My Friends — Books, Beauty, & Buys

By: Fredrik Backman
Published Year: 2025
Publisher: Atria Books
Pages: 436

Summary (Provided by Goodreads): 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 aspiring 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 seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

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 how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

First Impressions

I love Backman’s books. I haven’t read some of his more recent ones because I didn’t love the Beartown series and just haven’t gotten around to Anxious People, so I was excited to get this one. His writing is just so beautiful. I don’t know if his covers are always my favorite, but he will be an auto-read author for me forever.

What I thought

Beautiful as always.

Louisa has always live the painting The One of the Sea. After breaking into an auction to see the painting in person, she gets herself into a little trouble but winds up (legally) with the painting in her possession. She also winds up in the company of one of the teenagers in the painting, though now he is almost 40. They go on a journey together as he teaches her about the history of the painting, the people in it, and the artist who painted it.

This story bounces back and forth between the present and the summer when the painting was made and the teens were 14. It’s a fantastically written story of friendship, childhood, grief, and teen angst. I loved seeing the connections between Louisa and the past. She is 18 in the present yet she feels the emotions of someone who lived through that summer which was so sweet.

The way Backman handles grief and trauma is so beautifully done. It never feels like he’s pandering or writing about traumatic events just to get a rise of out his readers. It’s real and grounded and never over the top. I loved getting to know the friends in the painting and felt like I lived that summer with them.

I don’t want to say too much about the tory itself because I feel like what made reading it so good was being on the journey with Louisa and learning about hat summer and the artist with her. The ending was so satisfying and I feel like this is one of those book that is going to sit with me and just continue to have a greater impact on me as it sits with me over time.