My Friends by Frederick Backman

Fredrik Backman, bestselling Swedish author of books such as A Man Called Ove and Anxious People has done it again. The feelings he can evoke with his descriptions make you love these characters like old friends.

Eighteen-year-old Louisa becomes the owner of a priceless piece of art that has inspired her since childhood from an old postcard. As she travels across country and learns about the artist and his life, she better understands the three small figures in the painting.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life.

These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art - Louisa’s painting. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect.