Run, don't walk, to pick up Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow! I was so excited when I received the eARC from NetGalley. I loved some of the games mentioned in this book, like Oregon Trail, The Sims, Harvest Moon, and I have a degree in Computer Science but I have read several raving reviews that you don't need to be interested in games at all to adore this book. It's much more about relationships. I did not want this book to end. I wanted to stay in Sam and Sadie's world forever. This book is for literally everyone. You will not regret diving into this book.

I loooooved loved loved this book! Such a stunning reflection on friendship, love, and the creative life. Cannot recommend enough!

All the stars for this one! I’m declaring Tomorrow x3 my book of the summer.

There’s so much to love here - 90s nostalgia (Oregon trail, the sims), pop culture references, a slightly unconventional love story. Those things aside, there’s a lot to unpack with this one - gun violence, disability, racism, homophobia, the creation of art, loss, friendship and love. Gabrielle Zevin really packs a lot into this story about three friends who as college students set out to create a video game, their initial success and subsequent events after their game takes off.

If you enjoy character driven novels, video game references, grew up in the 90s and 00s, I think you’ll enjoy this one. I loved it.

I absolutely loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin! This is a story about two friends, Sadie and Sam, and spans 30 years of friendship. You will see the highs and lows of their relationship. They are creative partners and they plan, create and promote video games. I am not a gamer at all but this really brought me back to my childhood. I remember playing games mentioned throughout the book like Donkey Kong, Leisure Suit Larry, King's Quest and The Oregon Trail. I was so invested in their friendship. I laughed and I definitely cried. You will see their failures and successes. You will even be immersed in a video game. I thought it was beautifully written and really loved it. I will definitely be purchasing for my library and promoting to my book club. Thank you so much to NetGalley for the ARC.

Something seemed off about the gaming in this book, maybe it’s that the author is younger than the main characters are. Maybe it’s that I’m near the same age as the main characters is I remember this time in gaming differently. I can’t put my finger on it.

Sadie was a complete narcissistic nightmare throughout the book really. Sam was downtrodden from the start and never really gained any traction. Marx (really, Marx as a first name?) seemed to be some kpop idol dream. For me the characters just never meshed. No one seemed to fit together. The tragedy plot seemed unnecessary and my brain was confused by Mapletown/Maplestory and Sadie’s gaming choices.

The whole Pioneers section was long winded and written in a very strange way. It didn’t seem to fit the book. If this was going for a feel of in game text or such it missed the mark for me. As a lifelong Oregon Trail (and Yukon trail) player the weirdness of the Pioneers game was just annoying.

I wanted to like this. I’m a gamer. I’m old. I still game. It seemed like the author referenced I Am a Strange Loop only after someone else told them about it, not having been influenced by it. So adding that reference after writing the story seemed wrong somehow. .

This is one of the best books I've read this year! The synopsis doesn't make is sound as good as the book is. I don't care for videogames but I was obsessed with this book. I will think about these characters for a long time.

Wow, did I seriously love this book. This book just hit me at all the right spots. Completely engrossing, I could not stop reading this. Zevin is a masterful storyteller and she created a story with no stone left unturned.
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This story spans 30 years from a childhood hospital, to Cambridge to California telling the tale of one of the most beautiful platonic love stories. This is not a story of Romantic love. This is a story of video games, business and above all friendship. This gave me all the #MythicQuest backstory vibes.
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Maybe this book hit so hard with me because I’m of the same age and I grew up with Mario. Also, there is no game I love more than #OregonTrail which becomes a large component in their friendship. Either way this is in the running for one of my favorite books of the year.
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Huge thank you to #knopfdoubleday and #netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow follows the story of video game creators Sadie and Sam (childhood best friends), and Marx, who create a popular video game and then launch their own video game company. But it's so much more than that. The story is complex, sad, romantic, and horrifying. It's an exploration of friendship, love, and dealing with loss and grief. It's a very moving book.

I'm not a gamer, but I certainly played my fair share of The Oregon Trail, The Sims, Maniac Mansion, among other games. I had a Sega, I used to play my cousin's Nintendo with the original Mario, I used to visit a friend's house to play Donkey Kong Country on her Super Nintendo. I loved all the old-school game references too. While gaming is the central theme of the book, it's not the main theme. Even if you're not a gamer, you will find a way to relate to this book.

The three main characters, Sadie, Sam, and Marx, are so incredibly well developed and each relatable in their own ways.

Major trigger warnings here: Grief, Suicide, Death, Mental Illness, Gun Violence, Abortion, and more.

