Fredrik Backman returns with a powerful, bittersweet tale of four teenagers whose deep bond echoes across decades—and unexpectedly changes the trajectory of a young girl’s life.
Most people glance at C.Jat’s iconic painting and see only the sea. But Louisa, a young artist grappling with her own creative doubts and the horrors life has brought her way, is captivated by the small trio of figures at the edge of the canvas. She senses a story hidden in those brushstrokes and sets out to uncover it.
Twenty-five years earlier, on a quiet pier in a forgotten town, four teens found solace in each other’s company. Joar, the scrappy fighter; Ted, the grieving reader; Ali, always on the move thanks to her restless father; and a gifted, troubled boy who painted his way through pain. For one golden summer, they shared stories, secrets, and dreams—creating not only memories, but a piece of art that would long outlive them.
Now, with that painting unexpectedly in her hands, Louisa embarks on a journey to trace its origin and to reignite her own sense of purpose. What unfolds is a moving exploration of how friendship leaves its mark, how art holds memory, and how sometimes, the stories we discover become the ones that shape us.
“Stories are complicated, memories are merciless, our brains only store a few moments from the best days of our lives, but we remember every second of the worst.”
The fun thing about opening any book by Fredrik Backman is that you full well know he is going to break your heart—you just don’t know how yet.
My Friends is a story about the friends you make when you are a teen that become your found family, of art that is so all-encompassing that it shatters everything you ever thought you knew about the world and how it can make you feel less lonely in this big world and, at its core, about loyalty, trust and love.
If I had to pick one word to describe what this book is like, I’d choose devastating.
Masterfully crafted, there is so much pain in the way this story is told. You are constantly on the edge of your seat as you listen to Ted reminisce about the summer that not only shaped his life but his friends’ as well. You can practically taste the sense of doom and tragedy that permeates the whole story but always, always the brilliant friendship between the characters gives you a sense of comfort that is desperately needed.
Besides the past narrative, you also have the present in which Ted finds himself saddled with (and unable to let go of) Louisa, a brilliant teen who has already gone through so much in her short life. There’s a certain level of cynicism and street-smarts that come with her that somehow make the story feel even more unputdownable. She’s crass and funny and boisterous but she’s also just someone who has never belonged and, above all else, yearns for that feeling. In a way, you as the reader fall in love with the friendship of Ted, Joar, Ali and the artist alongside Louisa, which makes it feel all the more special.
I wish I could go deeper into the plot, but everything somehow feels like a spoiler. There’s death and grief and devastating fear, there’s parents who don’t behave like it, there’s a mirror held before society and how pretentious art dealers and buyers can be but there’s also the sense of infinite possibility when you find an artist who makes you feel alive just through what they create with their own two hands. There’s unrequited love and platonic love and there’s the sense that everything you’ve ever done or thought in your life ultimately determines just how you will leave this world. There’s the powerful belief that nothing shapes you quite like the friendships you make when you are young—even if they fall apart or change in ways you never expected them to. And that’s not even half of the topics Backman tackles in this.
In any case, My Friends feels like an absolute career highlight. I usually highlight about 30-60 passages. In My Friends? I had more than 350 highlighted quotes. It feels like Fredrik Backman took a look at his fans and went, “Oh, you think you know pain just because you read Beartown? You think you know what’s relatable just because you devoured Anxious People? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet” and decided to blow everyone’s minds with a whole new level of relatability.
It’s no secret that Backman is one of my favourite authors but what strikes me even after multiple books, is that I somehow still remain baffled at the immense talent he possesses to make any read feel like it’s both calling me out and showing me just how relatable the human experience truly is.
Many of the things happening in this book are tragic and you can feel the pain the characters go through on such a visceral level that I had to put the book down multiple times because I didn’t want (quite like Louisa) to finish the story if it wasn’t going to turn out to be a happy one. But for me, this is always where Backman makes his boldest statement: We are all in this together. You are not alone in uncovering the secrets of that friendship and the summer 25 years ago when it took place. Together with Louisa, you discover just how magic the world can be if you have the right people at your side. And for that feeling alone this book is worth picking up immediately.
A devastatingly beautiful love letter to teen friendships and the way they shape who you are and who you want to be, My Friends is Backman’s best story yet.
My Friends is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of May 6th 2025.
Will you be picking up My Friends? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | 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.
