Will I love My Friends?

An engrossing, multifaceted story about a group of friends that learn to create a “found family” to help them rise above their hardscrabble lives. As the years pass and life gets in the way—fame, fortune, brushes with the law, death—the friends find their way back to one another in order to make room for an unexpected addition to their ride-or-die group.

As a writer, Backman is an alchemist; he has a way of taking prickly characters (angsty teenagers, grumpy old men, etc.) and transmuting them on the page into someone you look forward to spending time with and grieve… show more.

This book made me happy. I think I smiled the entire time I was reading it. It's about love, and the power of friendship, and both the pain of loss and the joy of remembrance. Honestly, it's the one book I read this year I believe everyone should read.

Oh, my gosh! It's so lovely and tender. Found family in the most difficult times of life. The characters are so wonderfully flawed and human, I fell in love with all of them. The different ways creativity can take us in life, the challenges and rewards all felt right. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I love all of Fredrik Backman’s books, but My Friends became an instant favorite as soon as I read it.

I love it for its deeply flawed yet intensely lovable characters and the powerful bonds that tie them together. Despite the tragedies the characters face in the story, I couldn’t help but be envious of their friendships and feel that every teenager could overcome whatever life throws at them if only they had these boys by their sides.

Backman makes you care about his characters from the start, and he is the King of Poignancy. Insightful comments into the human condition practically drip from the pages of this novel as a series of increasingly delightful, damaged characters cross boundaries into each other’s lives, ultimately improving them. And ample intrigue keeps you reading, far too late into the night.

This story evokes the magic of teenage friendships and how those bonds never really fade. It's heart-warming and deeply moving.

The story is about four teenagers, lost souls, whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later. At its center is a transcendent work of art. Heartwarming and poignant, My Friends is filled with hope, humor, wisdom and love. It is a tale of lifelong friendship, human connection, the power of art, and the ways that childhood—good and bad—stays with you for a lifetime.