Overall, I feel like I went back and forth with the story. The writing was lyrical, the story was interesting and powerful, but there were times I felt myself losing interest, but then something major would happen and I would get sucked back in.

I'm still thinking about it.
4/5 stars

Thank you Knopf Publishing and NetGalley for the #gifted eARC!

This was fantastic! When I saw this was about videogames, I knew I was either going to love or hate this, and I must say it was the former by far. Only towards the end was the more videogame-ish part incorporated, and I liked that it didn’t take up the whole book.
This book was just about characters that are beautiful, messy, perfectly flawed and the most real and raw and the relationships between them was heartwarming to read about.

If you love stories with emphasis on friendship, love, starting over and trying again with the importance of communication- this is one 100% absolutely for you. And with the bonus of video games, this is a book I think basically anyone would enjoy! Absolutely recommended.

This is absolutely fantastic, I don’t think I have ever read such a beautiful depiction of a friendship before not without it being overly sentimental. I loved the pop culture references as someone who grew up in the 90s this was a nostalgia trip for me and and brought up so many memories. This coming-of-age story is one of the best books I have read this year. I highly recommend it and you don’t have to be into gaming, I haven’t been since the 90s and I was obsessed with this story. If you’ve ever felt lost, alone or out of place this book is for you.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy in return for an honest opinion

Video game design is the setting for the story of Sam and Sadie, but it's so much more than that. This is a story about the friendship between the two, beginning in childhood when they spending hours gaming together in a hospital ward where Sam was recuperating from an injury and Sadie was visiting her sick older sister. They just had a lot in common even though their backgrounds were quite different.

Their friendship felt very real, hard-earned, warts and all. We follow their story over time, meeting boyfriends and girlfriends, roommates, professors (she's at MIT, he's at Harvard). In their collaboration over gaming they both thrive. They're wildly creative and successful together against the backdrop of the gaming community and technology of the 90s.

Life is a game, fits and starts, infinite possibilities, consequences, tricks and tools, companions. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow has a depth, a sweetness, playfulness. Five enthusiastic stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing for the ARC in exchange for this review.

Would you wish to live in a world of infinite restarts?

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These days, it is not uncommon to hear people long for yesterday and yesterday and yesterday. Faded and frightening, the present demands all our attention. That's why Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, is the present we need.

🎮

If literature were to be a natural phenomenon, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow would be the Northern Lights: Luminous, lush, lyrical, literary, but unlike the Northern Lights, easily accessible.

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This book, to quote the book, who quotes Whitman, contains multitudes. The primary plot follows the friendship of Sadie Green and Sam Masur, brilliant kids who win the birth lottery with regard to living in their perfect era. Their relationship grows and struggles as they collaborate on a video game company which, whether or not you can spell MIT or know Mario from Luigi, is fascinating to be steeped in. Why? Aside from a glimpse into the creative process (comp sci is just one factor in game design) and the symphonic sensory detail, it reveals how the heart and soul of the non-sentinent screen cosmos are the children of humans whose experiences are universal and their creations are their interpretations, corrections, and restarts.

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Immediate emotional investment in the characters, whose flaws are familiar and forgivable, is the fuel that propels the decades spanning tale that toggles from second person present tense narration (which even novice gamers recognize as reflective of the immersive standard) and third person
past tense. Also toggled are the game plots - extended metaphors for the primary narrative, and they masterfully puppeteer the heartstrings.

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You will be rooting for these characters as they become universal avatars for all of us who never quite get what we want, wonder what wild success looks and feels like, ponder the price of dreams that come true, and dreams that never quite will.

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Put it on the top of your TBR and then immediately take it off and read it.

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Thanks to @netgalley and @gabriellezevin for this treasure.

I was excited for the opportunity to read this book after I fell in love with The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, and this book was not at all what I was expecting in the best way possible. Sam and Sadie... I loved both of them and was so frustrated by both of them at different times as well. Without giving anything away, I was so emotionally tied to all of the characters and was devastated towards the end. 10000% recommend!

Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow is a life journey of two video game creators.

Sam Masur and Sadie Green have been friends since childhood-Mostly. As college students they reunite and borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first game Ichigo. The game is a Best Seller and gives Unfair Games (the company the two set up with their producer Marx Lee) lots of attention. This begins a repeat of their childhood cycle, someone miscommunications or assumes the wrong thing and Sadie and Sam are on the outs again. Will they become friends again, and make more games? When tragedies strike do they come together pr pull apart? The readers are given insight into thirty years of the relationship as friends and partners and how everything, as Ichago will tell you, in life comes in waves.

