This is a book about video games, but it's not really about video games. It is about friendship, growing up, misunderstandings, and forgiveness. As an elder Millennial, I enjoyed the late 90s/early 2000s setting, and even though I've never been a video gamer, I was still completely invested in the story. Sadie and Sam are complex, well-developed characters, and the novel is sweeping, funny, and complex. I give it 4.5/5 for a few spots in the middle that dragged a bit, but I really loved it.

Sensitive readers beware: MANY content warnings apply. To avoid spoilers, I won't list them here, but message me if you need to know.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the free ARC.

Thank you so much to @NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. I have to say that I found this book to be OK, but I felt it was a little reminiscent of “Ready Player One” in some aspects. Some of the characters were likeable, but there were some who I felt it was hard to connect with in a way. I rated this book 3/5 ⭐️’s.

I loved this book. Honestly, anytime I see a book coming out from Gabrielle Zevin, I know I'm in for a good read and this book was no exception. I'm a gamer myself so I loved all of the little references to actual games and the way the gaming aspects of the book felt real, even though quite a bit obviously was not. Although this was a book about creating video games, it was also very much about the people creating them and their relationships. I love that throughout the book there is an overarching theme about friendship potentially being more intimate than a romantic relationship. There are a lot of good things to say about this book. The only thing I really disliked was how stagnant Sadie was throughout and even at the end with the big change in her... It's not that big of a change and that's why I rate the book only 4 stars, even though it's more realistic than a drastic change would be.

I was not immediately enchanted by this book but fell deeply in love as the story unfolded, much to my surprise.
Sometimes when a book is widely popular I feel automatically that it must be overrated and generally go into it expecting to hate it but I ended up loving this book completely despite myself.
While it took me a little time to connect with Sam and Sadie on an emotional level I knew I adored Marx from the moment he is introduced. It’s rare that a male character is cast as the caretaker and it was a breath of fresh air to see a man who looks after his friends with a tenderness that is so often reserved only for women. Marx is simply the most precious and I loved him for his softness and optimism.
I’m not generally an emotional person but I became so attached to the characters that moments of tragedy felt truly devastating.
From a technical standpoint the writing can be pretentious at times but it’s easy to overlook because it feels so overwhelmingly earnest. The nostalgia of videogames as an institution is perfectly captured and the inherent escapism in playing is intimately portrayed by an author who clearly understands the feeling.
I could continue but I don’t think I can properly do this book justice except to say that it may be the best I’ve read all year and I highly recommend it to everyone.

This book was out of my comfort zone but I'm so glad I picked it up! There was a lot of hype around this one and it didn't fully live up to it, but it's definitely worth a read.

On the surface, this book is about video games. But it's actually so much more than that. It is about love, friendship, family, trauma, loss, grief, growing up, learning, and changing. I loved how the author weaved together the storylines from past, present, and future.

Overall, this was a very emotional and impressive book. Since it spans 30+ years, you really get to know the characters and feel connected to them.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a complicated novel, but a super short synopsis would be that it follows Sadie and Sam over the course of their 30-year friendship as they navigate grief, love, and the world of video games. There is so much more to this beautiful coming-of-age story though (and you do NOT need to be a fan of video games to enjoy it), and I highly recommend reading it.

This was one of the buzzy books of summer and it did not disappoint! The characters were flawed and so so realistic. Seeing them change and grow over the years even with all the challenges they each navigated made it feel like I was right there with them, my heart aching too. I haven't played a video game since, well, Tetris, but this book made me want to explore that world more. Loved this!

Ah, this book. I resisted reading it for a quite a while and then I was so glad I did. I have been a fan of Gabrielle Zevin since she was writing YA in the early 2000s.

I thought I wouldn't be able to relate to a book about video game designers but this was a deeply moving story about friendship, collaboration, and the creative process. I really loved it; I'm sure it will be one of my favorites of 2022.

I found my favorite read of 2022! I read 10% of my NetGalley copy of TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW and immediately bought my own physical book because I knew that this story was something special.

This story and its complex, beautiful characters captivated me from the get go, keeping me entranced within their world. It was a wonderful, welcoming escape, diving into their fantasy game-land. When I wasn’t reading it, I was counting down the minutes until I could dive back in. I stayed up until the wee hours reading the last page.

This story is every single thing that I love about generational stories - characters that you love (and maybe hate), their journey relatable to you (Marx’s identity question mark specifically), across thirty years (and across the country) stayed consistently strong. There was never a dull moment, I never felt like rushing a chapter to get to the next. I was hooked. The story, its themes and characters were perfectly developed and each person so meaningful to me that I felt melancholy when I finished the last page. I wanted to know what Sam and Sadie are up to today. When characters make a lasting impression on me, that’s when I know that I have found a winner.

