Thank you to the publishers for sending me this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review!

There were some really great moments and scenes in this novel, yet unfortunately, I found the writing style to be on the mundane side. There is a lot to be appreciated in the characters and their development throughout the story. The plot on the other hand was overdrawn to the point of causing boredom. The characters are what kept me going.

The way that video games are used and described in this novel is quite clever. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy contemporary fiction, character-driven stories, and video game development.

Great book! I would highly recommend adding it to your must be read list. All the characters were interesting and relatable. The gaming vibe was an outstanding idea and made the book a five star for me!

From the very first chapter I knew this book was not for me, but I pushed on because of the hype.

Sadly, it just got worse. Sam is one of the worst characters I have ever read. He is a misogynistic asshole from the very beginning and had some very concerning behavior when speaking or thinking about Sadie. I guess I can't just place all blame on Sam, almost all the male characters had concerning behavior and feelings toward women including a creepy professor.

I thought I would enjoy the parts about gaming and they were fine, but it did not help with the distaste I already had against the characters. I held out to see if I would get emotional at the end of this novel like most people do, but although sad, I did not care enough for any of the characters to be upset.

Overall, this book just fed into the misogynistic nature of the gaming industry and tried to hide under the guise of being woke. The book did not seem to care about any of the bad behavior happening and the characters just let things go without caring how it hurt others. I just felt like I was reading about the most toxic people ever.

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Historical fiction and friendship and gaming and Shakespeare references galore.

where did ya come from? Received this as an eARC from the publisher and I kept hearing about it. I didn't choose it as my Book of the Month only because I already had it digitally, but BOTM making it book of the year made me excited to finish reading it.

the good stuff: Sadie and Sam and Marx. I loved these three characters so so much. They go through so much of life together and apart in this book. Sadie's struggle with her abusive relationship with her former professor, her struggle within the gaming world/tech world as a female, and her complicated friendship/frenemyship with Sam made her fascinating and relatable and lovable all at once. Marx is easy to love because we meet him once we already care about Sam and anyone who cares about Sam is immediately lovable. Marx has this kind soul that wants to take care of people and experience life to its fullest and his death shattered me. Sam is the underdog. He refuses to be the underdog, though. His disability that he refuses to acknowledge and his drive to be something make him lovable. He doesn't want his past to define him and he refuses to allow it more presence than necessary in the present. His relationship with his grandparents softens him, as does his friendship with Sadie and his friendship with Marx. Without these people he cares for, Sam would be difficult to love.

my complaints: I actually don't think I have any specific complaints. I was worried that Sam and Sadie would become a couple at some point and I was thrilled to find that wasn't the case. So many books feel the need to make an opposite sex pair into a romantic relationship and I really enjoyed that this never crossed that line. It was so good to see this genuine friendship between a man and woman.

I loved this book and everything about it! Such an amazing and powerful story! Love and gaming?! Sign me up! I adored this and will be reading again!!

To be honest, I was hesitant to read this one because it received so much hype. This book sucked me in from the very beginning and lived up to every ounce of praise it received. While this book took me wayyy too long to finish, I’m glad I didn’t rush through it. This is one you’re going to want to savor!
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I really enjoyed that this book focused on non-romantic friendship and the complexities of how friendship evolves, ebbs, and flows over a lifetime. Sam and Sadie are both real, complex characters. I love them both, and while I did feel frustrated by their stubbornness or various miscommunications you have insight to as a reader, I empathized with both of them. I was rooting for them the entire time— both their relationship as friends as well as their own personal growth.
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When I first heard about this book I was worried about the video game aspect—I’m not a big gamer. I actually knew more than I thought having played some games a kid. This backdrop gave me a new appreciation for video games, world building, and what they can do for us as humans who often struggle to navigate our own world.
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I enjoyed my ARC so much that I ended up purchasing a copy for my own personal library. This is a book I want to own, love, and revisit someday (maybe even soon).
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If you are looking for a book to wrap up your year, this would be a great one to cozy up with during the holiday season. It will definitely be on my “Best of the Year” booklist.

