Gabielle Zevin's newest novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a long but beautifully written story of video games and friendship and love. Sam Masur and Sadie Green meet when they are young over a shared loved of video games. Years later when they are in college they are reunited, and again still share a passion or video games. They form a partnership and design a very successful game together. Told over the span of a few decades, Zevin covers topics such as grief and loss, disability, economic hardships and abusive relationships. Zevin has a way with characters, are Sam and Sadie feel so very real, that you'll miss them when you're done reading.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, is another emotional, full-of-story book by Gabrielle Zevin! Following the interlacing lives of Sam and Sadie, who have known each other since childhood, we see the leveling up of the two as they develop video games, grow a company, and deal with how to continue a friendship as one matures.

It's hard to condense this chunky book into a review, but here are some thoughts:
-There are slow bits, and sometimes there are brick of text, which make it feel a bit long.
-The story is bittersweet and emotional. I would have used the word sad, but I think just using that word is a bit reductive for what all is going on in this story. It definitely tugs on some heart strings.
-There is disability representation, and it can be both hard and good to read.
-Grief really coats most of this book. Which I personally like!
-The arts are featured a lot in the story, on top of video gaming, which I thought was great. There's theater, visual arts, etc. It reminds you that video games are more than just something you play.

Overall, I would recommend!

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the e-ARC.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is getting a lot of traction on the gram stateside, so I was elated to discover it on Netgalley this month and eager to dive in. Here’s my quick take…

The story centres around Sam and Sadie, childhood pals who bond over their shared love of video games. From here, the story follows the pair over two decades as they pave their way through adult life and the tribulations of love, heartbreak, ambition, uncertainty and devastation (to name a few). It’s a complex tale of friendship and illustrates the type of intimacy that one only really has with someone who gets under one’s skin, but has never touched it. Theirs is a really intense, frustrating at times, platonic love and one that is easily shaken but perhaps never broken.

Sam and Sadie are gamers. They play games, they create games, they promote and sell games and I for one, LOVED this particular component. It’s great that games are finally getting some decent recognition outside of the gaming world. At the same time, I cannot stress enough that loving games is not a prerequisite in order to enjoy this immersive story.

My one critique, and it is admittedly a small one, is that I think it ran a little long. For this reason, it stops short of a top of the pops read for me. At the same time, it’s definitely one I would recommend to anyone looking for a fresh alternative to all the sugary beach reads that are heavily circulated this time of year. All in all, a pleasure! 💜

This is very good, which is not really a surprise since this author has written a number of highly rated books. This has lots of helpful reviews, so I'll simply recommend it.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

I loved this book. Sadie and Sam meet in a hospital children's ward as 12 year olds - Sam is playing video games and Sadie is visiting her sister - and this beings a life long friendship with many bumps along the way. Both are incredibly bright and meet again in college where Sam is at Harvard and Sadie at MIT and they decide to build a video game together. It immediately becomes insanely popular, and with the help of Marx, Sam's roommate and best friend, create a company and spend the next 20 years creating. It's the story of Sam and Sadie's relationship though all sorts of ups and downs. Sam is very insecure and is always in pain from his disability, and hides most, if not all of his feelings. Sadie does not. They are like oil and water. Marx says tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, borrowed from Macbeth, is like video games - there is always a chance at life again when you die in a video game, and you can always take that chance. Marx is very positive, and is always there to fix what has gone wrong in Sam and Sadie's lives. And even though they are like oil and water, and even though they seem to always be at odds with one another, and they spend a lot of time apart, they still love one another.

I cannot say enough good things about this book! Though this is a story mainly about platonic love, what a story it is! Gabrielle Zevin does relationships so well-- and the fact that the relationship between the two main characters Sam and Sadie isn't romantic makes it even better. It's multi-layered, complex, and messy. But oh so very real. This book delivers a punch to the gut but in a good way. Memorable and unforgettable. Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and author Gabrielle Zevin for gifting me with an ARC of her newest novel; Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

Almost as wonderful as The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, this new book by Gabrielle Zevin will leave you with #AllTheFeels ❣️Sam & Sadie are childhood besties until a misunderstanding shatters their friendship. Years later they reconnect only to once again have a falling out. It’s a story about friendship, love, responsibility, expectations, staying true to your art , promises & promise.

This multilayered story was full of nostalgia and heart. Sadie and Sam bond as teens over their love of video games both preferring virtual worlds and realities over their current ones. It’s their love of gaming, games and ultimately each other that remains a constant as this novel spans several decades. While I didn’t understand all the gaming references, as I’m old school Pong and Pac Man, it didn’t matter at all. Sadie and Sam along with the secondary characters will worm their way into your world.

