Member Reviews

When I discovered that this is literary fiction about video game creators—with a Shakespearean title, no less—I was intrigued and moved it to the top of my list for the summer. I’m happy to report that, in my opinion, this book lived up to all the hype.

The story follows Sam and Sadie, who meet at a hospital as adolescents and bond over video games. After a falling out, they reunite fortuitously years later and begin to create video games together. We follow them through their successes and failures, both personal and professional, and through the betrayals and heartache that threaten to tear them apart.

I devoured this book. I’ll start by saying that I do enjoy video games—my siblings and I grew up gaming together, so there’s a lot of nostalgia there—but I don’t think it’s necessary to love video games to get hooked into this story. The platonic love and creative partnership between Sam and Sadie is what drives the novel. Gabrielle Zevin does a wonderful job of capturing the messiness of people and relationships. Her characters are so complex and real, her writing is smart, and she does some interesting things with structure and perspective.

It’s not a perfect book, and it won’t be for everyone. The main characters are pretentious, and they make some poor decisions that will drive some readers crazy. Also, if you hate video games with a burning passion, maybe pass on this one. But this is a good fit for fans of literary novels that span decades and focus on the development of flawed, realistic characters.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC. I was over the moon about receiving this one!

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the first book by Gabrielle Zevin I've ever read, and good lord, it was amazing. Somehow, it took me by surprise how much I loved this, because I really didn't know what to expect. Is this a story about videogames? Is this a story about friendship? And it is a story about both of them, but it's also about love, and the ups and downs through the life of Sam and Sadie, who met when they were kids and develop a friendship that spans almost 30 years, where the main constant are videogames.

I love how the characters are developed in such a complex but realistic way. Sadie and Sam are both stressful, arrogant and with lots of flaws, but they are also very easy to love. Sometimes, their minds go from 0 to 100 in less than a second and it can be a little difficult to follow their lead, but it just shows more about them and their creative, always working minds. Sam goes through a lot during his life, from the death of his mother and the accident that changed his life, to the painful days of his adult life. He also has a physical disability, and the way the author develops it was, for me, proper and respectful. Sadie is a woman in a world made by and for men, so she is constantly underestimated and faces a lot of inequality in various situations. But she's a genius, she loves and hates and suffers and it's very stubborn, and she's probably the character that's gonna stress you the most during the book, but I still loved her so much.

The rest of the characters have a lot of importance for the story too. They all are very well developed and we get to know enough about them to feel sympathy or despise them, depending of who are we talking. I loved Marx so much, he's literally the best friend in the world, and how he was always there for Sam, even when Sam didn't want him to be.

The book has a lot of videogames references, it's true, but that doesn't stop you from enjoying it even if you don't know a thing about videogames (I know a thing or two, I played many of the games mentioned during the book, but the ones I didn't I still understood because they explain it to you as a part of the story). The writing is very dynamic: it doesn't have long, boring descriptions, it goes back and forth in time so we get to know different aspects of the characters, it can change the point of view a little too fast sometimes, but it always keeps its pace. At some point, I didn't want to stop reading at all!

So give this book a chance. Because it is a book about love, friendship and videogames, and the unlikely chance that you'll find that childhood friend you haven't seen in year on a random day in the same train station you always pass, and how that can change the rest of your life.

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Initially I had trouble getting through parts of this book and even put it aside for a day. Some of the details of designing, coding and playing video games were tedious for me to read.

However, when I tried to get into another book – the characters of THIS BOOK kept coming back to me. From 30% on I was invested and fell in love with Sadie, Sam and Marx.

It’s important to note that this book covers several decades so it’s hard to describe all that happens with these characters!!

Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital. Sadie is there to visit her sister, who is undergoing cancer treatment, and Sam is a patient. He was in a horrific car accident and his foot has been repaired but it will never be normal!! He will be in constant pain!!

Sadie and Sam bond over their love of video games, mazes, etc. “They had the rare kind of friendship that allowed for a great deal of privacy within it.”

There is a point where Sadie and Sam don’t see each other for years but when they are back together the magic is still there. Ideas are worked out together, code is written, Marx is the producer and promoter and for a long time all is good.

As with all human relationships that span decades, these three will go through many changes, and it’s wonderful to watch how they grow. All the emotions are here, friendship, love, happiness, grief, depression, exuberance – all so well described that I felt it with them!!

The writing in this book is absolutely wonderful. I love this quote from Marx “What is a game? Marx said. “It’s tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption”.

This book is very unique, I already miss these characters so very much! I would encourage you to give it a try, even if you’ve never played a video game in your life!!!

I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley.