This is an incredible book worth all the hype. It is quirky and odd at times. The characters are difficult, frustrating and beautifully flawed but so loveable. It is about video games but don’t let that throw you off. It is about friendship, love, creativity, and family. It is filled with so much heart. I savored every word.

2.5 stars, rounded up

I read this one over two months ago, and I still do not know how I feel about it.

I did appreciate the complex relationships that were present in this novel. The dynamics between Marx and Sam and Sadie were interesting to read about. However, I felt that the book itself was far too long and dragged on a bit.

It took me two months to get through this book. There were so many references that completely went over my head and around half the book was spent describing various video games - both of which put me off a bit. Similarly, there were so many times that the author chose to describe simple things with unnecessarily big words that made it feel pretentious.

*slight spoiler alert ahead*
However, the final straw of my dislike for this book came from the fact that there were absolutely no content warnings about the graphic shooting that happens near the end of the novel. As someone who has too many personal connections and experiences with various shootings, I thought that this was done in poor taste.

I started reading this as soon as I received it from NetGalley, but I put it down after a week, deciding I wasn't the right audience for the story. After hearing it recommended by the Amazon Books guru on a morning news show, I decided to give it another chance. I'm so glad I did.

The framework for the story--video game programming--was just the scaffolding, which couldn't convey the depth of interest I found in character development, relationships among friends and lovers, betrayals, assumptions tainted by experience and disappointments, twists and turns, and the book's sober ending.

I finished reading with great respect for the complex characters, the author and the story's uniqueness among modern novels.

A true gift of a novel that opens your eyes to new ways of seeing relationships, art, and the journey of time.

Such an amazing book. I loved the character arcs, the gaming vibes, and following the friendship over time. It’s a long read but worth it.

I was hesitant to read the b/c it's about gamers, but I ended up loving the story of Sophie, Sam and Marx. Sophie and Sam meet as children over their love of gaming and reconnect as college students. Marx is Sam's roommate and they start a company together. It was a novel about love and friendship and work and it all just came together beautifully.

When deciding if I wanted to read this book, I saw one review that said it was the best book ever. Hmmm... a high bar, but ultimately, it did not reach anywhere near that level.

Yes, it was good, but it felt about 1,000 pages too long. Sadie and Sam meet as children in a hospital where Sam is a patient and Sadie is there to visit her sister. They play some games together and a friendship for life was formed. Once they get to college IMIT and Harvard) they reestablish this friendship and start making games together. Their games are good, very good in fact and a business is formed with Sam's friend Marx as producer.

Over the years they create games that millions love to play. The business aspect is successful, but the friendship has the ego issues to deal with so it's a rocky road. We all know 3 people cannot always play nicely together.

I won't say more, but it is worth reading if you have a ton of free hours. Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

What a story! I can see why it got all the hype. I loved the friendship between the two main characters and how it followed them through the years/stages of their lives.

I wish we could have followed them for a little bit longer, but that's my only gripe. This story gets all the stars!

I never thought a #book about video games would have my heart, but oh my goodness this one makes you feel every emotion under the sun. Bonus points for the brilliant use of the Hokusai Wave 🌊 #bookcover and it’s role in the story.

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An unlikely friendship in California formed in a hospital arcade room turns into a later partnership and a video game empire shared between Sadie Green and Samsun Masur, with the complicated friendship, unrequited love, and business partnership of this unlikely duo setting the backdrop for their lives, as they struggle with disabilities, relationships both good and bad, creative failures, creative successes, death, and more, from Massachusetts to Venice Beach.

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I cannot do this one justice - it is poetic, deep, and philosophical in so many ways.

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I will say, though - I struggled with my thoughts on Sadie. I found most of the time that her behavior and treatment of Mazer was wholeheartedly undeserved, petty, and ridiculous. I was not a fan even though at times I understood her pain and struggles.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin!

I feel there is not much else that can be said about this book. I really enjoyed this book! I do like video games, but you don’t need to know about them to like this book. It is a bit of a long read, but that didn’t stop me from loving it.

