Whew! What a ride. I have absolutely zero interest in gaming and anything associated with it and Zevin managed to hook me anyway. The relationships and characters were excellent, deep, memorable - the main characters and also the side characters.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review

Someone needs to give this book a more evocative title. Far from creeping from day to day, it crackles with life and novelty. A touching tale of love and yearning set within the milieu of game developers. It opened a new world to me and made me appreciate gaming as an art.

Wow.

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” a book about friends who make video games, felt like a game in itself, and as I read, I constantly leveled-up as their journey continued. A roller coaster of emotions, game-worlds and story-worlds that absorbed me throughout, relationships that evolved and deteriorated, characters whose success I rooted for over and over again. There was so much magic in the character development, of the book and the games its characters created. The settings of the book, were a great backdrop to each part of the story.
The editor’s note is an actual great introduction into this story and I'm so grateful I took the time to read it before starting the book. It really set the tone for what I was about to get into. I loved this book.

This book scratches an itch you didn't know you needed scratched. It is so smart, funny and full of characters you really want to get to know and come back to. It's about friendship, technology, race, disabilities, religion, literature and how to try to stay grounded in an ever-changing world. I couldn't put it down but did not want it to end!

Sam Mazer and Sadie Green created a lifelong friendship when they were young about their mutual love of video games. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow covers the 16 years of friendship of the two and how they are brought together and broken apart by their love for video games. This book will break your heart but then instantly put it back together again. I loved the way that the book was written where you get the perspectives of both of the main characters but you also get sliced of interviews done by the two of them through out their careers. Zevin does a great job of sucking you into the world she created and making you love the characters even when they frustrate you. I personally do not know a ton about gaming but I even got into how the gaming world worked and operated. This book pulled me out of a reading slump and I know i’ll be thinking about it for a while now.

TW: Death, racism, abuse, drugs, homophobia, gun violence.

What a heartbreaking story on friendship and love. You fall in love with the three main characters, but mostly fall in love with the love they have for each other.

I think that I went into tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow with fairly low expectations, and I think that's what set me up for success. I had read a few glowing reviews for the book, but I really tried not to let that cloud my judgment. And I guess, with that thought process, writing this review doesn't really make a lot of sense, since this review will be pretty glowing, but I still want you to pick this book up without any expectations, either.

But anyway, here are the things I loved about this book.

I loved our two main characters, Sam and Sadie, as well as our cast of supporting characters (Marx, Sam's grandparents, Ant, and so many more to name). Sam and Sadie aren't perfect, and at times I wanted to shake them in frustration, but I think that's a sign of how much I grew to care for them. All I wanted was for them to be happy and succeed in what they were doing.

I like that the book didn't have a completely linear timeline and that there were also a few interviews mixed in which helped to provide backstory in a unique way.

I also absolutely adore the title. I love what it symbolizes and the relevance it has to Sam and Sadie (I'm being vague because I really don't want to give anything away!)

This book will tug at your heartstrings. It's a story about love and friendship and partnership and how being in love doesn't always need to be romantic. Overall, I think it was incredible and deserves all the hype that it's been getting.

I will say that I think Gabrielle Zevin has the most expansive vocabulary ever because I had to google quite a few definitions while reading.

These characters, Sadie, Sam and Marx, will remain with me for a very long time. Kudos to Zevin for creating a unique world for them to meet, develop friendships and love, that is relatable to anyone.

This is not a book about gaming. Yes, that is what these characters do for a living, but the focus is all on their relationship with one another. It is beautiful and hard and authentic. I’d recommend this story to any character-driven reader.

I love the story, loved Sam, Sadie and Marx characters and I highly recommend. I don't play a lot a video games and sometimes I was a little annoyed by the video game descriptions, but the story is beautifully written, and I enjoyed reading it.
thanks to the author, NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange of an honest opinion.

Not a gamer myself, but it’s a book about so much more than games and making them. Love, loss and the changing of friendship throughout life. My third book by this author and have to say I think it’s my favorite. Characters have so much depth, you understand them, get mad at them at times and hurt with them. Loved how different quotes came back throughout the book from earlier in the friendship and references to things that had happened kept popping up. Very much enjoyed!

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday publishing group for electronic advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book because I enjoyed The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry so much but that turned out not to matter because, apart from being in the same author's skilful hands, it could not have been more different.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the story of two young people who live, love and breathe gaming. If someone had told me that before I started reading I may well have decided not to bother as gaming does not interest me. I would have missed something very good! Sam and Sadie's tale begins when they meet as children in a hospital and the hours they spend playing and talking games probably saves Sam's sanity.

They part over a misunderstanding, meet again, cowrite some popular games, form a profitable business, part again, meet again and more. Much more. It turned into a book which I could not put down until the very last page. My reason for only four stars instead of five? Well I did get a little bogged down in the gaming talk and I got very cross with Sadie. For many reasons but I do not want to get into spoilers.

Nevertheless I highly recommend reading this book.