This book may have taken me six weeks to read, but it most likely is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. I have been in a big reading rut and just putting this (and everything else) off for so long, but once I forced myself to focus on it I connected so intensely with the characters and finished the last 70% in about 24 hours

Tomorrow is a book about games, but is the kind of book where if you personally love games yourself, it will heighten your appreciation for this book, but if you’ve never played a game in your life, you could still fall in love with the words on these pages. I will say this book is long. Despite my inability to read this month, it was made worse because of the density of this book. It was the exact same page count as the last book I read (415) but yet the audio of it is 5 entire hours longer - more than 50 percent longer! There were a lot of words per page which made it feel like it took forever to finish a page. The writing was also a bit more atmospheric than I’m typically interested in. Somehow though, I was never bored by it. The added descriptions were more about how the characters view things and feel more than they were about what something looks like, and due to this, I felt such a connection to each character and really felt like I understood them and their connections to each other.

Ultimately this is a story of Sadie and Sam - from the time they met in elementary school until the time they are almost 40. There is love in this story but it’s not a love story. It’s a story of friendship and of life and all of the hardships and wonderful moments that happen along the way and how the most important thing is who you are sharing those moments with when they happen.

I felt a lot of similarities between this book and The People We Keep. I love a good coming of age story where it’s all about just getting to know these cast of characters minds - and throw in a bit of nostalgia and I’m sold. I read the arc of this book thanks to NetGalley, but I think it will be one that I will purchase for my shelves because when someone asks me for a good book rec, I want to have this one around to let them borrow.

I sometimes dabble in genres that aren't my thing, and this was one of those books. It had me when the synopsis stated it has video games as big plot of the book. Don't freak out - it is about people, about friendship, and love, and growing up, about grief and loss. It is a story that spans 30 or so years, over a course of a friendship of two people who meet in a hospital as kids, and eventually build a business building video games.

It is hard to explain the plot, as it is not a big one. It is literary following along their lives and journey to the end. But this book has beautiful writing and story telling, and you do want to find out what happens to these characters in the end, There are lots of emotions that jump off the page, and make these characters real. They burrow under the skin, and you keep wanting to come back to them.

I for sure know this book was not for me, but at the same time i cannot help but recommend this to everyone, if nothing more than just to experience the writing and character building.

What an emotional ride. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow does it all - I don’t think it missed a single emotion. The writing is beautiful and perfectly captures the essence of a tumultuous friendship. It’s a love story to friendship, but the friendships you work for. The friendships that aren’t always easy but have something within them that makes them worth it.

Sam and Sadie are both deeply flawed, but underneath that, they share a profound love for each other. They are both unlikable at times and also bring to the surface the ways we can all be difficult to love at times.

If you want a fluffy read, this isn’t it. Save it for a time you want to feel all the things

This book was a rough read for me. There were parts that I really really enjoyed. The parts about gaming and the collaborations between Sadie, Sam, and Marx are really where this book shines. However, I never really believed that Sadie and Sam were really friends despite that being the element on which the whole story and all the ad copy hinges. They both seemed poorly drawn to me with their selfishness their only defining characteristic aside from being good at their work. Bad things keep happening in this book and it doesn’t really seem to serve a purpose as the two main characters never seem to grow or change or become more convincingly human. It gives the book a maudlin and self-indulgent quality. I loved Marx - he was the only character who seemed like a real person, the only one who had flaws, and loved so deeply and humanly. I found myself genuinely bereft and deeply angry at the way he was dispatched. It felt cheap, nihilistic, and unnecessary, shoehorned in to make a political point as a sort of afterthought. I hated it to a degree that’s pretty rare for me as a reader. I’m usually game for whatever the author does as long as the book seems to be accomplishing whatever it is that it set out to do.

Lots of people have noted the bizarre use of seemingly thesaurus-sourced language and I really agree. I love words and I was extremely grateful to be reading this on my Kindle, but this was poorly done and impeded understanding rather than adding anything significant to the storytelling. This too seemed self-indulgent.

I went back and forth a lot as I read this. I can’t say I enjoyed it and it had a lot of problems, but it was an ambitious concept and it did make me feel seen as a person who once was a young gamer just like Sadie and Sam. The saving grace of this novel is its efforts to shed light both on those quotidian moments of the young gamer experience and its interest in collaborative partnerships over time. I don’t think it accomplished much of what it set out to do, but I’m glad to have gotten and read this eARC. Thanks to NetGalley once again!

