My Friends is a beautiful, devastating novel, and a perfect example of why I love Fredrik Backman. It's heartbreaking, I cried almost from the start, but you can't help but keep reading. The characters are perfect, the parallel narratives are never confusing and I coudln't stop reading. Fredrik Backman never disappoints!!

This was my first Backman book and safe to say, I will be reading more now. This book tells a super emotional coming-of-age story that has elements of love, friendship, art and grief. I absolutely loved the style of writing and it never felt like a chore to read, I flew through it quicker than I expected.

A beautiful story of friendship, love, deep loss/ grief and the power of art to change and influence lives. Louisa's life changes forever when she accidently meets the artist of her favourite painting. Set in the current time through Louise and during the time 25 years ago, when the painting at the centre of the story was painted. It was slow in paces, but that's ok as the language and story deserve the time to develop and unfold around you .

My Friends by Fredrik Backman is a beautiful and emotional story that made me both laugh and cry. I’ve been a fan of Backman for a long time, and this might be one of his best books yet. The characters felt so real, like people I actually knew. The plot was touching, heartfelt, and full of meaning. I didn’t want the book to end—it was that good. Backman has a special way of writing about friendship, love, and life that really speaks to the heart. I loved every page and will be thinking about it for a long time.

Backman is an incredible writer as we all know but this just fell flat for me. A very slow start into a tragic story just left me not reaching for this, not rushing to get to the end. This will be perfect for someone, but unfortunately that isn’t me.

Favourite book of 2025..... he's done it again!! Made me laugh, made me cry and created another set of characters that I am now missing now that I've finished reading their story! This is definitely going to be one of those books that is re-read a few times so I can reconnect!

This is a story of friendship, of art, of grief, of love and finding those special people in your life that believe in you. What a difference that can make to you as a human and the impact that has throughout your life.

I think this story is best read without knowing too much about it - the author has this wonderful perceptive look on the world and it just resonates on so many levels that I was just smitten. - and will forever be saying 'goodnight, ghosts' ....... READ THIS BOOK!!!

This is the third Fredrik Backman book I've read, and admittedly it's probably my least favourite of the three (but it's trying to live up to the standards of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove, so.). However, this has got that distinctive Fredrik Backman feel to it - a mixture of love, loss, sadness, and hope all in one, and I can easily see this being many people's favourite of his works.

The writing in this felt very much like a stream of consciousness, with constant flicking back and forth between present day and the summer of 25 years ago, and at times, I just felt like it was almost a bit TOO stream of consciousness; that sometimes the order in which we got the flashbacks and information didn't necessarily make the most sense.

I really appreciated the themes of friendship and of the impact that art has on us as human beings - I think both of these are incredibly important to write and read about, and I especially loved how the author really understood being a teenager and the all-consuming feeling of teenage friendships, particularly of those summers with your friends when each day blurs into the next. I just personally struggled to connect with the characters for some reason, in particular with Louisa, but I honestly can't put my finger on why - I'm not sure if it was the way she was written? She was getting on my nerves a little with some of her dialogue, and I feel AWFUL for saying that, because I do understand why the author wrote her in that way, but I struggled to connect with her.

All this being said, this is largely a book about grief, and as someone in the very raw stages of grief right now, it might just be from a personal side of things that I didn't enjoy this as much as other readers have. I would still recommend, especially if you are a fan of the author already!

I love Backmans' writing style and that didn't change with his newest release, My Friends. You can tell that the story is really well thought out and that the author is in no rush to get to the ending, but that he is rather enjoying telling the story itself and allowing us to get to know the characters. He does divert and change topics throughout, then goes back to where he was originally in his story, which I usually hate in books as it feels a little all over the place. However, I actually loved how he did it in this book, as it felt natural, like an actual conversation, where you can divert from the story you're telling to explain something else, in order to add to the main overall story and understanding references and people you're about to be introduced to.

This whole story is centred around a painting, connecting what is currently happening to the memories of the past. I loved seeing how a painting was so important and what had to happen in order to create it. The memories that this painting stirred up and how it had an effect on the characters within the story, regardless of how young they were.  How we don't learn the painters name until towards the end and how it was a great symbol of hope for the characters involved and future characters. As the title suggests, this book is about friendship and how important true friends are and how they can make your life feel so much better than what it may be and the impact they can have on your life.

This book is up there for me with A Man Named Ove, with how great the storytelling ability is and how it all came together at the end. The author does an amazing job at making you cry and emotional one minute, then making you want to laugh the next. Fredrik Backman has always been an auto read for me since A Man Named Ove and I'm so happy that I'm never disappointed in his books he is undoubtedly going to continue to be an auto read for me.