The novel is set to publish on July 5, 2022

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As a non-gamer, reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is experiencing a beautiful epic novel, covering more than twenty years in the lives of Sadie and Sam. It is their platonic love story, best friends who become colleagues in the creation of a massively successful gaming business and who, naturally, have ups and downs throughout. Gamers will appreciate the video game evolution and creation aspects of the story, too.

The novel reads like a cross between Ready Player One and A Little Life, with heavy gaming content combined with a small group of close friends whose story continues over decades. At times, both Sadie and Sam, as well as Marx, seem self-involved, and made me become upset with a character's actions. Sam is traumatized from childhood, which affects his relationships throughout. The story takes the reader on an emotional ride, ultimately leaving them hopeful for Sam and Sadie's future.

Thank you to Netgalley, Knopf Publishing Group and Gabrielle Zevin for the opportunity to read an ARC of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. The opinions in this review are my own.

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Wow. I devoured this book. I originally heard about it through Modern Mrs. Darcy and was very pleased when Netgalley and Penguin Random House gave me the opportunity to review this book.

This is a book about the ups and downs of friendship, how people deal with loss, and why it's important to let others in on our pain all viewed through the lens of video games (you don't need to be familiar with video games to enjoy this book) .

I enjoyed the main characters especially because they had flaws and seemed like real people. The storyline of the book jumps back and forth in time in the beginning of the book which really helps move the story along. Zevin is also a master of words - I don't think I've looked up so many words before in a book. It didn't feel tedious or annoying, rather I enjoyed learning new words for daily use.

I did feel a little empty while reading this book - the characters did not have much hope in the world and that was conveyed to the reader.

Overall, this book was masterfully crafted and very engaging.

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Gosh, I loved this book. It’s not the gamer aspect per se (I was only a casual gamer, mostly just loved trying to beat my previous high score on Tetris). The book his some great nostalgia notes for those in the late Gen X zone. And I loved all the many different types of love, family, and friend relationships this book explored. And also realities and worlds and perceptions and the ways we unintentionally limit ourselves and project on others. I found the cast of characters rich and the plot compelling. One of the best books I’ve read this year.

Big thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC, in exchange for my honest review.

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I actually was not entirely sure how this book would land for me, as the synopsis doesn’t tug at my personal interests. HOWEVER, this hands down is going to be one of my absolute favorite books of the year. I immediately felt sucked into the vortex that is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and fell in love with the characters; development does not lack in plot or character. This was my first Zevin, and I immediately went to order all backlist titles. Highly recommend this enchanting and quirky novel.

And big thank you to Knopf for my ARC.

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A beautifully written book on true friendship. The highs and lows, disagreements and loves we share. I just loved this book. It's rare to finish one and just smile because it was just " that good".

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I thoroughly enjoyed this novel by Zevin. I love the writers style and voice. Character development and plotting were excellent and it was hard to put down!

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Sadie and Sam meet as adolescents and form a friendship based on a shared love of games. Later, in college, they meet again and develop an intellectual partnership. Sam's roommate, Marx, becomes the third member of their group, and his thoughtfulness and practicality combine with Sam and Sadie's technical and creative prowess to form a successful collaboration. But as time passes, the trio struggle with uneven success and the balance of their relationships. Ultimately, the games that brought them together can also tear them apart.

This is the kind of novel that rekindles one's faith in the written word. It has beautifully-crafted sentences and sharp-yet-inevitable turns of plot. The characters are so well-realized I felt I had met them in person, and their - and the book's - intelligence illuminates the pages. The story is grand in scope but intimate in scale, spanning twenty years but lingering in momentary details.

If I have any complaint about this novel, it was that it ended too quickly. I would have happily read this story for another hundred pages, and I think it would have been improved by expanding its second half. As with a video game, we can always hope for a sequel.

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This is an epic love story for all the nerds out there. Whether you are a drama nerd, game nerd, or good old well rounded nerd, this is a love story for you. It’s the Shakespeare, it’s the Atari game that you love growing up. Life-long longing for a person that stands right next to you could not be described better than how it was done in this story. You are so close, yet too far.

Two friends who met under very unusual circumstances… They parted ways some time ago but managed to find each other on the streets between Harvard and MIT. They decided to forget about what separated them in the first place and decided to build a game together. And what a game that was! These two along with their theater loving third wheel found themselves in the middle of a dream: they were successful, they were happy. This was until emotions and an unfortunate event took control over their lives. Gaming was their love language; it will be their savior.

I just cannot get over this quote from one of the games that make this book amazing: “"And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said. "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?'” Forget about romance, give me more of this!

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Sam and Sadie are best friends, who met as children in a hospital in California. After a falling out, they meet again when he's a math major at Harvard, and she's an engineering student at MIT. They join forces to create a video game and rebuild their friendship, and make new friends and colleagues. This doesn't make it sound very interesting but it's a compelling read. One of the best books I've read all year.

