My Friends by Fredrik Backman

Amy         

Lynnie      

contemporary fiction

 

Young Louisa is embarking on the rest of her life when a chance meeting with her idol literally puts her on a path she could have never imagined. During the initial leg of her journey, she learns about four kids who were the closest of friends one summer 25 years earlier: an artist, a troublemaker, an intelligent, quiet boy, and a girl who never stayed anywhere for long. They were each other’s refuge from the lives they’d been born into and they forged a friendship that was strong enough to span decades. Alternating between these two time frames, we see how the events of that summer affected the friends and rippled outward over time. 

Lynnie's Review

 

Wow!

I have enjoyed many books by Fredrik Backman over the years, but My Friends is my favorite, by far - which is impressive when you realize I gave two other Backman books 5 stars (Anxious People and A Man Called Ove). 

My Friends is about the indelible bond of childhood friends; your first found family who know and see all of you - your truths, your lies, your triumphs, your pain, your quirks - and who love you anyway. I was instantly in love with the characters in this story and their unfailing love for and support of one another. The journey that this book takes you on will inspire you, break your heart, and stitch it back together again page by page. I laughed out loud, I cried, I gasped in surprise… there is not a moment of this book that I didn’t love. 

Not just about friendship, as if that wouldn’t be enough, My Friends is also about the beauty and healing power of art and how it connects people. Backman’s writing in this book is its own art - painting a vivid picture of each scene, the characters and their feelings. In some ways the writing reminds me of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief; it paints a picture of a time filled with pain and it handles difficult subjects with beauty and empathy. 

I found it impossible to read this book without thinking about my own childhood friends - those kids I spent 8 weeks with every summer at camp who, 40 years later, are still some of my favorite humans. Who would I be without them and our experiences together, after all?

Read this book. Thank me later. 

Thank you to Atria Books, NetGalley and the author for the advance reader copy. My Friends will be published on May 6, 2025.

 

Amy's Review

While this wasn’t particularly like any of the other Fredrik Backman books I’ve read, My Friends was told with signature Backman style—with intuitive understanding of human sociology and psychology, with astute commentary on behaviors that humans shouldn’t be proud of, and with a good dose of humor and relatability. This novel particularly focused on the beauty of otherness. Backman took people who were considered to be outsiders, weird, and undesirable and wrote about their humanity, their art, their vulnerability, and their love and loyalty to each other and others like them.

Louisa grabbed my attention right off the bat. She was a complicated, yet hopeful, teenager struggling to survive. The interplay between her and Ted was charming and funny, despite its awkwardness. Louisa was slowly able to pull out Ted’s story and share her own, bringing them closer together during their adventure.

While I enjoyed the book, I did often feel that it was repetitive and long winded. I felt like Backman laid it on pretty thickly in relaying his message. I mean, it was a good message. It was just lots of the same message over and over.

I found it interesting that the book title is “My” Friends. Was Backman referring to his own life story? I also never understood why the name of the artist was withheld for so long. I assume there was a point to the timing of the revelation but I couldn’t figure it out. I’m planning to see Backman soon in person and I hope he discusses this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this opportunity to read a galley of this new novel by an author I admire. My Friends will be published on May 6, 2025.

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

Amy 

women’s fiction

Julia, a stay-at-home mom to two young adults, is not comfortable within her own skin and always feels like she’s playing a part.

Same As It Ever Was begins with Julia running into someone who obviously held some place of infamy in her earlier life. This is the seed planted by Claire Lombardo to keep the reader invested in this long, slow-paced, look into Julia’s depressed mental state. But then, once we get the answer to that question and the big climax happens before the mid-way point of the novel, the story just continues as mundanely as ever. Lombardo does throw us another bone to keep us reading, which is the suggestion that something awful and secret happened to her when she was 17 years old. But even though this mystery carries us through the rest of the novel, its explanation is not Earth-shattering. Rather, it’s a bittersweet, soft ending.

The audiobook was over 18 hours long and it’s literally just about one woman’s unremarkable life. Yes, she had a rotten childhood. But she, like many people with imperfect parents, made it out and grew up to consciously not be like her mother. Then she found a wonderful, patient, attractive, wealthy man with whom to spend the rest of her life. And yet, she’s never happy. And I mean, never—except when she’s hormonal during pregnancy. She makes the motions every day, doing what she feels she has to do. But she is, obviously, depressed. Her family sees it but doesn’t know how to help her and, since she does show that she loves them, they just all go through life. Ho hum.

That’s all there is to it. It felt very, very long. The only reason I kept listening was because this was for Book Club and I had no other audiobooks at the time. I imagine the Book Club discussion will be about expectations for women in society, motherhood, marriage, dealing with things like your children growing up and going to college, blah, blah, blah. Life! Nothing extremely unique or unusual to see here.