The most apparent thing I loved was the pop culture. As a gamer, moving through the land of gaming from the 90s to the present was nostalgic and kicked up memories from those games. This aspect reminds me of Ready Player One: the games they play (the games they create), and the characters they create show what these characters are deep down. The name drop of Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, and Donkey Kong actually mean something to Sadie and Sam, and favorites said a lot about their personalities.

Once you get past the pop culture trapping, you really get to delve into the story. This is a story about love but it's not romantic love. Gabrielle Zevin wrote this book about friendship, showing that love is vital to our being. Too often these books lead to a cliche romance but Zevin lets Sam and Sadie just be. We need more books about friendships and how they undulate throughout the years. The honesty in Sam and Sadie's fights honesty gets homes and makes you think about our own friendships.

The novel gets 4.5 stars. I wanted to give it a five but the ending left me wanting. Two days later, I felt like I had to go back and finish it. It just wasn't satisfying; with the grandness of the plot, I expected a bigger and more emotional ending.

Delving into friendship and how important it is to our life, this novel is touching, deep, and fun with all its pop culture.

I was a little wary about this book, as I adored AJ Fikry but didn’t love Zevin’s next book, Young Jane Young. Well, this one I loved. Gamers Sam and Sadie coming together in their childhood then bouncing off one another through life is just marvelous. It’s a beautiful depiction of a friendship without becoming maudlin or overly sentimental. I was a little worried as the end was coming that Zevin was about to take it somewhere I really didn’t want her to, but thankfully she did not. I highly recommend this book and you don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy it (I’m not). Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a joy to read. The prose was hauntingly eloquent. At its heart, this is a coming-of-age story that will touch you in unexpected ways. Hands down the best book I read so far this year.
For a brief period of time, in their grade school years, Sam and Sadie are best friends. They connect over their love of video games and then have a falling out. Years later, a chance meeting when they are in college reunites them. They, along with Sam’s college roommate, form a software company and a friendship that will be the most rewarding thing and the most hurtful thing in their entire lives.
It has been a long time since a book touched me this deeply. I felt like I was peeling away layer upon layer of text to reach the core of these characters that I fell in love with. This is not one of those books that you can read quickly and then jump right into the next. Definitely no fluff here. The story is subtle and yet also complex. It is life and the characters felt as real as any I have ever encountered.
This is the perfect book for fans of A Gentleman in Moscow and A Man Called Ove. I have already recommended this one to my friends and a highly recommend it to you!
I received a free copy from the published, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review. For more of my reviews, and author interviews, see my book blog at www.thespineview.com.

Sadie and Sam have been friends since there were young, but a falling out meant they hadn’t spoken in years. When the two reconnect in college, they start designing and creating video games together, starting them on a lifelong path of working together. Told over their lives, Tx3 is a complicated love story.

This is such a unique and special book. I don’t really want to say much more because I think it’s best to not have many expectations when you start. Just know that the writing is spot on, the characters are fully fleshed out and great, and the story might just pull on your heartstrings.

Tx3 is so complex. I definitely think there’s something for everyone in this novel.

I think this novel is going to go become an immediate modern classic. Or at least I hope it becomes one! Seeped in nostalgia, it’s a riveting portrayal of two smart misfits – Sam and Sadie – who first meet in hospital games room and bond over a shared love of video games. The book follows their friendship over the next thirty years or so whilst they attend university, have affairs, make mistakes, argue, fall in and out of love with each other and other people and, crucially, design video games together. However, it’s so much more than a story about a friendship (or video games). It’s about art, creativity, nostalgia, grief, jealousy, race, belonging, appropriation, disability and much more. It reminds me of a more millennial (and more playful) version of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, but crossed with the romance of David Nicholls’ One Day or When Harry Met Sally and the tech-start-up origin story of The Social Network.

Zevin structures the chapters around the video games Sadie and Sam create, using them as pivotal marking posts around which the rest of their worlds rotate. These games are inventive, intriguing and playfully rendered. This novel is a clear love letter to technology and the art of video game design, but this is never off-putting to anyone not familiar with that world. Zevin clearly has a high regard for gaming culture and history and although she peppers the text with a lot of tech-terminology and late 90s/early 2000s pop-culture references, it’s always done in an incredibly accessible way. Indeed, there’s a certain wistfulness and hopefulness that digital worlds can provide something we lack in our current lives, provide an escapist balm or create a digital utopia which corrects real-world social injustices.