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow has quickly jumped to the top of my list of favorite books. The characters are so complicated and unique. I was also very impressed by the information I learned regarding the video game community. There is a beautiful balance between the light-hearted nature of reading video games and the messy human interaction that grounds all characters.

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I was so excited to receive this ARC! I loved AJ Fikry and have been anticipating Zevin’s next book for some time.
This is a TOTALLY different book than I imagined, or that I have read, ever. Even if video gaming is t your thing, there are so many aspects of this novel that may be up your vein. Loss, love, heartbreak, growth, all told surrounding Sam & Sadie, and their non-romantic love for one another. Their creative minds come together to create such an epic video game that launches them into success they could’ve never imagined. But with success comes challenged they didn’t plan for either. And some of these challenges destroy the things they love.

Thank you NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest review!

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Wow. Just wow. A deep dive into lifelong love and affection for a close platonic friend over the course of 30 years more or less. Seen through the mists of gaming, a childhood fascination that becomes a lifelong pursuit for these characters. There is so much meat in these relationships and realistic looks at the people behind them, the randomness of life experiences and how people reinterpret those experiences over the course of a life. Sam and Sadie define a certain period of gaming history while at the same time defining platonic love and affection. Incredibly moving. A book worthy to become a classic.

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was not what I was expecting at all. It’s a love story, but not a run-of-the-mill love story. It enraptured me from the first page, but it was a slow read for me, I think because there was a lot to digest and maybe some part of me never really wanted it to end.

***Spoilers follow****

Sadie and Sam have a complicated relationship. Friends since they were preteens, they bond in a Los Angeles hospital game room over video games. Trust issues are a problem for them as kids and this obstacle falls into their collective path many times in the future. After several years of not speaking to each other, they run into each other in Boston, this time as students at MIT and Harvard. And Sadie has created a video game, which she hands off to Sam for him to play.

They pick up their friendship where the left off and things escalate as Sam asks Sadie to make a game with him. Marx, Sam’s roommate and friend, enters the story as does, Dov, Sadie’s college professor (and not-so-secret married boyfriend). The story spans 30+ years with flashbacks to the lives of loved ones and defining events and sees Sadie and Sam through the creation of not only their first video game, but an entire company.

I’ve never considered myself a gamer, more of a dabbler, but this book has lit a fire under me, making me want to know more about the gaming industry. But more than that, I fell in love with these characters and with all their foibles and imperfections. I absolutely adored this book and feel like it will stay with me for a long time to come.

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Read 18%.

Unfortunately, I was incredibly bored with the story. The relationship between the married teacher and his student disgusted me. I did not like the "friendship" as it was set up on false pretenses. I tried but found myself not wanting to pick it up and read it.

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a stunning novel that takes place over the span of a couple decades following two friends from one coast to the other. It’s got lots of layers, lots of symbolism, and lots of depth. It takes place within video games, within city’s, in memories and hospitals and it’s just an incredibly stunning novel.

The characters themselves are really complex and realistically flawed. The balance between plot and character development is perfect. I was even able to forgive the miscommunication going on because it’s very on brand for the characters and it added another element to the book. By the end of the novel I was both in awe and incredibly frustrated with all the characters, but also very pleased with where they ended up.

The video game element is just the cherry on the top of an already stunning book. I can already tell this is a book that i’m going to think about for years to come. It’s going to stay with me for sure. There’s not a single thing I would change.

If you love character development and drama that takes over the span of decades this is easily a great book for you to read. It reminded me a lot of The Nix by Nathan Hill. If you liked that one (like I did) I highly recommend you pick up Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

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4.5~5★
“With his sweet, roundish face, light-colored eyes, and mix of white and Asian features, Sam looked almost exactly like an anime character. Astro Boy, or one of the many wisecracking little brothers of manga. As for his personal style: Sam looked like Oliver Twist, during the Artful Dodger years, if Oliver Twist had been from Southern California and a low-level pot dealer instead of a pickpocket.”

This has some of my favourite elements of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, A Little Life, and Ready Player One. People who make their own families. It is just terrific!

Sam, Sadie and Marx are much like the artistic, adventuresome trio of Kavalier and Clay with Rosa.

Sam Masur (later Mazer) is A Little Life's Jude, whom everyone cares for while he hides his pain (although Sam's suffering isn't on the level of existential anguish that Jude’s is).

Plus, there comes a time when Sam can connect with Sadie only through their avatars in online gaming, much as Wade, through his avatar Parzival, connects with others to solve the riddles in the virtual world of The Oasis in Ready Player One.

The gaming world reminds me of the popular Choose Your Own Adventure series, where readers could pick another ending. In gaming, your avatar dies and then begins another life, so it can start over and over again, tomorrow after tomorrow.

