Wow, I just finished "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" and I can't believe that this video game widow was so compelled by a book about video games. But more than being a story about video games, this epic novel is about friendship and creativity and pain and grief. The plot follows old friends Sam Masur and Sadie Green as they go from playing video games together in a hospital room to creating a video game of their own to owning a successful video game company. Their relationship has a lot of missteps along the way, but they keep finding a way back to each other.

Here's what I liked:
- I found the development and growth of both Sam and Sadie both intriguing and believable. They go from 12-year-olds to almost 40-year-olds throughout this book, so there is a lot of ground to cover, and I am glad they aren't the same people at the end.
- The whole creative process of making a video game actually hooked me. From finding the right idea to executing a particular aspect of the design, the creative process is fascinating no matter the medium and Gabrielle Zevin wrote this part so well. In another writer's hands it could have definitely been boring to someone who isn't interested in video games.
- But more than video games, "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" is a commentary on the purpose of pain and grief. It was so interesting to see how these characters tried to make sense of their (often intense) pain -- both physical and emotional -- outside of the Truth of God's Word. The video game made a pretty compelling metaphor a couple of times for some of these ideas. Would LOVE to discuss some of these themes with someone who has read it.

What I didn't like:
- It was long. Like really long, and I could have done without the whole bit inside the Pioneer game, but I understand why it was important to the story.
- Honestly, both Sam and Sadie frustrated me in a myriad of ways, which made it difficult to read at times (like why aren't you just being honest with your friend???). But I'm probably most frustrated with the conversation at the end where they talked about the state of their relationship. I don't want to give anything away, but it really bothered me.
- Finally, just because I enjoyed this book does not mean I endorse all of the characters' behaviors or political beliefs. I think this book actually did a realy good job of showing the consequences of sin -- both to yourself and your relationships.

Thank you to Net Galley and Knopf Publishing Group for an e-ARC of this book!

This is a really thought provoking book - and I am going to be thinking of these characters for awhile. I feel like I have just read a future American classic. Tomorrow is so unlike any other book the Gabrielle Zevin has written, and I've read several of her teen novels and "The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry".
The story revolves around main three main characters. Sam Mazer - an avid gamer who is half Jewish, half Korean, partially disabled due to a horrific car accident, and basically a loner. Tragedy has permeated Sam's life, and pain is a part of his daily life. Sam lives with his grandparents in K-town (the Korean section of Los Angeles), and owns the record on the Donkey Kong machine in his grandparent's pizza restaurant.
Sam's first friend is Sadie Green - a young girl who is trapped in the hospital waiting room while her mother spends time with her older sister, a cancer patient. Sam and Sadie bond over gaming, and each feels like they have found a true friend - only Sadie has been using these visits as "volunteer hours" for her temple. When Sam finds out, their friendship ends abruptly.
Fast Forward to college - Sam is now at Harvard, Sadie is a student at nearby MIT. On a train platform, Sam spots Sadie, and they reconnect - Sadie asks him to try out a game that she has designed for a class at MIT.
From this point, the story takes off - Sam decides to let Sadie back into his life, and asks her to design a game with him. The game they create, Ichigo, becomes a sensation, and will change the trajectory of both their lives. Other characters play major parts in the story - Sam's roommate, Marx, (also a mixed race character, with a Japanese father) and later their producer, and Sadie's gaming instructor, Dot Mizrah, a 28 year old game designer with a penchant for young college coeds on the side.
There are many themes to discuss in this book - the effect of art of gaming, and life in general. Communication and misunderstanding - Sadie and Sam end their friendship multiple times- neither characters are perfect, and sometimes you dislike one or the other, but as the reader - we know both their stories, and their frustrations and pain. Even characters with fatal flaws like Dog have some humanity.
I loved looking up the art and quotes referenced in the book - the game Ichigo was inspired by the artwork of Hokusai - the Wave at Kanagawa (also found on the dust jacket cover of the book) Other important things are speeches by MacBeth (hence, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow , and a piece of fabric designed by William Morris called "The Strawberry Thief".
There are disturbing parts in the book as well - I don't want to give away plot lines, but unhealthy relationships, violence, and death play a major role.
But - in the end, this book affected me - and I don't even feel like I am the target audience. I see a slice of America in this book, and I want to talk to someone about it!

This novel was out of left field for me; I have no knowledge of gaming at all, and probably thought it was all about shooting down aliens. But now I know a lot more, in theory at least, and can see it is all about story telling and indeed being at the centre of where the story is going. But I digress, because this story is at its heart about loyalty and love and passion and drive and motivation and being brave enough to have another go when things don’t work out. Sadie, Sam and Max were three of the most lovable and complex characters I have met in a book and the writing was extraordinarily good throughout. Part VII (THE NPC) was one of the most masterly ‘depictions’ of dying and grief I have ever read. And the ending was perfect. Bravo!