The audiobook narrator, Emily Rankin, did a great job with her voice acting. She displayed a more limited vocal repertoire than I remember hearing from her in other books. I’ll give her an A-.

 

DallerGut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee

 Lynnie

fantasy

 

This book was a disappointment. The Dallergut Dream Department Store has a beautiful cover and a fantastic premise: There is a world that exists that is only accessible to most of us while we sleep. In that time between falling asleep and dreaming, you can visit this world and go to the dream department store (or apparently one of its competitors) and buy a dream for the cost of half the emotions that the dream brings out in you. Penny lives in this world and works at the dream department store and… and that's kind of it. 

This book had so much promise and I really wanted to like it, but truthfully I don’t know why I finished it. Sadly, the problems with this story are many, starting with our heroine, Penny. I was never particularly interested in her - she is a conduit to teach us about this world, as we learn about the Dallergut Dream Department Store as she does. But if anything goes wrong, if there are missteps or problems, it’s simply swept under the proverbial rug and everyone says that it’s no big deal, probably for the best. It was so weird!

I struggled to find a plot I was supposed to care about – is the story about Penny? Is the story about the store? Is there a customer I should be focusing on? I have no idea, but I think the answer to all of those questions is yes and no, but mostly no. Is it just a bad translation? Maybe the translator missed some key Korean ideas? I have no idea.

Lee Mi-ye does some wonderfully creative world-building in this book, and has some interesting ideas that have the spark of something I’d like to learn more about, but sadly it never gets any further than that. It all felt very superficial and dissatisfying in the end.

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin

Amy    

historical fiction

When Grace and her friend, Viv, leave their countryside village for the job opportunities in London in 1939, the threat of war is on the horizon but seems unlikely. However, once England joins in World War II, the women’s plans are changed. Viv leaves to join the war effort outside of London and Grace is left to face her new realities.

This was a quick read for me. I enjoyed Grace’s story and all the characters in The Last Bookshop in London. I appreciated her bravery and personal growth, especially. I had read a few other novels focusing on how British women faced World War II “at home” and I like a story where women shine. The tone of this novel by Madeline Martin reminded me of Jennifer Ryan’s novels spotlighting British women during the war—nothing too terribly heavy or depressing. It felt authentic and uplifting. It’s a story of hope and perseverance.

The audiobook was narrated by Saskia Maarleveld whom I’ve heard narrate many novels. In this one, she uses British accents the entire time which was fun. I’ll give her an A-

   

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Lynnie

romance, contemporary fiction

 

Lucy and Josh work together at a publishing company and hate one another - at least, that’s what they would like you to believe. They share an office space and spend their days playing games against one another - the Staring Game, the Mirror Game, the HR Game, the Spying Game, and, of course, the Hating Game.

The Hating Game is a cute, if entirely predictable rom-com. I listened to the audiobook for this one and found myself wondering if I thought Lucy was immature because of the way she was narrated or if Sally Thorne wrote the character to be immature. While Josh and Lucy both had their moments, I couldn’t help but think that both of them acted like middle schoolers for much of the book. Written entirely from Lucy’s point of view, I would have liked to have Josh’s perspective on some of the events instead - it would have made it more interesting to know what he was thinking, rather than Lucy’s (often wrong) interpretation of what he was thinking.

I thought some of Josh’s behavior was really odd and over the line - being jealous, possessive, and overprotective when he didn’t really have any right to be any of those - hence, why I would have liked to know what he was thinking. Still, it had its moments and if you’re looking for a good beach read, this will do the trick.

As I said above, I listened to the audiobook. Katie Schorr narrated and I don’t believe I’ve heard her read before. I didn’t love her voice choice for Lucy - she sounded super immature and childish during many parts of the book & I wondered if I would have felt the same way if I had been reading. I also found it difficult to tell some of the characters apart at times and struggled to figure out when Lucy was speaking, rather than when she was thinking. 

 

If you're looking for a quick, easy romantic book, The Hating Game fits the bill.  

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

Amy  

mystery

Evie just moved in with her boyfriend who is a wealthy inheritor in small-town Louisiana. His friends are very curious about her. It turns out, they have good reason to be curious because Evie is not who she claims to be. In fact, the more that is revealed about her past, the more Evie’s situation is quite remarkable.

First Lie Wins had me in its grips for the first half. I really liked the way Ashley Elston built the story so that it started off as one thing and then she slowly built a fuller picture. I liked the way the flashbacks informed the reader.