Eleven-year-old Sadie Green meets Sam Masur, who’s wearing pajamas, in the games room of the hospital, where she’s visiting her older sister. He has crutches nearby and is engrossed in a Nintendo game. She enjoys just watching this boy who plays so skilfully. He seems oblivious to her until he completes a battle.

“He paused the game and, without looking over at her, said, ‘You want to play the rest of this life?’

Sadie shook her head. ‘No. You’re doing really well. I can wait until you’re dead.’

The boy nodded. He continued to play, and Sadie continued to watch.

‘Before. I shouldn’t have said that,’ Sadie said. ‘I mean, in case you are actually dying. This being a children’s hospital.’

The boy, piloting Mario, entered a cloudy, coin-filled area. ‘This being the world, everyone’s dying,’ he said.

‘True,’ Sadie said.

‘But I’m not currently dying.’

‘That’s good,’ Sadie said.

‘Are you dying?’ the boy asked.

‘No,’ Sadie said. ‘Not currently.’ ”

They continue to play and laugh and chat about his Korean grandparents, who have a pizza restaurant in Los Angeles, until it’s time for her to leave. On the way home, her mother tells her that those are the first words Sam has spoken to anyone since he was in a horrific car accident six months earlier.

The hospital asks if Sadie would consider visiting Sam again. She is supposed to be doing some community service for her Bat Mitzvah next year, and this would count. She considers.

“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.’”

She agrees to go but never tell Sam, and thus is their friendship born. He draws mazes all the time, which his therapist encouraged, and now he slips them in her pockets. The story is told in the third person, and flashes back from time to time or foreshadows future ramifications of a situation. It makes for an interesting overview of their lives.

Sam has had countless operations on his mangled foot, and a lot of the story hinges on his health and what allowances need to be made for him. Walking is a problem.

“Sam did not think of it as a disability—other people had disabilities; Sam had ‘the thing with my foot.’ Sam experienced his body as an antiquated joystick that could reliably move only in cardinal directions.”

They develop such a strong bond through gaming and gaming language, that they are almost living on, or in, another level of life. The become game inventors and developers who are so intensely absorbed that you wonder if they will ever manage to let anyone else into their lives. They have different skill sets and attitudes.

“While Sadie experienced this period of indecision as stressful, Sam didn’t feel that way at all. ‘The best part of this moment, he thought, is that everything is still possible.’ But then, Sam could feel that way. Sam was a decent artist and he would come to be a decent programmer and level designer, but remember, he had never made a single game before. It was Sadie who knew what it took to make a game—even a bad game—and it was Sadie who would do most of the heavy lifting when it came to the programming, the engine building, and everything else.”

You don’t need to be a gamer or understand gaming to enjoy these people and their relationships, but it must be even more fun if you do. You can read a terrific Dick Francis mystery without knowing much about horse racing – he fills in the necessary blanks. My knowledge of sailing is minimal, but I always used to love stories set on the high seas. I probably didn’t know what was happening to the ship half the time, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Same here. Sam is the artist, Sadie is the programmer, and both argue and contribute to the story and design. Sam’s college roommate is Marx Watanabe, the son of a wealthy, Princeton-educated, Japanese father and an American-born Korean mother. He takes an interest in the business and gives them his apartment to use for free. Now they’re a trio.

Sam changes his name from Masur to Mazer, so he and Sadie become Mazer and Green. Their first famous game character, ‘Ichigo’ is a little Asian child, and the public is convinced it is Sam. Mazer becomes the better-known name behind the business, so Sam is the one the public wants to see. Marx, as the producer, is an essential part of it all, too.

There are tugs-of-war in all directions, love, heartbreak, tragedy, betrayal. There are other family members I was glad to meet. These are very complete people. There are a couple of slower places in the middle of the book, but all in all, I think it’s wonderful. I don’t know how Zevin pulled this off, but I’m glad she did.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf/Doubleday for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted (so quotes may change). It’s due to publish in early July.

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Well, I think I just read one of my new favorite books ever. I inhaled this book in a single day, because the thought of putting it down was too unthinkable. It's heartfelt, emotional, brilliant, brutal and beautiful. It's a love letter to games, to creativity, to friendship and to the power of people coming together to make beautiful and messy things. I found myself desperately wishing that Sam, Sadie and Marx lived in my world, that I could play their games and feel the impact of their lives on my own. But I suppose I still get to, because fiction, whether found in novels or in games, has the power to do that. I am just, too stunned for words to express how much I loved this book, how much I loved the way it throws you in with these lovely, flawed people who are driven to create, who can't seem to help themselves in hurting each other, loving each other, and making amazing things all the same.

I can't recommend this one enough.

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