#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Goodreads • USA TODAY • Marie Claire • BookPage • Literary Lifestyle • Book Riot • Sunset Magazine • Totally Booked with Zibby Owens * A Fallon Book Club Pick
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later.
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.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-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, timeless power of friendship and art.
Perhaps the book is an allegory
"The author is able to toss off a varied list of insights that provoke thought. But I had to give up on the book with about 100 pages left. I'm sorry, I find nothing charming about teenagers who steal, or who solve their numerous disputes by "fighting" endlessly. A main character, Louisa, is impulsive and deeply annoying (Autism Spectrum Disorder?). Perhaps the book's fault is related to the translator. Maybe the humor gets lost in the translation (as P. G. Wodehouse does to some non English speakers). As it is it lands flat for me. I don't expect a James Michener level of factual accuracy but, my God, everyone knows a valuable painting has to establish provenance or it is without value. Everyone knows this. Everyone. Other mistakes can only be described as idiotic (you don't "tackle" players in soccer) and the idiocies pile up so much that I suspect the book drifts between fiction and allegory."
