"Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept them from despair."

I have to confess - I'm a huge gamer nerd. I've been playing games on PC & Xbox for as long as I can remember. In the time of the pandemic, I think many did as I did - played more open world MMO's and made safe friendships. So this story pushes all my nerd buttons in the best way.

This is, first, a messy story. It's about friendship and a love so deep it cuts even in the good times. Sam and Sadie have been friends since before they were both teenagers. A friendships forged completely in video games, a love they both shared unlike the other kids their age.

After a misunderstanding and a falling out, they each go their separate ways to college and find themselves in similar tech fields. They propose making a game together. It was fascinating to see all their ideas. Sadie's rough student projects were amazing. I would have loved that factory game. I would have played the crap out of the tsunami and voyage home game. I even would have loved the theater murder.

But even as they are making and creating, they are finding new ways to hurt and misunderstand each other. Sometimes the on-line world is easier and less messier than actually having IRL relationships. It was a story that sucked me in to their hardships and fights as much as their high times of loving both their games and others. This was an interesting story, a voyage I enjoyed. I'm so glad I gave this one a try!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this a ton. I felt like it dragged in the middle years; but obviously I'm in the minority since #Bookstagram loves it!

~ NET GALLEY REVIEW ~

I've been telling anyone who will listen to me - this book is hands down my favorite of the year, if not my favorite of all time. It's so authentically and beautifully written. It's a real love story between friendships and family. It covers sexism, racism, disability, grief, hard work, risk. I loved it all. I also loved every character, well maybe minus one, but it was so good. Terribly, terribly good.

Sam Maser and Sadie Green have been friends since the two of them met while playing video games in a hospital, becoming friends though through false pretenses. Years pass until they finally meet again, still with a love for video games. Sadie & Sam start creating video games that end up changing the video game world as they know it.

“𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒉 𝒂 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂 𝒗𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆.”

The characters in this book talk about and deal with disabilities, racism, tragedy, fame, and sexism. The love between the two is friendship based and never exceeded past that, although at many points Sam wished it were more.

“𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒅, 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒆. 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒏.“

This book was in the third person which is my least favorite so that turned me away immediately but I kept reading. I felt as is this book was repetitive and also confusing at times because it goes from past to present from one paragraph to the next without breaking it up. The plot line wasn’t one that was all that interesting to me, I was hoping for a little more. I’m disappointed I didn’t love it as much as I thought I would, but the writing itself was easy enough to get through without DNFing.

Thank you Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and @netgalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely loved Zevins first book, it was one of the first books that made me fall back into love with reading during the pandemic so I knew that I needed to try this one! This book focuses and is a love story to video games and that was something that I have never really felt in a book before. My boyfriend plays video games, and sometimes I play with him, which made this book so much more fun for me (do not have to love video games to love this book tho). This book is such an amazing story of love, friendship, and a world so beautifully described you cannot help but love it! Definitely a unique and unforgettable story, I'd recommend to pretty much anyone.

I wanted to love this novel, but it just didn’t happen. It is an interesting story of two people as they grow and navigate life, both together and separately. It happens that these two people are video game designers, but the book does a good enough job explaining things and not making this story only for gamers. The story, however, just didn’t work for me. It was frustratingly long and drawn out without enough of a finality to compensate.

Can I elect to give this book more than 5 stars? This book is everywhere right now and for good reason. It's the most beautifully written book I've read in years. I deeply cared for these characters, leaving me to wipe my eyes periodically. I knew after reading the first 50 pages it would have a space on my favorites shelf. While this is considered a love story, expect the unexpected. In the end, it's less about romantic relationships and more about the strong commitment of lifelong friends and co-creators. It immerses you in the world of video game design while revealing the inner world that makes each character come alive. I just want to read it all over again!

I loved this book and am probably the only person I know who has never played a video game. It’s not my typical read and yet I couldn’t put it down. Wonderful characters and exploration of platonic love and friendship. Highly recommended.

