Louisa, a troubled orphan teen on the verge of adulthood, is gifted a famous painting worth millions and meets not only the artist but the artist's best friend. After the artist dies, the Louisa and the friend go on a journey to find a home for the painting and in turn, find something within each of them that heals their brokenness. Fredrik Backman can do no wrong in my eyes and this book was no exception. It was a hauntingly beautiful story of love and loss, pain and healing, and most of all, the perseverance of the human spirit and the need for human connection. All the stars for Backman's latest.

4.5 stars rounded up - this book can be a little corny at times but that's overshadowed by the brilliant prose and the way the story makes one summer feel like a joyous eternity.

Every time Fredrik Backman releases a new book, I know I’m in for something extraordinary. Backman has an unmatched ability to capture the beauty, messiness, and intricacies of being human, all with a raw tenderness and humor that feels both effortless and profound.

From the very first page, I was emotionally attached to the characters. The themes—addiction, mental health, art, grief, and the kind of friends who feel like soulmates—are woven together with such care and vulnerability that these characters feel like people you know, people you love.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Fredrik Backman at his book tour stop in Dallas, and it only deepened my appreciation for his work. He speaks the way he writes, with compassion, humor, and incredible depth. Listening to him talk about his characters and process was such a gift, and it made reading My Friends all the more meaningful!

Backman’s writing is poetic, and his words stay with you long after you’ve closed the book. The found family in this story is EVERYTHING. I was rooting for them through every high and low, and I truly felt their pain, joy, and growth.

Absolutely unforgettable.

Backman truly never misses.
He understands the inner workings of humans and writes about them so honestly…

You will pieces of yourself written into every single one of these characters and it is something beautiful to experience.

You will laugh, you will cry and you’ll want to start all over again after closing the last page.

Where to begin with such a story...this book gives off every type of feeling: anger, sadness, frustration, and love, but most of all hope. This story is written for every grown child who has ever felt lost, unsafe, or forgotten. It is also written for every grown child who needs compassion, understanding, and the undying belief we can change the world. I laughed. I cried. I dreamed of a better world, for all of us. My Friends is a book for every soul, high school age and up. We are never alone.

Louisa is mourning the death of her best friend Fish, as she runs away from a foster home. She ends up behind a museum creating art with a homeless man — who ends up being an incredibly famous artist who has a fatal disease. That starts a chain of events that link Louisa to Ted, the artists’ childhood friend, as she learns the story of the artist and the close knit friends with who he grew up. This was one of my most anticipated books of the year and it just fell flat for me. I didn’t feel connected to Louisa, Fish, the artist, Ted or any other of the friends. The story didn’t move me. I gave the entire Beartown series 5 stars, so this was a total disappointment for me.

A group of friends remember the young artist that brought them together and introduced them to new friends across the span of decades.

This had a slow start, and then when it picked up I felt like this book was suddenly just hurtling towards the conclusion. The early stories of Ted, the Artist, and Joar were very slow paced and the character of Louisa took some getting used to. Unfortunately, I felt like all the characters within this novel were very surface level and the humor peppered throughout the tragedy just didn't work like it did in Backman's Anxious People. The sense of urgency was gone since the story starts with the artist's untimely death and so everything else that followed afterwards just felt simultaneously over the top and unimportant. It was an okay story overall, but the heartfelt message was kind of lost on me by the conclusion.

a billion stars, actually.
book of the year.
no contest.

Backman can do absolutely nothing wrong.
Marin Ireland - narrator - can also do nothing wrong.

Fredrik Backman does it again, folks — somehow reaching inside the human condition and pulling out all its messy, beautiful contradictions like he’s been doing this his entire career.

My Friends is, on the surface, a mashup of a coming-of-age story and a mystery. But underneath, it’s really a meditation — on art, on grief, on love, and on the weird, tangled machinery that makes up a human being. What makes someone an artist? Is it talent, or heart? What makes someone lovable — or worthy of love — especially when they’ve been told their whole life they aren’t?

This is also a story of found family. Of the rare beauty of recognizing yourself in someone else’s oddness. Of little moments becoming lifelines. Of bravery, not in grand gestures, but in standing still when you want to run, or admitting you were wrong when everything in you screams not to.

There’s youth and innocence, yes, but also violence and trauma, including themes of domestic abuse, prejudice, and the heartbreak of untimely death. It’s a story that holds both warmth and deep sorrow in the same breath.

And the autistic coding of the main characters — subtle but unmistakable. “Act normal. Not normal for you. Normal for other people.” I felt that one in my bones.

I have to hand it to Backman — writing from the POV of an 18-year-old foster kid, a world far from his own, is a bold move. And while there were a few small anachronisms (would she really have a passport? Hmm), overall, he inhabits her voice with care.

Plot-wise, it zigged and zagged in ways I didn’t expect. I did see the big twist coming, but honestly? I’m not convinced Backman was going for shock so much as inevitability. This isn’t a thriller; it’s a quiet unraveling.

In the end, My Friends is about facing your fears — and sometimes, more importantly, facing yourself. It’s not flawless, but it’s genuine.

One of my favorite Fredrik Backman’s books. Such an amazing friendship story. I laughed, I cried and instantly bought a physically copy when I finished.

My Friends is a story centered around friendship and found family. It starts with a group of 4 teenagers who are close friends, each dealing with heavy challenges at home. In the present day, the story involves a famous painting and an 18 year old girl, Louisa, who’s just run away from her foster home.

