly with a lot of artists through volunteering for my home town's annual street art festival.
The other main thing that this book is about, the art of friendship, is probably the real sticking point for me. It features characters who grew up together and, many years later, are still close friends. I don't have that. I don't even have close friends now. I am a loner. So I guess that might have been the missing element that manifested the disconnect.
And that's OK. It wasn't the book for me. I did finish it, it was a bit of a slog. There were elements I loved. The cat was awesome. The meeting between Louisa and the Artist, Ted finding Louisa, Louisa talking about Fish, the stand-in janitor, those elements I found interesting but, after that, when we went back in time to the days before the painting, the painting, and the days after, I think that was where we fell apart. I did also enjoy reading abut the connection between the Artist, Joar, Ali, and Ted which was strengthened by and despite of their individual adversities. All of which culminated in the creation of the painting which was where we came in.
It might have also been the non-linear telling of their story. How Ted kept flitting about rather than telling it from start to finish, chronologically. I understand why it was told in that way, but I didn't get on with it. Which is a shame. But again, it's OK.
But, like a few other books that I didn't connect with initially, I will try and get hold of the Audiobook once it has been published. Maybe listening to the words will allow me to better connect to the characters. It has worked before, worth a try, no? Watch this space.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

In My Friends, Fredrik Backman delivers a profoundly moving and quietly powerful story about art, memory and the quiet persistence of love. Told with his signature tenderness and insight, the book follows almost-eighteen-year-old Louisa, an aspiring artist drawn to a small detail in one of the world’s most famous paintings: three tiny figures at the edge of a pier, barely noticed by most, but unforgettable to her.

Louisa’s fascination with the painting sets her on a cross-country journey to uncover the story behind those three figures. What she discovers is a tale that stretches back decades — to a group of teenagers seeking solace and kinship on an abandoned seaside pier. Backman weaves their past with Louisa’s present in a narrative that gently explores themes of grief, connection, and the small moments that shape us.

This is not just a story about a painting. It’s a story about finding beauty in broken places, about chosen families, and about how art can both hide and reveal the deepest parts of us. As Louisa edges closer to the truth, she also finds herself — slowly, quietly, but with incredible emotional resonance.

Backman has crafted something delicate and deeply affecting here. My Friends is a beautifully observed story full of warmth, wisdom and wonder.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

With most authors who write in a consistent style, you either love it or hate it. Fredrik Backman is unusual in that his style is similar from one book to another, but in some I don't mind it, and in others it really irritates me. This is one of the examples where it irritated me, particularly in the first half of the book before I'd got into the story. He has a tendency to repeat things a lot, for emphasis, but it can really make the story drag. He also has the very annoying habit of putting in spoilers for the story. If something bad is going to happen, he tells you at least ten times before it does. I always find that maddening in any book - it's like the author is smirking at the readers because they know more than we do. It also means there are few surprises and the entire book, even the lighter moments, are sunken in a sense of impending doom.

'My Friends' is a strange story with characters it took me a very long time to get to like. Ted is a middle aged former school teacher, and Louisa an 18 year old care-leaver. Both are united by love of a particular painting, and are brought together by the death of its artist. Setting off on a train journey across Sweden, they find they have more in common than appearances suggest, not least that each is grieving a beloved friend. Over the course of the journey and subsequent events, Ted relates the story of how the picture came to be painted over the course of a summer twenty-five years ago, when a small group of friends in an impoverished seaside town determined that one of them should win an art competition.

Although it falls into the 'feel good' fiction genre - books that are supposed to give you a warm glow about humanity, and packed with deep and meaningful discussion of emotions - most of the story is really downbeat. Domestic violence, inadequate parenting, substance abuse and the general misery of poverty are not just themes but the very fabric of the novel. It manages to be both really depressing and implausible at the same time in how things work out.

Things do improve in the second half of the story when it gets more compelling and there is less foreshadowing as there is less left to foreshadow. I did read the last part eagerly, so I must have enjoyed it to some extent. I was left feeling mostly baffled by how a writer can both move me and really get on my nerves at the same time. This certainly isn't his best book - 'Anxious People' and 'A Man Called Ove' are better - but if you like feel fiction that's full of homespun wisdom, philosophical musing and emotional naval gazing, you will surely like it. And if you don't (I would say I mostly don't), Backman does it better than anyone else.

I'm a big fan of Fredrik Backman and Beartown is possibly one of my favourite books of all time. Whilst I have enjoyed his subsequent novels, none of them have quite lived up to that one, but 'My friends' certainly comes close.

With a dual time line the story takes place in the present day and 25 years in the past, with the two threads connecting by our main protagonists 18 year old Louisa and 40 year old Ted who tells her the story of the extremely valuable painting that has just come into her possession.

This is such a beautiful story of love, friendship and how being with your best humans is the best feeling in the world. Backman manages to develop the plot at a perfect pace, leading you to think you know what's coming and then subverting your expectations brilliantly. Highly recommended.

