My Friends by Fredrik Backman
Thank you for joining me for the first Book Beginnings on Fridays of the new year! Book Beginnings is a weekly blog hopping event where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment.
Happy 2026 and happy reading!
MY BOOK BEGINNING
Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human.
-- from My Friends by Fredrik Backman.
Not to sound like the cranky old lady I don't want to become, but I disagree with the opening sentence. Actually, the first chapter put me off so much I almost gave up. But My Friends is my book club's pick for this month so I wanted to try harder. I read some reviews that assured me there would be adults, not just teenagers, so I kept reading. I'm now halfway through and like it quite a bit, although it's not my favorite.
Have you read this one yet? Are you a Backman fan?
YOUR BOOK BEGINNING
Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.
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Then they lay on the pier and drank cheap sodas and watched the sunset for free. The summer was still endless and the world-famous artist who wasn't world-famous yet slowly moved his finger across the sky in the last of the daylight, drawing skulls in the air.
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.