Sam Masur steps off the train and sees an old childhood friend. When they decide that they will collaborate on a project, they have to beg, borrow and plead to get the project off the ground. When it becomes a success, will it pull them apart, or will they thrive in the world they have been catapulted into.

This book is very much about love, but it’s not a love story. It’s about the love between friends. It takes places in the 80s to the present and I loved all the 80s and 90s vibes. The two main characters are gamers and they meeting a hospital as children. They reconnect in college and create a video game and then go on to launch a gaming company. I think readers who are into video games will probably be really into that aspect of the book, but it was over my own head a lot of the time, like I wasn’t in on the inside joke.

2.5 stars, but I'm rounding down to 2 stars for GR.

When I first recieved a widget from Netgalley a few months ago, I turned it down. Even with the promise, that you didn't have to be a lover of video games to enjoy, a book revolving around video games just did not seem like something I would be interested in, so I had no desire to read it. I should have listened to my initial gut instinct. Although, I have grown up playing video games, loved Super Mario on Nintendo 64 and was obsessed with The Sims, I don't classify myself as a gamer.

But I began to experience FOMO a few weeks ago when I began to see this book everywhere. It was a Book of the Month selection and then I began to see lots of high ratings and rave reviews from other trusted readers that usually coincide with my opinion of books, so I requested it not really expecting to be approved since it was already released. Shockingly, I got the approval and I was so excited.

When I first started reading this book, I became immersed, thinking to myself, "They were right. I didn't need to love video games to appreciate this book!". Unfortunately, that feeling ended about 30% into the book and I became bored, easily distracted, and was having to force myself to pick it up just to get to the finish line.

It's only 400 pages but it feels so much longer than that. I felt it became tedious and certain sections of this book were unnecessary and could have been omitted. I was disappointed and frustrated with Sam and Sadie's behaviors during certain parts of the story and that frustration caused me to also not enjoy reading this book. Some sections didn't flow particularly well for me and I was questioning what was going on, i.e. the Pioneer section towards the end. You get clarification after, but I hated being confused while reading that part.

All in all, I am glad that others enjoyed this book and I am also glad that I was able to join in to see what the hype is about, but I am glad I didn't purchase it or choose it as my BOTM selection.

**Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced copy of this book and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion. I am posting this review to my Goodreads account immediately and will post it to my Amazon & Instagram accounts upon publication.

DNF early on because there are themes right off of the bat that are triggering for me that I was not prepared for. I may return to this one at another time when I am better prepared to manage these emotions. TW: Childhood cancer.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is centered around game design, but focuses on the relationships between the characters. It spans the lives of the main characters from childhood through adulthood, but not in chronological order. It's a very realistic story with complex characters, appropriate surprises, and a look at an industry I wasn't very familiar with and found very interesting. I especially enjoyed seeing into some of the gaming industry from the earlier days and how it evolved with technology improvement. As a former English teacher and current librarian, the reference and connection to Shakespeare's Macbeth and learning how the book got its title was special and emotional for me. It is an altogether emotional ride and leaves the reader feeling enriched with the lives and experiences of the characters.

Lifetime friendships can go through many changes including disagreements, being separated by time and space. This is true of Sam and Sadie. They meet in a hospital. Sam was in a horrible accident and is recovering. Sadie is at the hospital because her older sister is having chemo. Their friendship develops while playing video games. After a falling out, they did not see each other for many years. They literally ran into each other while in college. With their love for video games, their friendship comes together and they decide to start a company and develop a video game. (DISCLAIMER: I did put the book down for a few days as I do not play video games.) When I went back to reading, I did skip through some of the gaming details. What I did love was the survival of their friendship through the good and the bad. I also enjoyed some of the minor characters.
My thanks to Knopf Doubleday and NetGalley for an ARC of this book. The opinions in this review are my own.

It’s always a little nerve wracking to read a new book by an author who has written one of your all-time favorite books. Gabrielle Zevin’s “The Storied Life of AJ Fikry” had such a hold on my hear that I was both apprehensive and excited to pick up “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” To my surprise, I fell equally in love with the characters here. This is such an epic story, told over the course of decades: following the ups and downs and inside outs of 30 years of friendship between Sam and Sadie. I was worried I wouldn’t be “into” the subject matter because I’ve never been much of a gamer, but it really doesn’t matter. While it may have added an extra layer of appreciation, it did not in any way diminish my love for the book.

Make no mistake, this is a sad book. Sam and Sadie go through so much over the course of their lives, and sometimes it was not easy to read. But through it all, I found hope and comfort in their relationship with each other and those around them. They are not always nice. They are not always likable. But they are human, and that is very essence that Zevin always seems to manage to capture with such perfection.