This is a MUST READ - available July 5, 2022.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is an immersive story about growing up, friendship/found family, and video games from the 1990s to present-day. This is a book for people who enjoy character driven stories that span several decades. I loved the pop culture references and throw back to many youthful memories.

This book explores the relationships of three friends, where the relationship between Sadie and Sam is most central. The book follows this central relationship from childhood through adulthood. I loved the backstory of these two characters and how their lives are woven together. Their relationship starts organically as children when both Sam and Sadie are dealing with individual life challenges. However, their loving friendship is continually tested, as they try to figure out their place in the world both as individuals and in relationship with each other.

What makes this relationship especially interesting is the backdrop of the gaming world where Sam and Sadie’s relationship intensifies as they expand their gaming roles from players to designers. I have to admit I was a bit wary about the gaming aspect prior to reading this book, since it's not a world I inhabit. However, the author invites the reader into this world with just the right amount of explanation so that I was engaged and enjoyed learning about the gaming world.

This book would be enjoyed by anyone who likes a story that is character driven and follows the relationship of characters over time. All types and levels of relationship are explored - including romance, friendship, parental, and work relationships. The characters grow in ways that feel real and satisfying. After finishing this book, it's difficult to say goodbye to characters who feel so real.

Trigger note - gun violence and sexual violence are part of the story, but not overly graphic.

A big thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an Arc of this wonderful novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for.providing me a copy of this book to review.

If there is bookish catnip for me, it is this book: a long, character-driven tale about a friendship and found family. Sam and Sadie meet as children but have a falling out. When Sam forces his way back into Sadie:s life in college on the other side of the country, they begin a partnership that lasts years, creating video games together.

The characters of Sadie, Sam, and Marx, and their family members and friends, are so vivid and real. Some of the stylistic choices in this novel are beyond creative and blew me away. I loved everything about it.

If you need an action-packed book, this is probably not for you. But if you don't care what happens as long as the characters are amazing and grow and the writing is fantastic, I think you'll love this one too.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow follows the lives of Sam, Sadie, and Marx, three individuals who are linked by their love of playing and creating video games. They are programmers, designers, producers and more. But from the beginning, Sadie and Sam keep rubbing each other the wrong way which affects their collaboration and their creativity. Sadie, Sam, and Marx's desire to create games that are gender neutral, that are accepting of different lifestyles, and that present a wide range of human experiences becomes their downfall. But not how you might think. There are references to Shakespeare, to Homer, to Emily Dickenson, and more, each seamlessly integrated into the narrative.

Gabrielle Zevin has come up with a very original concept and she presents it in her own unique way. The characters are endlessly fascinating and are constantly growing and changing as the novel progresses. At 416 pages, this book is somewhat long but it is never boring. It kept my interest throughout.

Ultimately a story of growing up and all the different types of love one should be so lucky as to encounter in their life, Tomorrow and... tells the story of childhood on again off again best friends Sadie and Sam, following them through their lives as they come together over the shared love of game creation and draw apart over misunderstandings and that same shared love. It's like being a fly on the wall in their lives, watching them experience success and failure, all while trying to understand exactly what they mean to each other, what that means for how they want to spend their lives.

I loved this book. I don't have many other words than that, but this book was just lovely. I really felt like I knew Sadie, Sam, and Marx, and I was living my life parallel to theirs. I thought this book successfully took a topic that is very nostalgic for many people (including me), the rise of popular gaming in the 90s and 2000s, and made it meaningful to the characters, not just a list of cool things they happened to toss about when needed (looking at you Ready Player One). I also felt that it didn't neglect anyone who may not have that set of knowledge or memories. It explained what was important for the story and why it was important to our characters, but never over explained anything either. I thought the games that Sadie and Sam created were very clever and fit into their appropriate time periods well, along with other games from that time. I loved the snippets of articles and interviews with popular tech publications. It honestly felt like they fit in with the time period, and I had to remind myself that they and their games weren't real multiple times.

I really loved the relationships of this book and the emphasis on platonic love. You don't see that done very often, let alone done well, and it was done extremely well here.

It's difficult for me to accurately pinpoint everything that made this so enjoyable, but I honestly did enjoy the whole book and walked away with a feeling of contentment. It's not a happy book, but it's also not a sad or tragic story. It feels real, and I think that's what I liked about it most of all. The middle can drag a bit, as Sadie, Sam, and Marx become comfortable with their business and lives, but that kind of fits with real life too, so I can't fault it for that. I bought a physical copy of this book to keep, despite already having read it and having a digital copy. It's one I want to keep on my shelves and revisit when I need a hug.

Rating: 2.5
This is the type of book that I wish I loved, bit I just didn't. I don't typically like literary fiction because they're usually too pretentious and are usually about toxic friendships/relationships and it's almost never done well to me.

