I’m seeing Tomorrow x 3 EVERYWHERE lately and it seems to be widely beloved. So I’m here to be a party pooper, because I didn’t love it. But you might.

When I started this, I thought it was going to be 5 stars for me, like a more relatable Ready Player One with less misogyny. I think this book has my favorite cover this year (John Gall is a god. Fight me.) Early on, I loved the 90s references, and even though I’ve never been a big gamer, I was into the descriptions of Sadie’s early games. I had hope for Sam and Sadie’s friendship.

And here’s where people are going to be torn,because I think I understand why people love this book. And that might be exactly the reason why I don’t.

I think we’re at an age in literature where readers kind of expect characters' lives to have been informed by their trauma, myself included. But there are two ways to do this. One is to show the trauma on the page, to use it as a plot device, and a way to elicit an emotional reaction from the reader. Zevin does this skillfully. It’s twisty and at times shocking. And maybe I’m desentized from a decade of hearing trauma stories 250 days/year, but it’s not that bad or scary thing that makes me feel. For a story to elicit a big emotional response from me, I need to see how those kinds of events fundamentally change characters. How they hurt, and grow, and heal. And that’s where this book is lacking. There’s plenty of trauma on the page, but the impact that it has on the characters here doesn’t always feel fully fleshed out or consistent with the other things we know about them as characters. It’s the psychology here that doesn’t really work. So while other people were sobbing their way through this one, I left it feeling “meh.”

And it’s about 100 pages too long. I think I get what Zevin was trying to do with the pioneers portion of this book, but my god did that part drag.

If Kristin Hannah gives you big feelings, this book probably will too. Otherwise, maybe just play Oregon Trail for the nostalgia?

Thanks to Knopf via NetGalley for a DRC to review. All opinions are mine.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
4.5/5

I’m going to get right into it with what made this book brilliant for me:
The characters. I loved them all so much for how unique and raw they were, how they embodied the nuances of what it is to be human, the importance of play, of failure.

The acknowledgment that the real world can be a violent dumpster fire, which presents gaming as a means of escape and self-development.
Gaming is layered and filled with possibility, and the perspectives of people of all ages, genders, abilities and socio-economic backgrounds being accepted and given a world to roam freely was a huge takeaway.

The writing I found to be brilliant, if not sometimes dense and clunky (this was a large part of our BR discussion), but overall I didn’t find it impacted my time with it

Suggestion to read this book with your most brutally booksta friends! People who can share differences in opinions and make you laugh all at once.
Was I the only person (out of 5!) who loved this book? Yes.
Was it also one of the most interesting buddy reads I’ve been in? Also yessss

Tomorrow was an interesting glimpse into the game development world. I enjoyed the character depth and development of this story, despite not being a "gamer". At times, I found myself wondering when the book would end, but despite this, it kept me reading and engaged, wanting to know what would happen next.

First off I want to thank NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book for an honest opinion.

Honestly, this book didn’t really do it for me. I appreciated all the back story between Sam and Sadie, even the video game aspect brought me back down memory lane (I grew up on the Atari and the Sega Genesis). But the story was very long winded and it took forever to get to the point.

The first half of the story really drew me in, but in the end I just fell flat.

2.5 stars

Loved this book and will be recommending to my friends. I appreciate the depth of characters and narrative

This was a great exploration of a decades -long friendship. Sadie and Sam definitely had their ups and downs, but that’s what makes this book so relatable. The video game world was such an original concept and Zevin did a great job of making it easy to understand. I also really liked her detailed descriptions of Boston and LA.

I totally picked this book up for the video games, but there is so much more to the story. I really enjoyed this one! It was a very unique read!! I highly recommend this one!⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I love love love Gabrielle Zevin so a huge thank you to Netgalley for the arc!

The premise of this book almost reminded me of the love story in "Free Guy". Two friends who come together over their love of video games.
A lot of the reviews for this book have been very long, and they are well deserved reviews because the book is THAT GOOD!
I'm going to try to keep it simple. Even if you do not know anything about video games (I have a teenage boy, so I have the basic knowledge) its not going to stop you from falling in love with this book. In fact, if anything, this book will give you a newfound appreciation of video games.

Such a great book!!

I was so excited to read this title after hearing about it on Goodreads. I read another by this author while looking for a copy of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. The storied life of AJ Fikrey was the title I read first and quite enjoyed it. Good characters in a touching, enjoyable story.
I was thrilled to find I had been given a copy of Tomorrow,, via Netgalley and couldn't wait to start reding. Unfortunately that excitement soon wore off. I enjoyed the nostalgia of the older games, but not being a big gamer myself, I didn't connect to much of it. I did not like the characters and became frustrated with them and their constant drama- mostly caused by rash judgments and lack of communication. I so wanted to like this, but instead found it tedious to get through. It seemed so long! I hated the Dov character- which I get you are supposed to feel that way at least to some degree. I get that, but I found him offensive and did not like the language used. I would not recommend this to anyone, unfortunately, but after so liking the first title I would try another by this author.