Utterly captivating! 18 year old Louisa has been in care for most of her life and is very misunderstood, Her only friend, Fish, took her own life and Louisa is very much alone. The only thing that matters to her is a postcard of a painting that has captivated her and inspired her own art, actually her whole being. A chance meeting with the artist changes everything for Louisa and as she navigates her new. life, she also hears the story of how the painting came to be and what it meant to so many.

The artist, at 15 years old, was part of a misfit group of friends who shared their sweets, their summer, their fears and their uniqueness. A bond that was never questioned and never broken. Each and every character is wonderful in their own individual way and has a lasting impact on their friends and the painting.

As the past and present intertwine in the story, I went through so many emotions. I'm not articulate enough to write a review that truly reflects how wonderful this book is, but I urge everyone to just read it.

"I love you and I trust you."

5 ⭐️ Thanks to Netgalley, Frederik Backman and Simon & Schuster for an ARC of this book.

This is in my top 10 reads of 2025 and we're not even halfway through the year!
What an exceptional story about friendships, loss, hope, love, and dealing with the lemons life throws at you. There have been hundreds of thousands of books revolving around the theme of friendship but this is one of the most excruciatingly beautiful ones that will have you smiling and sobbing and smiling again!
Also, i can't believe how insanely quotable this book is. I'm going to reference this book so much in my daily conversations now, no kidding.
I don't want to give much away but I highly recommend reading this!

My Friends is a beautiful and emotional story about friendship, loss, and how art connects us across time. Fredrik Backman’s writing is honest, heartfelt, and full of quiet wisdom. The book follows Louisa, a young artist on a journey to uncover the story behind a painting that has deep meaning for her. As she learns more, we also meet a group of friends from 25 years ago whose summer together changed everything.
I loved how this story shows the power of friendship, especially during hard times. The characters are real and flawed, but you root for them anyway. Some parts were a little slow and heavy on reflection, but it fits the thoughtful tone of the book.
If you enjoy character driven stories that linger in your heart, My Friends is worth reading.
Very grateful to the publisher for my copy through NetGalley, opinions are my own

“Soon Ted will stand up and discover that he’s forgotten how to walk … that happens to us all 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 a book chock-full of memorable quotes, this is the one that hit me hardest. It’s a searingly accurate expression of loss — that inability in grief to place one foot in front of the other — but it still made me smile through my tears.

This gift — to stir all the emotions — is one that Fredrik Backman has in spades.

And here, in My Friends, it’s on magnificent display, as Backman delves into the messiness of teenage friendship — the fights, the joys, the lifelong loyalty, and the love — with his signature blend of humor and heartache.

As always, his characters are beautifully flawed and utterly real, each one shaped by life’s trials and triumphs in a way that makes them instantly relatable.

But this novel is so much more than an ode to friendship. It’s also a coming-of-age story and a testament to the transformative and healing power of art. Moreover, it’s woven through with darker threads of loneliness and melancholy in a glorious play of light and shade that only Backman can pull off so convincingly.

Even after reading all his books, Backman’s understanding of the human condition continues to stop me in my tracks. His unrivaled blend of empathy, philosophy and wry humor, coupled with an incredible facility for metaphor, make me want to savour every single word.

And I did.

My Friends caught me in all the feels and gave me not one but five unforgettable Backman characters to sit alongside Ove, Benji and Britt-Marie in my heart.

4.5⭐️

My Friends by Fredrik Backman is a deeply moving, contemplative novel that I feel will stay with you long after the final page. With his signature blend of warmth, wit, and emotional gut punches, Backman crafts a story that’s less about grand events and more about the quiet, powerful moments that define our lives and relationships.

At its heart, this book explores the enduring bonds of friendship how people shape each other, challenge each other, and carry each other through grief, joy, and change. Backman’s writing is so simplistic yet feels lyrical in a way that’s honest and full of small observations that hit with surprising emotional weight.

The characters feel incredibly real, they’re flawed, endearing, and profoundly human. You don’t just read about them; you live alongside them. There’s melancholy here with some pretty dark themes discussed throughout the story, but it’s also full of hope, humor, and a reminder of the beauty in the ordinary.

Why not 5 stars? Only because the pacing can feel slow in parts, and it leans heavily into introspection, which was a little repetitive at times, but for those who appreciate character-driven stories that linger on life’s quiet truths, this is a near-perfect read!

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.