<i> I would like to thank Net Galley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. </i>

My heart breaks, aches and truly soars - 5*

I love this book. I truly do. I will definitely be buying this in hardback when this book is released. I need to have a physical copy of this book. I need to remember this book - and I know this book will be in my heart forever, but I need to see the reminder of the book that broke my heart and rebuilt it in two days.

I could have read this book a lot faster but I wanted to hold onto every word there was. Backman paints heartache and truly heartfelt moments with the words he carefully sculpts and moulds. I remember reaching 30% of this book and thinking, "Please don't disappoint me. I already love this book too much." I think the reason I loved the book this much is for one simple reason: the characters. Deeply complex and maybe a little too relatable, I loved every single person in this book. Each character felt like a real person; they were three-dimensional with dreams and fears.

I cried at multiple points in this book. I don't really relate to art. I always felt I wasn't really good at it but maybe I didn't have the right people telling me that art was beautiful and art was filled with so many emotions. I don't truly get art - but I get the emotions felt in this book.

Pick up this book. It's an emotional rollercoaster, but that's life and this is the perfect embodiment of it.

Backman, thank you for creating this!
My favourite book of the year (so far).

My Friends by Fredrik Backman is a book about friendship and found family, but also about grief and loss.
Twenty five years ago a group of teenage friends spend their Summer days together, each escaping their own difficult family circumstances and finding comfort and companionship with each other. When one of the group creates a painting of the sea that captures the freedom and joy of their friendship and that glorious summer he has no idea that it will become one of the most famous paintings in the world or that it will change the life of one young woman forever.
Louisa is about to turn eighteen and is on the run from the latest in a series of foster homes, one of her few possessions is a postcard depicting the painting that she has carried from home to home for years. She is reeling from the recent death of her best and only friend, and when she learns that the painting is on display ahead of being auctioned she knows she needs to see it in person. An unlikely encounter results in the painting falling into her hands, something that terrifies her given the value of it. Unsure what to do with this life changing turn of events she decides to trust fate and embarks on a cross country train journey with an unlikely companion, one of the group of friends depicted in the painting. The long journey gives them plenty of time to adjust to one another, and it is an adjustment for both of them, but it also allows Ted to tell Louise the true story of the painting, a story that will hurt but ultimately heal them both.
This book will tear at your heartstrings and I defy you not to feel a little choked up by the bittersweet ending, but it is absolutely worth any tears you shed along the way. I don't know of any other author who so perfectly weaves together humour and heartbreak and have you laughing and crying within moments. His ability to create characters that feel so real is unmatched and the unlikely duo of Ted and Louisa have found their way into my heart as has this book.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

The older I get, the less forgiving I am when it comes to the toxic ways men often write women.

Because of this, I don’t read many male authors anymore.

Andy Weir, Stephen King, and Fredrik Bachman are my exceptions.

I need them to neither stop writing, nor turn out to be super-problematic.

I’m lookin’ at you, Gaiman.

I loved everything about this story. I loved Louise and Ted’s enemies to friends arc. I loved the dual timelines. I loved how everything converges into one perfect bittersweet ending.

I’m particularly in awe of how a translated work can retain such poignancy, humour and insight.

Zero was lost in translation.

A warm hearted, joyous read that I was captivated by and completely fell in love with. Highly recommended.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It reminded me a little if A Little Life but lighter and more humour. The characters were well established and the train journeys were a great way of breaking up the action in the stories in the post and the present. It also had a message about what makes art

I can’t describe how much I loved this book! It was heartfelt and funny and sad all at the same time! What a happy coincidence when two people unexpectedly bump into each other and it changes the course of forever! I just loved all of the characters and the way that the story unfolds.
Fredrik Backman is fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Beautifully heart warming and yet completely gut wrenching at the same time.
Backman seems to understand the human condition like no other. The loneliness of being an outsider, the fear of living with bullying and abuse, the reality of being a girl and the pain that all of these bring. Yet finding your people can bring light and love into that world of darkness.
And the author's truest gift is being able to intersperse all of that with moments of laughter and joy.
An emotional roller coaster.

No one writes stories which can leave you laughing and crying (often on the same page) quite like Fredrick Backman. He is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. Loved this one as much as his others

I spent a couple of weeks thinking about how to compose this review as - cheesy as it sounds - I was too full of feeling and reacting to what I had read to be able to compose a lucid response.
Fredrik Backman creates characters so full of life and feeling and suffering and joy that they find their way right into your heart, so much so that their hurt becomes yours.
This book is about friendship, about love, about moving on and standing still. It is about being human in a world where there are mountains to climb and storms to weather but there are also hands to pull you up along the way. The story moves between past and present and explores human connection in so raw and beautiful a fashion that I am struggling to put it into words. Sometimes this book felt quite dark and contained some potential triggers but it also made me laugh out loud on occasion. Backman is the master of an irascible character and I loved the interactions between Louisa and her reluctant guardian Ted but it is the lives of four young friends over a couple of summers that really will not leave you.
Grief and love go hand in hand in life and in this very powerful novel too.