The story of two childhood friends who go on to create video games. It’s the story of their professional and personal relationship as it evolves over 30 years.
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I’ll start with the good. You can enjoy this book without knowing a thing about gaming. Take it from me a super not gamer. This book is easy to read, I was hooked pretty early on and wanted to see where Sam & Sadie’s relationship would go. It reads almost like YA in the sense that the storytelling moves quickly sentences to sentence. I also loved seeing LA as a setting for much of the novel, since I live here.
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Ultimately I didn’t care for this book. It is too long, maybe 150 pages too long. The back half of the book completely falls apart. The author attempts to do things with form but completely looses track of the storytelling and soul of this novel in doing so. It almost felt like a writing class exercise and not a novel toward the end.
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There are also some plot elements that were way too on the nose (the title included). I can’t say what, I’ll just say when you start to combine 2-3 hot button issues in the climax of the novel it feels manipulative and a little lazy. Not to mention that in a strange way it felt like the author didn’t fully go there. She used these buzzy topics but shied away from the mess of it all.
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I’ve been describing this book as diet A LITTLE LIFE. Yes, it’s about friendship. Yes, there are sad backstories and events. Ultimately there isn’t the emotional resonance or truthful storytelling that could make me latch on to this book like so many other people. It’s a beach read with a little dash of current events.

A beautiful reflection on the power of friendship, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow follows Sam and Sadie from childhood and explores how their love of video games keeps pulling them together - even when the circumstances of life threatens to pull them apart.

I’m not sure how I continue to live knowing this book is out in the world every minute of every day. Somehow Gabrielle Zevin broke and mended my heart in less than 500 pages.

Sam and Sadie’s love story is one of the best I’ve read to not have a “happy ending.” So often, we are given neat, tidy endings to novels. This was messy, real and raw. A true look at how friendships can ebb and flow – how love stories can be more than just romantic.

Do NOT even get me started on that section written from Marx’s perspective. The one person who loved Sam and Sadie both so purely that you could only hope to have a person like him in your life.

The exploration of Sam’s disability and how it’s handled is also one of Zevin’s great feats. She does so much to make us understand how Sam’s every day life is changed by the injuries to his foot without making that his only defining quality. Too often, authors miss the mark in that respect, doing a disservice to the disability community. .
A beautiful reflection on love, life and grief – Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow should be an addition to everyone’s library.

This was an unexpected 4 star. I absolutely loved this I'm a gamer myself so I loved the characters in this.
A book about friendship, love with the backdrop of gaming

You do not have to be a gamer to be touched by and enjoy this book. Although growing up in the 90s and playing a few games of Donkey Kong and Super Mario does give it just the right amount of nostalgia. I enjoyed this book and finished it quickly. I loved the character development and following their relationship across decades. I also love a book that doesn't wrap up everything in a nice happy ending, but also doesn't leave me gut wrenched. This was an overall good read!

This story spans the lives of a boy and a girl, from their early teens to their mid-thirties. Sam and Sadie bond when he is in the hospital recovering from a car crash, and she happens to strike up a conversation with him. From there, their lives intertwine for years, as they become friends, create videogames together, form a company that becomes very successful, and continue living their lives. The story is a bit too long, and becomes a little repetitive towards the end, but their story is realistic, and in the end uplifting. I have never used the online dictionary as much as I did reading this book. I'm not sure all the fancy words were needed, or why the author chose to use them when others would have worked just as well. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for providing an ARC.

I'm a little behind on my ARCs., and at this point I'm not sure what I can say about this wonderful novel that hasn't already been said - I am definitely on board with the rave reviews. This book is the perfect example of books building empathy. Do I care at all about video games? No I do not. Do I now better understand the appeal? I sure do. Did I care about the characters? I sure did.
We meet Sam and Sadie when they stumble upon each other in the hospital, where Sam is a patient, and Sadie's sister is, and these two very different tweens bond over their love of video games - fast forward, they become wildly successful game development partners, with naturally many trials and tribulations along the way. We also meet Marx, Sam's college roommate and eventual producer, who becomes inextricably entwined in both their lives as a result of convincing his father to seed their budding company.
I savored this saga, which in the end is not really at all about video games, but about love, friendship, identity, and grief. If that seems like a lot to tackle, it is, though Gabrielle Zevin does so nearly flawlessly. 5 solid stars, and will definitely make the top tier of my own best reads of the year.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author in exchange for my honest review.