This is a story of a complicated relationship between childhood friends. Their relationship begins under false pretenses and throughout the book they graple with the complexities of their friendship. Sadie and Sam have a friendship that is complicated to say the least. And then they become business partners! They are joined in that endeavor by Sam's roommate turned friend Marx. The the friends are in the business of creating computer games. I imagine you can still love this book if you didn't grow up with computer games, but I greatly appreciated the references to some of my favorites from childhood: Kings Quest, The Oregon Trail, Commander Keen, and more. It was really fun to be transported in time via these game references!

I truly loved the story of these friends and how their relationship changed over time. Though he was technically a secondary character, I especially loved Marx and his heart of gold. He had a way of holding everything together! If you've loved other books by this author, there's a good chance you'll enjoy this one, too!

If you are a gamer, if you are not a gamer. If you are a gen-x-er if you are not a gen-x-er. If you simply love a good story. If you want to pick up a piece of art and devour it, READ THIS BOOK. I adored the three main characters of this story and was rooting for them all. To me it was a little reminiscent of Donna Tarte’s The Gold Finch but more concise. And I believe I liked this one more. This book just put Gabrielle Zevin on my auto-buy list.

This book made me miss playing video games! While gaming is a strong part of the story, at the heart of this book is relationships. There are three people, two guys and a gal. Sam meets Sadie while in the hospital, after not having talked for weeks after the car accident that killed his mother and shattered his ankle. They are kids who bond over playing video games. There’s a falling out and they reconnect in college, where the third main character enters as Sam’s roommate Marx. Eventually Sam and Sadie start making video games, and Marx becomes the everything else in supporting their coding and creations.

The novel isn’t told in direct linear fashion, and is mostly with Sam’s point of view, but not exclusively. While I enjoyed the book by the end, I was annoyed by both characters, and Marx a bit too, but not as much. Perhaps that made the characters seem more realistic, not being perfect.

This book is the first I’ve read by the author and won’t be the last.
Book rating: 4.5 stars

After seeing Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow on several summer reading lists, I was thrilled to get an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley. I have a basic knowledge of video games, but have never played them much myself. Gabrielle Zevin creates a nostalgic world of video game creation that centers on two childhood friends who reconnect as college students after a falling out. Zevin's work is about video games on the surface, but the real story is about friendship. The tenderness of this book will stick with me for a long time. She expertly weaves the relationships between the different times and releases vital back story like an IV drip. There are moments in this book where I was exhilarated, depressed, disappointed, grief stricken, and so touched that I cried. Let me be another person who recommends you add this one to your 2022 summer reading list.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a wonderful novel about friendship with the backdrop of video games from the 1990s to present-day. I can see why there was a bidding war over this book! It's incredibly enthralling and makes you want to sit down and read. Zevin is wonderful at world- and character-building. I loved the journey the characters took and found myself very connected to them. Even though they didn't always make the best decisions, I liked that they were imperfect but trying. It incorporates how we change through our lives and when encountering success and failure. I really enjoyed this well-written novel.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.

This is a book about two game designers, Sam and Sadie, who meet at a very young age and after a period of not speaking, become forever entwined in each other’s lives.

I am not a gamer, but I don't think you need to be a gamer to enjoy the book because it isn't really about gaming; it's about work and how our work relationships can, at times, have even more profound impacts on our life than our personal relationships.

This book was on the Modern Mrs. Darcy Summer Reading Guide for 2022, and since I trust her recommendations, I was excited to get the ARC for this book. I have to say that I did like the book, but I didn’t love it.

What I didn't like about this book:
-The two main characters, Sadie and Sam, are not very likable. Now, I do not need all the characters in a book to be likable, but they do need to show some growth, and I never really saw that, especially in Sadie. There is a moment where she convinces herself that Sam has done something to her (there is no proof that he did) that is very similar to what she did to him many years before (there is proof she did it), and she won’t forgive him. It is probably more a case of her not really forgiving herself from all those years ago, but she takes it out on Sam, and it is juvenile and doesn’t make sense for a woman of her intellect.
-It was very heavy at times so much so that I needed to put it down for several days because it was just too much.

What I like about this book:
- Although I never find Sam truly likable, he does change over the course of the book and become more open.
-The representation of how constant physical pain can affect who we are and how we see the world is very important to Sam’s character, and I found it very real.
-Representation of women in gaming is changing but still it is slow, and I loved seeing a successful woman game designer be front and center.
-Marx is a great character and balances Sadie and Sam in many ways.
-The story isn’t stagnant; it physically moves in terms of setting but also the company builds and grows as the story progresses.

If you are in the mood for strong writing, complicated characters, and an unusual setting (for literary fiction), then this book may be for you!

I’m aware that I am in the minority but it eludes me how this book has received so many rave reviews. I read about 85% and finally gave up. Thanks to NetGalley.