In classic Backman fashion, My Friends weaves back and forth, revealing how “then” became “now.” I really enjoyed the close bonds and friendships among the group, it was definitely a high point of this book. The story felt long though and I found myself reaching for other books often while reading this one. It reminded me of the reading experience I had with Anxious People — enjoying it enough but hoping to get to “more” soon, too. I did like how My Friends ended, it felt like a fitting conclusion — 3.5 stars

I really enjoyed this story and how it wove all the characters together. I do think I will also try to get it in audio to hear the different characters voices. Great story of family, friends, love found and loss.

Backman is one of my favorite authors and he does not disapoint here. He perfectly balances funny and poignant and keeps the reader on their toes.

This book is a MUST read. I literally loved everything about it!

The storyline, the characters, the setting-everything is great. This book will make you laugh and cry. I truly did not want it to end.

Fredrick Backman has a way of writing characters that you fall in love with. He did that with the Beartown series, and My Friends is no different.

Absolutely wonderful! Sad, funny, heartwarming, and hopeful, It's all the hard parts of being human with a healtjy dose of hope that people still care about others!

Some strenghs that I obviously adored was Backman's unique ability to take marginal groups of people and bring them into the spotlight- from the homeless, the immigrant, and the young adult and make them actualized to the reader. I love the compassion and found family that are such common themes in his books.

I obviously recommend this one but this will come as a shock to many, but I genuinely didn't love this one. I felt the story lagged and in part due to the writing style of short chapters with a lot of breaks in the dialogue flipping to a backstory of the characters. It felt jarring and I had a hard time feeling immersed. It felt like a really long winded voicemail and I just wanted the story to get to the point.

This book has been so well received so maybe just ignore me haha.

5+ Stars!

“The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.”

I love this author. I love everything he’s written, and this will be one of my favorite books of the year. The way he writes loneliness and the importance of connecting to other people is hard to put into words. I love that music and reading tastes can vary from person to person, but I genuinely feel so bad for people who don’t have the same connection to this author as I do. I wish I could share the feeling of what his books do for me with others. This book is a dual timeline story about a lost and homeless girl trying to find anyone or anything. She finds just what she was needing and hears a heartbreaking story about four friends in the process.

One would say this book is about Louisa and her journey to sell a painting. But it’s so much more than that. It’s about how the author writes about human emotions. His ability to make you care about the characters is so well done. This book is about art, friendship, and loss. But most importantly it’s about how important people are in this world and how important connection is between humans.

I will always recommend Fredrick Beckman’s books to people.

“The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.”

This is written by the same author as Beartown and Man Called Ove which are some of my favorite books of all time!! Fredrick Backman- If you ever read reviews, please know that "I love you and I believe in you.”

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an e-arc of this book. These opinions are my own. This book was magic.

Louisa, a foster kid, now homeless, is about to turn 18. Since the tragic death of her only friend, Fish, Louisa has nothing dear to her heart other than a postcard picture of a painting called 'The One of the Sea' by artist CJat (later we learn the artist's real name is KimKim). This painting, a symbol of hope and beauty, becomes a central motif in the novel. Breaking into the gallery where the real painting is to be sold, Louisa is found out and attempts to run away from the guards. She unexpectedly and literally runs into a homeless man who coincidentally happens to be the artist himself. Now, it all sounds too coincidental to be true. Still, Backman writes in such a way that turns coincidence into serendipity. Flashback 25 years, and we learn the genesis of the painting. We are enmeshed in the lives of the author and the three friends who all needed to rely on each other to survive the trauma and heartaches of their childhoods. Joar is the protector. A Child of an incredibly abusive father yet a gentle, loving mother, Joar. And, of course, Ted, who endures the death of his father after a prolonged sickness. Ali is a young girl with a single father with a nomadic lifestyle. Each of these young people was lucky enough to have found each other at a time when they were suffering from traumatic childhoods.
The novel is structured, alternating between two time periods. In the present day, we follow Louisa as she meets Ted, now an adult, and begins to unravel the story behind her beloved painting. The second timeline, set decades earlier, immerses us in the lives of 'the friends.' 
I loved several elements of this book; I especially loved the idea of people who, when they find someone who is "one of us" (an artistic, sensitive soul), will do anything to protect and encourage them to flourish not only in their craft but in life itself. I also love that even though this novel is rife with trigger warnings (suicide, abuse, neglect), the characters are portrayed as pure-hearted, loyal and warriors against their specific demons.
This novel's primary theme is friendship and how true friendship survives trauma, conflict, and time.

Most of the time, when I read a book, I’m reading to get lost in a new world, to be entertained, to enjoy a nice romance, etc. And there are certain authors you only read when you want something more - something deeper. Fredrik Backman is one of those authors. I started reading this book digitally via NetGalley, but then realized it was so freaking good, I needed a hard copy. I had to be able to hold it in my hand - to write in it - to highlight the parts that are so beautiful, they need to be in color. This is a book about friendships, art, life, beauty, grief, joy, sadness, and everything in between. Backman always just knows how to pour cold water over your sobbing head and then wrap you in a warmed blanket. If you’re reading this, then you know what the book is about. Well, you think you do, anyway. It’s so much more. You just want to know if you should read it. Does it live up to the hype? Abso-freaking-lately you should! I just wanted to hug this book when I finished. I will recommend this book to everyone who asks!

Wow! I had to wait a few days before writing this review. This may end up being my favorite read of 2025. I did not read any reviews or spoilers and I’m so glad I went in blind. If you love character driven stories about found family this will not disappoint. I felt every emotion and savored each moment. I didn’t want to let the characters go. Backman does it again.