DNF at 37%. I really couldn’t get into this one. Maybe I’ll try again someday, but I thought the story was clunky and hard to follow.

Thank you for the arc in exchange for a review!

I LOVE this book and would give it 6 stars if I could!! Sam meets Sadie in the hospital after his foot is badly crushed in a car accident. They are kids who love video games, and that love turns into an incredible friendship, and then a business partnership as they create best-seller games. As the story progresses we see how their video games reflect real life.

I wasn't sure if I would relate to this book when I read that it was about gaming. I thought it was going to be a "young adult" story. But what it is about is love and life, good times and hard times. It's cerebral and complex. I could not put the book down - I was totally immersed and in a state of flow with these characters and their games. LOVEDLOVEDLOVED it!! Highly recommend!!

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review Tomorrow, and Tomorow, and Tomorrow.

This book was about video games, life, family, and friendship. The ups and downs of knowing and not knowing someone pretty much all your life. It was well-written, decently paced, and a treasure trove of vocab words. I did keep hoping for a more poignant reconciliation, a more direct acknowledgement and acceptance of each other's wrongs or misunderstandings. But, this was a human story, and that's a type of closure that doesn't always happen in real life.

I could give this book two different ratings.

5 stars for the overall story of Sadie and Sam. I loved both of these deeply flawed characters, and if someone was to tell me they did not love Marx we would no longer be talking. But Sadie and Sam's relationship is not a conventional one, which I think some people will struggle with. But I wish they wouldn't. Because the complexity of it fits their world, their life, and their personalities. I truly cannot say enough wonderful things about how Zevin wrote the connection of S&S.

The pacing at times felt slow and the prose wordy. I felt the video game Pioneer at the end felt a bit too long, so then the very end felt a bit flat.

Though I would not give this 5 stars, I would give it a strong, solid 4 and recommend it to those who love stories about people and don't need their characters to have nice, neat, easy relationships.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is the book I never knew I wanted to read. I passed on this title several times because it it was about gaming. But I found a review that said don’t let the gaming scare you off. So glad I picked up. Zevin’s writing style and language made for a beautiful book, deep, vulnerable characters and a story that spans 35+ years. The skill of an author to bring together Shakespeare and gaming in the same sentence is splendid. I loved the main characters, Sam, Sadie and Marx. Their friendship is deep and beautiful. These characters and their friendship bring the novel to life. The dialogue, references to early video games and the nod to Shakespeare bring this book so much passion and life!
Thank you to Net Galley for giving me access to this advance copy.

Love, love, love Gabrielle Zevin's newest book! Highly recommend. The story jumps right into and the page turning begins. The different points of view keep the reader engaged and waiting to find out how they're connected to one another.

Love love love. These characters are so richly drawn and realistic, and I loved the interplay of game creation versus real-life decisions. I'll be recommending this book a ton!

👾 I never want to see the “game over” screen. It’s a perfect summer read!

🕹With mention of three classic video games from my childhood (Donkey Kong, Frogger, Oregon Trail) in the first 15 pages and a 1995 Cambridge setting, I’m ready to level up with these collegiate game makers, Sam and Sadie. The nostalgia is strong, this is a love story but not a romance. One of the best portrayals of platonic friendship and it’s longevity I’ve ever read. I suggest you press play to start! I geeked out learning the backstory about the cover art and design development. Check out the post by the publisher @aaknopf and make sure you tap through all the slides to see the progression.

🎮This book has been widely reviewed by early readers and many have admitted with surprise, “I am not a gamer and I loved it.” This is the classification I fall into. Zevin IS a lifelong gamer and while she could’ve written a story that targeted this blinking screen community, I feel a sense of invitation. She is offering readers like me a glimpse into those early years of the gaming industry which is often unfairly judged by bookish folk. “No matter how bad the world gets, there will always be players,” Zevin writes. “Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair.” Happy pub day @gabriellezevin 🎉🎉🎉

🎮🕹Thanks @netgalley and @aaknopf for my digital copy! Of course the cover and content is phenomenal so I’ll be buying a hard copy too!

My silk pillowcase currently hates me, because I have soaked it in tears. My mom was very concerned as I came out of my room wiping fat tears off my cheeks and out of my red-rimmed eyes. She asked me if I was crying because the book was too sad. I told her no, I was crying because it had just made me feel so much I couldn’t help it. Then we both basically said the same thing: “Art is supposed to make you feel things. If it doesn’t make you feel something, it’s not good art.”