Gabrielle Zevin is one of my favorite authors and she does not disappoint in her newest story. While this is a story about gaming and the people and industry that creates these games, the themes that are central to the core of the book are far reaching. I am not a gamer, but yet found that part of the book fascinating. Friendship, lovers, expectations, depression, heartbreak, death, disappointment and sheer joy and disabilities are just some of the topics covered. The book is a roller coaster ride of emotions and everyone will find themselves or their situation in there somewhere among the quirky wit that puts Zevin at the top of her game. A great read. Thank you NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday for providing me with an Arc to review.

Definitely a sweet story for almost anyone, although I have a hard time understanding why it has been chosen as Book of the Year for various groups. The story is centered largely on a triparte friendship between Sadie Green, Sam Masur, and Marx Wanatabe. The three are video game developers who eventually end up owning their own developing firm. Sadie and Sam have been friends for decades, stemming back to Sadie's 600+ hours of visiting Sam in the hospital as he recovered from a serious injury. Marx comes into the picture much later to fund development of one of Sadie and Sam's games. The story is a very slow burn. Although you need not know anything about video games to enjoy it, the description and development of various games will not be for everyone and seems to drag out. I wanted more of the personal stories and relationships between the three characters than development of the games. The chapter regarding Marx's reflection on life (no spoilers!) was one of the best chapters I've ever read in a book - I wanted more of that!

I find it hard to care about video games. I study computer science at university, and with awareness of the intricacy of their development, I still find it difficult to care. Thus, an entire book centered around the significance and art of video games was never really going to emotionally resonate with me. It’s also practically daring me to fact check it on its game dev content. This book makes game dev look spectacularly easier than it actually is. The video game industry is one of the most brutal of an already brutal sector; it’s a money-making factory that, due to the demand of constant upgrades, is known for working its employees cruelly and unjustly. It does make a conscious effort to depict it accurately, and some of the ease can be accounted for by its time period, but it's still doomed to be frustrating. Also, if such is going to be used to justify it’s stilted portrayal of the industry (“it’s not like today!”), then I would have expected much more nostalgia. Instead, I frequently forgot that this was historical fiction, technically.
Beyond my somewhat unsubstantiated dislike of video game centered novels, the other confounding influence to my opinion is the fact that this book is essentially the prequel to Ready Player One that no one asked for. It could, with little modification necessary, be a novellization of the three people who start the RP1 VR world–even down to the sexual envy one of the founders feels for the other. Ready Player One was a deeply flawed novel, and its sequel was quite possibly one of the worst books I have ever read. Perhaps the ties to this book have tainted my reading experience–truly, this reads as the fanfiction origin story of the creator’s of Ready Player One’s universe.
Video games aside, RP1 comparisons aside–the strength of this novel is in its characters, and this, at least, I have little to gripe about. The two characters that carry us through the novel are deeply flawed. I would also like to credit the female characters for where said credit is due; gaming women, more so than many other female demographics, are reduced to manic pixie dream girls with impeccable trigger fingers (I glare, pointedly, at Ernest Cline). She was so truly flawed. Horrible, so frequently. Selfish, so frequently. Still, in the dichotomy between her and Sam, the author allowed her to be annoying and unlikeable in a genre that rarely allows its characters to do so. The response I had to her as a reader was so strong; stronger than a character had inflicted on me in a while, try as much recently released literary fiction might. Some of the choices she made, especially regarding her abusive teacher relationship, could have been clarified (currently, I’m having to give the author the benefit of the doubt on a couple points), and I think the writing fell flat when the characters moved out of their heads and interacted with each other. But, it still stands that Sadie was flawed in a literary space and metaphorical one where that isn’t usually allowed.
Since receiving this ARC, this book has been launched to stratospheric popularity–one of the biggest books of the year. While for one, this is a sad reminder that I should be on top of my Netgalley reviews or face the consequences, it also demonstrates how I could never predict literary trends if I tried. I didn’t think this book would be big–as aforementioned, it's a rewrite of RP1 with actual character development–and I don’t really think it deserves the astronomical acclaim it's wrought. It’s not the worst book the internet could have picked to be its darling, but I’m, once again, left a little confused as to what made it so.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book, but it was masterful written. Wistful, sad, and full of questions about how our relationships contain layers of meaning. It got me interested in the technology behind video games. I would definitely recommend this to anyone, because at its core this book is about the power of friendship and forgiveness,