However, around the halfway mark, a new character was suddenly introduced who seemed extremely unlikely. The descriptions of how Evie and this person met and formed a “team” was not robust. Their backstory lacked sufficient detail to make me believe it. His existence was just too sudden and left me feeling like it was at this point in the story when Elston didn’t know how to continue, so she taped a branch on her story tree instead of making a new branch grow naturally. This character’s existence took me out of the story and greatly lessened my enjoyment of the book. Because, after that point, I started noticing all the things I perceived as flaws in the story instead of just enjoying the thrills and skillz the author was trying to highlight.

For example, I found it really hard to believe that Evie’s own past had prepared her in any way to take on some of the challenges and roles in which she, supposedly, excelled.  I can’t specify without giving things away. But let’s just say people go to college to be successful at things for which she just seemed to have natural ability or could quickly learn on the Internet. Ridiculous. I do, normally, enjoy a good antihero. But Evie just felt unbelievable, sadly.

The narrator, Saskia Maarleveld, was awesome. My usual complaint is with her “narrator voice”. But since this story is all told from the protagonist’s point of view, she never had to read from a narrator’s viewpoint. Her voice acting and vocal repertoire were awesome! A+ because I see no reason to dock her for anything on this one.

Chaotic Orbits novellas by Beth Revis

Lynnie

novella, science fiction, series

As a fan of Beth Revis' Across the Universe series, I had high hopes for Full Speed to a Crash Landing. Even though it's a fast read and I was interested in the characters and the world they exist in, it's hard to get excited about a book when you know exactly what's going to happen.

How do you know what's going to happen? The main character, Ada, tells you over and over and over and over. She's meant to be presented as an unreliable narrator, I think, but her narration is very reliable. She wink-winks her way into spelling out her plans as clearly as she can without actually saying them out loud. As a character however? Ada is a completely selfish, unreliable person, which makes me less interested in her; I don't like people who use people.

I really liked the crew of the Halifax and was much more interested in and sympathetic toward all of them than I was Ada. And of course, we're meant to like Rian, and I did; I would have liked to hear more of his story, frankly. This novella is the first in a series and feels incomplete. I don't know how quickly Revis will release the next one, but I wonder if I will still remember any of this story when she does. As always, I would rather a book tell a complete story than string me along for years and years. Full Speed to a Crash Landing is long enough to start a story, but I'm not sure there was enough meat there to get me invested enough to read the next one. 

edited to add: The next novella in this series is scheduled to be published in December. If Revis continues to publish the series this quickly, I will be thrilled!

Full Speed to a Crash Landing is scheduled to publish 8/6/2024. Thanks to DAW, NetGalley and Beth Revis for the advance reader copy.  

How To Steal a Galaxy

Lynnie

This is the second book in Beth Revis’ Chaotic Orbits novellas. Knowing that this is releasing so quickly after the first book actually helped me enjoy it as now I’m confident that the next novella will be released in a few months. My concern after the first novella was that when the second was released, I wouldn’t remember anything. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

It was lovely to spend more time with Rian and Ada. It wasn’t as actiony as the first one but I enjoyed the scenario and of course the banter between Rian and Ada. I don’t know if Revis will continue this will-they-won’t-they going for much longer, but their chemistry is wonderful and I’m eager to read the next part of their adventure.

While I’m enjoying these novellas, it’s hard to tell if How To Steal A Galaxy moved the story along at all. I mean, stuff happened, but does any of it impact the greater plot? Maybe. Probably. But I still find myself frustrated that I will be waiting again for the next section. I recommend the series if you like YA sci-fi, but I also recommend you wait until they have all been published so you don’t have to have these breaks in the story.

Thanks to DAW publishing, NetGalley and of course, Beth Revis, for the advance copy. This title will publish on December 3, 2024. 

 

Last Chance to Save The World

Lynnie 

I was very excited to revisit the world of Ada and Rian and find out whether or not they were going to save Earth (even though, that answer was easy enough to figure out in advance). It was HOW they were going to do it that intrigued me most of all, along with the interaction between them.

The blurb promised an, "explosive, satisfying conclusion" and a "happily-ever-after ending" - sadly, this book delivered neither of those. I was not at all satisfied with the end of this book and even though this is billed as a trilogy, it ends like the other two- on unanswered questions & frustration.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the action and 98% of this novella and watching all the chaos unfold - it's that final 2% that left me dissatisfied, particularly since the happily-ever-after scenario was written in to an earlier chapter and I fully expected it would be the epilogue. Ultimately, it left me wanting more...more for the characters and for myself, as the reader. I don't think a fourth book is planned, but never say never I guess.

Should you read this trilogy? Absolutely, it's great fun! But set your expectations for those final page turns.

Thanks to Beth Revis, DAW publishing and NetGalley for the advance reader copy. This book publishes on April 8, 2025