So I am not sure what I expected when I read the synopsis of this book, I guess my brain read video games and was expecting something more along the lines of “Ready Player One.” “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” seems to be categorized as Contemporary Fiction / Adult Fiction, but I do not necessarily agree with the genre of Action & Adventure Fiction. It is not a romance novel, but definitely a book about relationships, friendships, family, and love. When they were eleven years old, Sam and Sadie met in a hospital in Los Angeles, she was there visiting her sister who was battling cancer and Sam was there recovering from a tragic car accident. They both bonded over their love of video games and developed a friendship. After running into each other many years later while in college, they decide to work together designing video games. Over a span of several years, the story of their friendship is portrayed and how their love for each other is continuously tested. As a reader, you definitely experience the angst of ‘will they’ or ‘won’t they’ (become a couple) throughout the novel.

I truly enjoyed the level of detail of how Sam and Sadie designed and developed their video games, I grew up in that era playing Donkey Kong and PacMan. It was also reaffirming to have a female character that was a designer and developer during that timeframe, when female programmers were few and far between. And Sam as bi-racial character was also relatable to me. I appreciated reading about the New England setting of MIT/Harvard and then the contrast when they moved out to Los Angeles, California. The vivid descriptions of Koreatown and Sam’s Grandfather with his Pizza shop. I also loved how the picture of the wave on the cover and the title of the book are explained in the novel.

The book definitely challenged my SAT vocabulary, I used the Kindle dictionary quite a bit while reading this book. I felt that the beginning of the story was just a little slow, I had a hard time getting into it. But the subject matter of video games and hopes that Sam and Sadie would eventually get together, kept me going. I felt uncomfortable with Sadie’s relationship with Dov, her professor at MIT, it was a bit disturbing. When Sadie, Sam, and Marx moved to California, the pacing and storyline picked up at about a third of the way into the book. One of the later chapters in the book threw me for a loop (you’ll know it when you get to it), but I kept reading on and once I finished it totally made sense. All in all, it was an entertaining book, just not what I had expected. I probably should have read the description just a little bit closer “This is not a romance, but it is about love.”

5 engrossing, mesmerizing, beautifully written, unputdownable stars for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. I want to tell anyone and everyone about how much I love this book.
Sam and Sadie are childhood friends who have reconnected in Boston during college. They both love games so they decide to collaborate on creating their own and here starts the beginning of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. At it's core, the story is about friendship and a mutual passion for something that takes you out of your world and into another. I don't even care about video games but this book is much more than that. I love all the characters in this book. The author did a phenomenal job with developing the characters while keeping the plot moving along. Simply brilliant.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I've been a fan of Gabrielle Zevin since middle school when I picked up her YA novel Elsewhere and knew I had to pick up Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow when I saw the cover (one of my favorites in a long time) and it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

The novel follows Sadie Green and Sam Masur through almost 30 years of their lives and their changing relationship, always with video games and video game development as a central point. The timeline jumps around a lot, particularly in the beginning, which really worked for this story. However, I don't think Zevin quite captured the way 12 years old speak in the youngest sections of the book.

The characters were absolutely the strongest parts of the novel. Sam and Sadie each felt fully fleshed out and, even when I was frustrated with them throughout the book, I did understand their motivations each time. Marx was the standout character to me and I wished we were in his head for more of the book.

Overall, the writing was solid, but I did feel that Zevin was throwing in vocab words in a way that did not necessarily work with the relatively simple and straightforward prose. I enjoyed the chapters in the latter half of the book that departed from the previous structure and almost wish she took more risks and varied each chapter even more.

I have no knowledge of video games but still found the gaming parts of the book accessible and fun to read! If you like character-driven stories with sometimes unlikable characters then I suggest picking this up.

Thank you to Knopf Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC.

Much thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the privilege of receiving an ARC of this remarkable novel.
What an amazing, wonderfully ambitious and deftly written book.. It's an expansive story that follows the lives of three brilliant young people who, in a relatively short period of time (from college to their mid-30's) experience a tumultuous epic life journey.
And it's a grand full menu of what these characters go through........crushing heartbreak, lifelong friendships kindled, demolished and then rebuilt, all the ups and downs of romantic relationships, the 360 turns between achieving fabulous success and then crushing failure........and lastly, the surviving of what fate sometimes cruelly hands out with a terrible randomness.
Sam and Sadie, once childhood friends driven apart by misunderstanding, connect again as college students. Their own technical brilliance and gifted creativity lead them to create and design a groundbreaking stunner of a video game that captures the world's imagination. Marx, their somewhat rogue-ish, freewheeling friend, joins them as their lifelong producer and business partner.. Thus a powerhouse trio is born, with Sam and Sadie now forced to deal with the tensions, pressures and rivalries of suddenly becoming gaming world legends at the very start of their careers.
And Sam, who's struggled through a lifelong physical disability since childhood, must also cope and suffer through a repressed, equally lifelong unspoken love of Sadie, who's endured her own strange, turbulent relationship with Dov, her college professor and mentor..
This is the kind of novel to lose yourself in completely, to laugh, ache, cheer and cry along with the three lead characters. And while I've never been a gamer or had the slightest interest in games, the book's skill at bringing that unique world to life makes for fascinating reading - the meticulous amount computer science, artistry, storytelling and marketing savvy to go into a game's creation, along with the accompanying blood, sweat and tears of its makers.
Through the entire length of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", Gabrielle Zevin's prose never fails to incisively hone in on her people and their all too human flaws with devastating perception.........and even, at times with some marvelous deadpan wit.
So for anyone looking for THE book of the year,,......the kind of book you'd be thinking and talking about long after finishing it, this one's the 5 star real deal.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a phenomenal book. Not for everyone—Zevin is a fan of complicated prose and her work takes time to get through. This isn’t a quick read, but it’s so worth it. Sam and Sadie’s relationship over the course of 30 years is one of the best explorations of platonic love I’ve read. It’s messy and complex and unpredictable. The supporting characters are a great addition—I especially love Sam’s grandparents. As someone who’s definitely not a gamer, I thought I would struggle to be interested in the plot, but it was a really interesting lens to view this story through. Definitely recommend!