Like her characters, Zevin has built an incredibly charming and immersive world. From the first page the characters draw you in and the reader is taken through every step of Sam and Sadie’s turbulent but irresistible relationship and experiences the same highs and lows. Whilst romantic in tone, this book is not about romance – or if it is, it’s about the romance of creativity and hard work. It’s layered and textually rich. It jumps between Sam and Sadie re-uniting at university, the time they first meet at hospital and even their lives before they meet. It manages to be sweet but not saccharine, intelligent but not geeky, complex, moving and profound. I mourned the characters before I’d even finished the last page and will be recommending it to everyone I know.

I was not surprised to read that the film rights to this book have been won in a competitive auction by Paramount Pictures. This book is so unique and I think will make an amazing film. It is the Great American Novel for the Gen X and Gen Y generations- born at a time when our formative years covered the flip from the analogue world to the digital.

With thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy to review.

A beautifully written story, with so many well developed and relatable characters. I think at its heart, this is a book about friendship, about love, about the many ways that we are shaped by what we go through and by the people that we love and that love us. I loved the authors use of language and the way that I was pulled into the story right from the beginning. This is definitely a character story, and I found these characters well worth the time I spent with them. I think if you’ve ever felt different or alone or misunderstood, if you’ve ever struggled to find your place in the world, you will enjoy this novel. One I will recommend to others and that I would read again!

When you're old, like me, you don't expect to follow middle-aged peoples' passions because you raised them so you know there's just stuff not shared between generations. One of those things is gaming. I've watched people get really passionate about the games they're playing and, frankly, wanted to yawn in their face. I do not see the appeal. But, knowing this was going to be the spine of the story, I was ready for that and factored my indifference out of the story's appeal.
<blockquote>Sadie had often reflected that sex and video games had a great deal in common. There were certain objectives that needed to be met. There were certain rules that shouldn't be broken. There was a correct combination of movements—button mashes, joystick pivots, keystrokes, commands—that made the whole thing work or not work. There was a pleasure to knowing you had played the game correctly and a release that came when you reached the next level. To be good at sex was to be good at the game of sex.</blockquote>
What we're left with is the childhood friend, I think most of us have had one, whose idea of a good time marches well with our own and whose ability to connect with our quiet places makes them invaluable and necessary companions. This is not to say they're romantic-partner material, and in some odd way I think that romantic facet, if present, actually works against this sort of long-term companionship. The relationship that Sam and Sadie take with them through their lives is that companionably silent, creatively clicking connection. It's a wonderful thing to find and, mirabile dictu, Author Zevin makes the force of it real, present, and never overplays her hand with it. A tremendously admirable and no doubt difficult achievement.
<blockquote>Why was it so hard for him to say he loved her even when she said it to him? He knew he loved her. People who felt far less for each other said "love" all the time, and it didn't mean a thing. And maybe that was the point. He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.

–and–

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won't hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love.</blockquote>
The hardest thing to admit to yourself is that you're the Bad Guy in someone else's fairy tale of life and love. Someone out there thinks of you with acute hurt and badly wounded feelings. Sam and Sadie are that to each other, as well as companionable besties. It's complicated, and it wouldn't do to spend time spoilering it, but suffice to say that the ability to betray, then to forgive yourself and seek forgiveness from the betrayed, is another very difficult thing to present in any believable way in fiction. Author Zevin does that, too.
<blockquote>"We work through our pain. That's what we do. We put the pain into the work, and the work becomes better. But you have to participate. You have to talk to me. You can't ignore me and our company and everything that came before."</blockquote>
It's a story about the depths of devotion to an idea, an ideal, and a cause in service of one's burning passion to make and be more than one is. It's a story about Love being, in the end, enough to make even failure less important. It's a story about Sam and Sadie making a life with each other: even though not spouses, they're necessary in each others' world because...well, because.
<blockquote>“I thought you were worried I was going to die," Sam said.

"No. You'll never die. And if you ever died, I'd just start the game again," Sadie said.

"Sam's dead. Put another quarter in the machine."

"Go back to the save point. Keep playing, and we'll win eventually.”</blockquote>
There it is, in that brief passage. That is what some connections offer, and what some of us luck into once or twice in a lifetime. It's precious beyond price and it's the heart of this loving story of the messy, cruel, angry thing we call life.

Why, then, have I given the read a mere four stars? Because I am, as noted above, old. It is not a story written for me, and so I am not as invested in it as I would be if I were 42 not 62. I expect that others will love the delicate and intricate love among all three main protagonists without the sense I had of being spoken around at the dinner table. It's a fate, like bed-wetting, that comes around again after being left behind in childhood. Hence the lack of a fifth, or fraction of a fifth, star. Still a story I'd encourage you to read. (With an agèd person caveat.)