A beautiful, thought-provoking novel.
In the beginning, I was a little worried that my lack of interest in and experience with video games might hinder my appreciation for this book. However. I never felt lost and I still grew to love and appreciate the characters. Even though video games are a huge part of the story, this book is in no way Sci fi and in all ways literary fiction, and A beautiful story of love and friendship. I highly recommend giving this a read, especially for millennials.

This was an epic love story, but not the romantic type of love. The type of love that forms you and your experiences with life. The story is hard hitting but refreshingly honest. I loved every bit of it.
The story is told in a mixture of perspectives from characters and the video games they created. A lot of the video game reference are culturally accurate and the author really captured the zeal one felt playing games during this time.

This is such a unique read, I think readers of all genres will really enjoy this novel.

My sincere thanks to the author and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the gifted review copy via NetGalley. Now available.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5. I love this book in every aspect, the characters felt very real, the plot was enough to keep the book moving forward but was not overly involved and let the characters be the main focus, and the writing was sublime.

Zevin packed this novel with so much honest commentary about issues in the gaming community, guns, manipulative partners, LBGTQIA+, and being non-white christian in the US. In fiction, it is very easy to try to make the world seem perfect. I fell in love with Zevin and this book because of her contrasting the video games with the real world. I love that she did not shy away from talking about the hardships in the real world and then seeing Sam change those aspects in the games he created.

What makes this book so compelling is the characters. Marx, Sadie, and Sam each face their own private struggles and seeing their relationships between each other evolve over the course of the novel was phenomenal. It is a testament to Zevin's talent as these characters felt incredibly real, raw, and easy to connect with.

While this book heavily feature gaming, you do not need to be immersed in that world to appreciate the beauty that is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. There are so many quotable lines about grief, love, pain, determination, any type of relationship, and growth. Thank you to NetGalley and Alfred A Knopf for an ARC.

This was an interesting book. I heard you didn’t have to play or enjoy video games to read this but I think it would have been better if I did. I definitely had my interest wane during this book especially during the Pioneers section.

A beautiful story of friendship, love, loss, and video games, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about how we connect to people, how we know ourselves and others. I fell in love with Sam, Sadie, and all the characters who enter and exit their orbit over decades of friendship. Zevin blends a story Shakespearean in scope but still intimate, heartfelt, and utterly tender.

This is truly one of the most beautiful books I've read in years. It was so beautifully written; I felt so connected to its characters that I felt that I had grown up with them—which made the twists and ending all the more devastating. I finished this last month, but I'm still thinking about how well Zevin paired a classic coming-of-age story with a critique startup/workplace culture in a world that's constantly changing. I've recommended this book to EVERYONE I know and I hope that it's up for all the top book awards this year.

This was the first book of Zevin's that I've read and will be quickly diving into the rest of her books!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knof Publishing for providing me with an eARC of the book for my honest review!

rating: 4.85

Wow!!! I truly loved this book. I gave it a 4 just based on all the rep. I had no idea that this was going to have Korean rep which was such a wonderful surprise. It's rare to find in many contemporary, much less, romance novels--or I guess, books in general.

The story mainly surrounds Sam Masur (later Mazer) and Sadie Green. They meet as children in a hospital where Sadie's sister is receiving treatment and Sam is there after a tragic accident. The two bond over videogames and become best friends. They have a falling out not short after, and meet later on in life as college students who decide to make a videogame together. They stick with each other (sometimes begrudgingly) through the ups and downs of running a company together as well as navigating what it means to be adults in their own right, and also in the face of loss and grief. It's a love story but not.

I loved all the intricate layers and levels of humanity that was woven into the story and characters. We're shown how grief affects people in different ways and how they heal at different rates through various means. The characters felt like real people with real backgrounds and problems and feelings. I particularly enjoyed how accurately Asians were depicted in several characters.

The flow of the book slowed down for me a bit too much at around the 80% mark during Pioneers. I understood why Sadie's playthrough of Pioneers was important but it's not obvious to the reader, or at least it wasn't to me, until after everything is said and done. Which is why I didn't feel this was a full 5 stars. I also felt the number of unfortunate occurrences some of these characters lived through was a bit of a stretch, almost soapy opera-y.

However, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a mind-blowing read with lots of fascinating storylines and gaming tidbits. I don't consider myself a gamer, but I thoroughly appreciated this book. This is a must read in my opinion.

What a great book! I loved the incorporation of computer science/coding into a novel and making it feel so relevant in today's world. The characters were amazing and I fell in love with them.

I really enjoyed this book and I can see why its praise is so high! The storyline spanning so many years was interesting and I loved getting to see how the characters changed. Their friendship was so realistic and they dealt with so many challenges and changes. I also loved the gaming aspect and was really interested in how games are produced. This book was extremely character driven which felt a little slow for me at times.

I loved this book! Great read. Set in the world of video games in the late '90s/early 2000's, a very memorable exploration of friendship and love.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was a novel that handled the complexities of friendship with a steady hand. It was all done within both real life and the gaming world. Though you do not have to be a video game lover to appreciate the story. The book delivered something unique and I am glad I read it.