I was so excited to read this book, but it really wasn't a good experience.

With bland characters, pretentious writing, random pieces of dialogue and weird pacing, this made for such a bad experience. Not to mention that it felt like the author's pushing her own views and agenda through the mention of a 'place' that carries out genocide.

I really don't know why this was published because the story is not what it seems. Would not recommend.

Gabrielle Zevin's 'Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow' spans a period of thirty years, telling the story of two childhood friends as they navigate their childhood, coming-of-age, and adulthood.

Sam and Sadie meet as children at a hospital in LA, bonding over a shared love for video games. Although they grow apart, they rekindle their friendship when both studying in Cambridge, MA, and start developing video games together, an endeavour that sees them go on a journey that takes them farther than they would have thought.

With dual protagonists, it is easy to take a liking to one character over the other, but Sam and Sadie are both likeable and flawed in their own ways and I could not decide with whom I identified, felt, or despaired more. Reminiscent of Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, albeit less depressing and sad, Zevin chronicles the lives of two characters whose lives cross several times, who move in and out of each other's orbits, and are linked by a deep (although not necessarily romantic) love. It would have been easy to construct a romance between Sam and Sadie, but I am glad the novel handled the situation as it did.

The title's line 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' is taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth, fittingly also addressed in the novel, and hints at the narrative's underlying motif of time. The novel not only spans a period of thirty years, but Sadie and Sam's childhood in L.A., specifically the hospital Sam is treated in after a car accident and where Sadie's sister undergoes treatment for cancer, their coming-of-age during their University time in Cambridge, MA, and their adulthood after their return to LA to start their own video game company. The movement between these three stages of life is fluid, flashbacks giving insights into the childhood scenes, all paired with occasional game sequences that appear timeless. Time links Sam's and Sadie's pain, joint and individual, imagined and warranted, physical and psychological. Like a wave, it crushes over the characters and it is not always easy to get up to the surface for air again.

Zevin's writing style is accessible and even without being a gamer myself, I could follow and immerse myself in her descriptions of game design and gaming. Spanning such a long period of time, the novel seldom felt stuck in one scene, place, or period, and brought a dynamic to the novel that made it an engaging read. I've never had an interest in gaming, but Ichigo and Solution caught my interest and I would give them a go if they were available in real life.

The novel caught my interest before, during, and after reading, and will be a book I'll look back on tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Even if you are not a gamer, this novel will appeal to you, although 1990s and early noughties gamers might find it even more charming due to the nostalgia of early gaming experiences and games.

Thank you to Knopf for the gifted ARC.

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

Gabrielle Zevin blew me out of the water with her beautiful writing style in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. While there is a focus on video games, this is absolutely still a book to read if you’re not a gamer. I was fully immersed into this story through the friendships and deep emotions over the course of a journey with hardship, pain, success, vulnerability, grief, and rebirth. While this novel is slow-paced, it’s perfect for savoring such an incredible story. There were some parts that could have been edited down in my opinion (some of the beginning background info and the game immersion toward the end), but everything else in this book was absolute perfection.

At 12 years old, it feels like wunderkinds Sadie and Sam have known of each other forever. During Sam's extended hospitalization, proximity leads them to a friendship that will become the center of their lives for nearly thirty years. Their friendship is collaboration, understanding, love, and betrayal. It propels them to the highest highs and the deepest depths. Will their compulsion to play end or are they destined to collaborate?

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a story about our need to be understood and loved for who we are. Sam and Sadie struggle with their own insecurities and the injuries enacted by each other and the world around them. The story is compelling, the characters are nuanced but relateable, their traumas (as they refer to them near the end of the book) are heart-breaking, their growth realistic.

I didn't expect to love this book as much as I did. I thought the premise was promising and loved the title for my connection to both Shakespeare and Hamilton, but thought it would be too "video gamey" for me. Almost instantly, I was drawn in by the rich characters and their experiences, both alike and unlike my own.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves books that tackle coming-of-age, friendship, love, loss, popular culture, and escapism.