Review of “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman. Or: Trauma, Art, and Found Family™, Now in Nordic Flavor

 

Fredrik Backman is back, everybody. Just in case you were worried your tear ducts had dried up or your serotonin levels were stabilizing, My Friends arrives like a literary Hallmark card soaked in wistful Nordic longing. As always, Backman sets out to remind us that life is hard, people are beautiful, and, this time, paintings can be emotionally loaded metaphors for literally everything.

The book has all the trademarks of the patented Backman Experience™: sad but soulful kids, a cross-generational mystery, emotionally stunted adults learning to feel again, and a narration style that’s 65% “poignant inner monologue,” 25% “goofy-but-wise side banter,” and 10% “someone dies, probably.”

The Plot: Stand By Me with a Fresh Coat of Melancholy

The premise could’ve been spit out by an AI trained on Backman, Pixar, and every Reddit post tagged “found family.” In 2025, Louisa is an artist trying to find the story behind a painting. A painting that, like every sacred art object in modern fiction, is drenched in mystery and emotional resonance. It features three kids on a pier. Louisa becomes convinced these kids matter. Because of… vibes?

So she goes on a dramatic journey across the country (emphasis on “emotional” journey; actual logistics are handwaved like a Disney montage), tracking down the story of these teen friends who, 25 years earlier, did what all YA protagonists must: escaped their broken homes by sitting on a decaying pier and developing lifelong trauma bonds.

From that summer comes a miraculous painting, and from that painting comes Louisa’s mission, and from Louisa’s mission comes 300+ pages of lush emotional breadcrumbs leading to a final reveal that is neither shocking nor subtle but will be described in all press releases as “life-affirming.”

Let’s be clear: this book will absolutely be your aunt’s favorite thing in the world. It’s wholesome with a whisper of sadness, like if The Perks of Being a Wallflower were rewritten by a very polite Swedish dad with an MFA. You can smell the Netflix adaptation.

The Cover:

The book jacket looks exactly how you think a Fredrik Backman book should look: warm, gentle pastels arranged like a memory you’re not sure you had or just saw in a Subaru commercial. You’ve got silhouettes, distant landscapes, and probably some wistful font work like a serif that believes in you. It screams, “This is art. But in a cozy way. And your therapist might approve.”

If the My Friends cover were a scent, it would be “saltwater and second chances.” If it were a fabric, it would be linen worn at a late-summer funeral.

The Verdict:

Backman doesn’t write books so much as he constructs emotional IKEA sets: everything is neat, comforting, and makes you feel things, even if you’re not sure why. It’s manipulative in the gentlest way possible, like being hugged by someone who starts crying on your shoulder halfway through.

Is it brilliant? No. Is it original? Not particularly. But it’s wildly effective at what it does, and what it does is make you remember that you were once a teenager who swore your friends would save the world.

It’s a literary sugar cookie: warm, sweet, and structurally predictable, but that’s the point. If you wanted existential crisis, you’d be reading Dostoevsky. This is emotional self-care in hardcover.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (one for emotional manipulation, one for prose like warm dishwater, one for the book club appeal, and one because Fredrik Backman will absolutely outlive us all on the bestseller list)

My Friends: Because no one does emotionally elegant group therapy disguised as fiction quite like a Swede with a cult following and a Netflix contract.