This book made me feel all the feels. My pillowcase tells the tale. So do my (now) swollen eyes. For about the last 15% of this book, practically all I did was sob as this book broke my heart and then put it back together piece by piece like an exquisite jigsaw puzzle. By the time the last words had come, I was practically shaking, overcome with a kind of relief I’ve never felt for two book characters ever before in my entire life.

Part of me had thought this book was surely overhyped. There was no way it could be as good as everyone was saying, could it? It was better than I had hoped. To me, this is Generation X in a book. This is me (born in 1978) picking up an original Nintendo game controller on Christmas morning in 1986 and playing Super Mario Brothers for the very first time and knowing life would never be the same. This is parents urging you to pursue what will make you money when you want to pursue what makes your heart race. This is putting up with casual racism and misogyny all the time because no one had ever said you didn’t have to put up with it. This was making the transition from landlines to cell phones and then never actually answering your cell phone but just texting. This was the transition from PC to console and then back to PC and then multi-porting.

This book wasn’t a book about video games. This book was about a generation raised playing them. This was a book about people who were raised knowing that video games meant infinite lives to restart but not infinite health. This was a book about a pair of people who knew real life contained infinite restarts but only one heart that could be broken so easily. In video games, they could live life after life and be whoever they wanted to be, but in the real world they were stuck being who they were, and sometimes being who they were was downright unbearable. But they could go to sleep, wake up tomorrow, and hit the restart button. But games get old just like people get old, and games get boring just like people get bored. And both the world and people can seem so bleak.

I insist you read this. It’s up there as one of the best 5 books I’ve read this year (according to GR I’ve read 361 books already this year), and I can tell it’s going to be stuck in my head, floating around there, making me think the philosophical and emotional thoughts for some time after this. You won’t be disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for granting me access to this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

A story of friendship that spans thirty years, Sam and Sadie go through the ups and downs of life. They meet when they are kids and bond over video games, than again in college, and as you guessed into adulthood. The highs and lows of friendship and falling in and out of love.

I liked the story and characters this book gave us. It was a fresh look into friendship a reflection of what life can throw you. The theme of love and loss definitely made this book what it is.

One of my favorite books this year. I loved the not predictable timeline/not a perfect back and forth with chapters. I really loved the diversity that didn’t feel forced. This is a winner.

📚Book Review📚 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 🎧 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I finished this book at 1am, and it’s hard to succinctly put my thoughts about it into words. At it’s most simple, this is a story about a special male/female friendship, and the way that ebbs and flows throughout the travails of life. To summarize the plot simply does not do it justice because the story is so much more. Go read this book!

I also listened the audiobook, which was fantastic!!

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is my first book from this author and it was pretty good. I have seen quite a few blurbs saying that this is a book about gamers and gaming but I would say that this is a story about friendship, love and relationships over time.

Sam and Sadie meet in the hospital as children where he is there for multiple surgeries after a car accident and she is there visiting her sister who has cancer. They form a bond over playing Super Mario Bros in the TV room and she keeps visiting him for awhile until there is a betrayal that Sam cannot get over and they fall out of touch. Sam sees Sadie years later in his junior year of college (he at Harvard, Sadie at MIT) and they end up rekindling the friendship and collaborate on a video game that becomes a blockbuster.

The rest of the book follows Sam, Sadie, and their friends, family, and lovers as they navigate life as heads of a video game company and work through the sometimes frustrating task of maintaining friendships and relationships as we grow up.

Overall, I did enjoy this book but I found it to be a little long and the second half seemed to drag on for a long time, especially after a certain dramatic event occurs. I found the characters of Sam and Sadie to be very annoying at times and Marx was just a little too perfect. On the whole though, it was well written. If you are a fan of video games, I think that you will get a bit more out of the references but most of the games discussed are fairly well known in popular culture so the majority of readers should have an idea of what they are talking about.

This one started off a bit slow for me and I really struggled to get in to the storyline. I switched to the audio and connected with the story much better! I really loved the characters in this one and the gaming aspect really made this one great! Overall a really enjoyable read and definitely recommend to those who love a good character driven book!!

I really enjoyed this book, it was a pleasant surprise! I would recommend it to everyone, I mean it, everyone! It's that amazing!

Zevin writes a complex and thought provoking book centered around friendship and gaming. Sam and Sadie are well developed characters that you won’t soon forget. While gaming is not necessarily a subject I’m interested in, Zevin does a good job explaining the ins and outs, but the book does feel overly long at times, with some of the passages being quite tedious. For those that loved Zevin’s previous books...this was quite different! While I wasn’t a huge fan, it was well written. It will be interesting to see what Zevin comes up with next.

truly one of the best books I've ever read, emotionally devastating and one I can't wait to reread. These characters were rich and complicated and so real. The event at the 2/3 mark destroyed me, like ugly crying on the plane. This book has something for everyone and I need everyone to read it.