Follow Sadie and Sam- two childhood friends- as they decide to make a video game together after having no communication with each other for years. Time fluctuates fluidly as readers delve into their lives and become part of their love, dreams, and trauma.

I don't really know what I was expecting from this novel, but I found myself loving this from its first page. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a gamer, or maybe the fact that I went through my own trauma over the years. But ultimately, I found this was a frank look at life.

There's a beautiful sentiment of Sam and Sadie having a friendship that transcends the need of being lovers. Readers see the dichotomy of their relationship as the years go by, and I thought that captured the reality of true friendship extremely well.

There was just the right amount of levity for the heartbreaks the characters endure. But the story also doesn't shy away from the painful moments and how they affect each person differently.

This will definitely be a novel that stays on my mind for a while.

Wow oh wow! I heard so much about this book and was so excited to read it. It definitely lived up to the hype of it and I would recommend you go into it blind now knowing what to expect.

This story follows Sadie and Sam over the course of 30 years. Starting with how they met, you get to see their highs and lows (and there are many) with regards to each other and their lives. As kids, they love video games and when they reunite in college - they take a chance and make one of the most famous video games ever. I am not a gamer, at all. And, yet, I enjoyed this one so much. The author gives the reader so much to think about that not only includes little nods to real games and the intricacies to building one but also to grief, sexuality, love, friendship and betrayal. I think the author made a lot of risks with writing style, the pretentious choice in words, for example, but it was a risk that pays off.

“What is a game? It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption.”

I would describe this one as “wandering” if I had to use only one word and to be honest that’s exactly how I like my stories lately. The writing isn’t always spectacular but it’s very reflective and fluid. Because the characters are so flawed (sometimes downright infuriating), you get so much from them including rage, jealousy, warmheartedness, and LOTS of misunderstanding. As much as I wanted to shake the sense into them, I loved how earnest they were. I won’t forget the characters for a long time. And!! The side characters are equally as earnest and some of my favorite.

Oh how I loved this book! I wasn’t expecting such a complex story, woven through the two main characters who develop video games. What starts a relationship between two young children turns into a lifelong intertwining of imaginations and real life.

Without giving too much away, this book covers themes such as abuse, loss, mental and physical health struggles all while focusing on what it makes to build creativity and new worlds.

I can’t recommend this book enough!

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a coming of age story about Sadie and Sam, two game designers who first meet as kids under tragic circumstances and are reunited later in life. Spanning decades, the novel follows Sam and Sadie as they turn their shared love for video games into a partnership that ends up completely changing their lives.

As a lifelong video game player, I loved this book. It’s quirky and beautifully written, and it was really fun imagining the games Sadie and Sam came up with. It was also exciting to read a book that begins in the 90s and is queer in a modern way. The third main character, Marx, was my favorite one and I think it’s a sentiment that many readers share - both Sam and Sadie had moments where they made me want to rip my hair out, but I prefer characters to be flawed rather than having absolutely no vices. This book is getting a lot of hype and I think deservedly so, but I couldn’t help but compare it with Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life - both feature main characters who are disabled, traumatized, and generally have a ton of bad things happen to them. While A Little Life had a much stronger emotional impact on me, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow doesn’t tilt into the ‘trauma porn’ territory that Yanagihara’s book is often described as.

TLDR: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a brilliant story about friendship, love, and grief, set against the backdrop of the early gaming industry. It’s original and creative, and definitely made me nostalgic for my teenage years.

Sam and Sadie met in the hospital as Sam was recovering from a car accident, and Sadie's sister cancer.. Their common interest in video games allowed their friendship to blossom. When Sadie doesn't tell Sam the truth, their friendship gets torn apart until one day when Sam spots Sadie in a subway and their friendship rekindles and they go into making video games together.

This story spans over a few decades and covers friendship, illness, death/loss of loved ones, and troubles that friendship faces. I personally struggled through the first 40-50%. I found it a bit slow, but the last half I went through very quick as I felt it picked up pace. I think if you aren't into video games you will get through this book faster than me as it's not my thing. It was a lovely story about friendship though..

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing Group for this e-Arc. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is available now!