Book: My Friends

 Book: My Friends

Author: Fredrik Backman

Pages: 448

This is my 109th read for the year

What Amazon says:

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.  25 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 18 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, timelss power of friendship and art.

I want to start off by saying that I am a Backman fan.  Most of the books he writes are wonderful and I always get excited when he releases a new book.  This one just missed the mark for me.  There were a couple of things.  1) it is overly flowery.  I am not a big fan of these kinds of books.  It felt overdone.  Do I love a sweet story?  Of course.  But this was just so much fluff that I could not get into the underlying story.  And it wasn't really sweet - it was overly depressing.  2) I hated the main character.  Louisa acts more like a 12-13 year old instead of the 19 year old that she is.  I have two 19 year olds.  Are they immature?  Sure.  But not to this level.  Was Backman writing her as if she wasn't wordly because of her background and maybe he felt this is how someone of that age would act without guidance?   Maybe, but it was a big turnoff.

Stars: 3