My Friends
By Fredrik Backman
Simon & Schuster
I really wanted to like this book. I really did. But this is Backman at his worst, with his style of interconnectedness that makes it so clear that everyone needs to rely upon everyone else to survive falling flat. Too many coincidences, too many chance meetings, too much repetition of both concept and phrase made this read just plain tedious. The biggest issue I had was the constant baiting and switching. We think the story’s going to go in one direction, but then another detail gets tossed in out of nowhere, pushing us in a completely different direction. It’s meant to be cute, and meant to provide better depth of the characters, but for me it didn’t work. This book, sadly, was a chore.