Sadie and Sam meet by chance, and a common interest in video games. Their lives are filled with love and heartache while working together creating new games and a new gaming company. Gabrielle Zevin brings the story and games to life with her writing style. Great read for the weekend.

A very different book! I loved the story line, the characters and, though I’m not a true gamer, understood the passion and hard work it takes to create a company and make a dream into reality. This book hit every emotion possible. I got lost for a bit during the Pioneers segment toward the end but eventually realized what the author was doing. Please read this book. It’s truly about what being human means.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC copy in return for an honest review.

This book will be one that sticks with me for a while to come for so many different reasons. This book had so much to offer from a passion for gaming and critiques of society, to a slow-burning romance.

Following friends from childhood as they enter into their adult lives at the helm of a gaming company and the many complications that come along the way. This book made me laugh, it made me cry and it made me understand more about what goes on behind the scenes of creating a video game. It certainly left me with an urge to play more fantastic games. I loved that we saw this book taking place over 30 years and how the gaming industry changed during this time.

Getting to know Sadie, Sam and Marx was a delight in this book, despite them all certainly being flawed characters. At different times in the books, each character got on my nerves a little, but in a way that showed the challenges they were going through at that tie in their lives. I particularly enjoyed the chapter we saw from Marx's perspective, this was truly beautifully done and offered some variation from the previous narrative.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is a story of video game development but so much more than that. The reader does not need to be a player of games to love this book because ultimately the story is about love and friendship and work. I loved the way the author revealed bits of the characters’ stories from various points of views. It makes the reader understand each character in depth. I definitely recommend this book!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book.
I have read a few of Gabrielle Zévin’s books over the years. The Storied Life of A.J Fikery was one of my favorite books of 2021, and I was very intrigued by this new book.
I have to say that at first, I was expecting a completely different book. I don’t know if I made assumptions based on the cover or the blurb, but this book is much, much, darker than I anticipated. It depicts trauma, abusive relationships, grief and pain in such a realistic way that I sometimes had to pause my reading.
Also, I’m sure everyone’s review will repeat a variation of this, but you do not need to be a fan of video games to enjoy this book. I enjoy some video games, but I do not consider myself a gamer. (I actually think this book frames video games as another type of narrative format, not so different from other formats in its purpose, which is something I’d love to expand/read more on, but that’s not the point of this review.)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a book about love (romantic or not) and growing up. It’s about the ways we get hurt by the people we love and the ways we end up hurting them too, and it centers around the relationships that make us who we are. The characters were realistically flawed - I sometimes wanted to slightly punch Saddie and Sam for the choices they were making, but I also knew that those decisions made sense to them. It’s easy to see mistakes when you’re not the one making them.
My favorite thing about this book was the narrative style. The storyline is not linear, which is something I love, because it relies on the reader’s ability to piece together parts of the story. It also lets you know parts of the outcome without telling you how the characters will get there, which makes it all the more interesting in my opinion.
This story and its characters will stay with me for a very long time, and I will now get on to read Gabrielle Zévin’s other books, because she has a way with words that invariably brings tears to my eyes.

With tears in my eyes I type this review mere moments from finishing this book. Even before finishing it, I've reached out to reader friends to put it on their radar by describing it as follows. Imagine Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid and the movie Free Guy have a baby. Now, this baby doesn't really look like the parents, but looks just enough like the parents for you to not question the parentage. That's this book. The book follows a set of friends turned video game designers over the decades. There's love and loss and a friendship full of conflict and art and longing and so much more. This book leaves me breathless and makes this avid reader want to dip her toe into the world of gaming. I'm so excited to see this book launched into the world this summer and can't wait for it to reach level 100.

I've been reading Gabrielle Zevin since she was writing Y A, loved The Storied Life of AJ Fikry and now this. There's always something unexpected and I always enjoy it. I've been recommending this book left & right, forgetting that I read an ARC and that it doesn't come out until July. My library will have a long holds list for this one if I have anything to say about it!

This book was epic! And by that, I mean a) in length, it was really long, b) it took place over several decades and 3) it was an original and BIG book covering so much. It's a love story, but not a romance, between Sadie and Sam who met and bonded over video games as teenagers when Sam was in the hospital after a severe accident and Sadie was visiting her ill sister. Although that part of their friendship ends in a bitter fight, the two meet again in college and resume a friendship that morphs into a successful career as game designers. I cared so much for these characters, as well as Marx and some of the other side characters, and my heart broke and was put together numerous times over the course of the approximately 400 pages! Don't let the fact that it's about gaming deter you because at its core, it's a story about friendship, forgiveness, and resilience.

I love this author and all of her books and this one was no exception. Ms. Devine has the ability to write complex characters who have many faults which makes them feel that much more real. I cried a lot while reading this book and that tells me it was incredibly well written. I highly recommend this one.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Knopf Publishing for an advanced copy of this new novel.

Gaming is something that does not translate well to the written page. Sure there have been books about gaming, but these have been about the game, say your Zork novels, DOOM or Resident Evil tie-in books. Some are based on the idea of the gaming world Ready Player One, and there of course books on the cultural significance and the the threat to children that gaming offers in based on who is writing what book. Not many books address what makes gaming not only fun, but what binds two people to play the same game over and over trash talking or working together for a goal, enjoying the nearness of each others as pixels dance on the screen. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin captures these moments and explores the world around these two characters, what makes them close and what brings them together and what keeps them away.

Sam sees Sadie outside of a subway station where he is going to school. He calls to her, Sadie tries not to hear, but then turns around. The two have known each other since they met playing games in a children's hospital. Soon they make their own game Ichigo which changes both of their lives forever, for the good and for the bad, but always they come back to each other, though not in ways that would be expected.

A different kind of book about life and love and gaming. The book is about friendship and bonding, but the friendship is a real one where they hurt each ther without thinking about it, and forgive each other, but don't forget. There is a lot of distant writing and strange sections, but I think it adds a layer of charm to the story and the characters. The can interact digitally, real world ehh not so much. The characters really make this book. The readers tend to care what they are doing, what is happening and why are they doing something so dumb. They can be a bit annoying, but at the same time the simple wins they acquire, make the reader go good for you.

A very different kind of book. Friendship, creativity, art and gaming. Making bonds and being a friend. In the end that is all we have and all we will be judged by. A book that will really stay with the reader.

Where do I even begin with this review? First off, I need to say that this was the most beautifully written novel that I have read so far. There was no dipping a toe in the water here. I was playfully pushed into the deep end quickly, and let me tell you, it was worth it.

This novel spans the thirty years that Sam and Sadie developed their friendship, careers, and commitment to the gaming community.

Following these characters as they create their first video game together and the beauty and destruction that comes with their newfound fame, Zevin maintained the authenticity of each character’s struggles. And allowing the reader to peek into each of their pasts throughout the chapters helped create more of an attachment and empathy towards the character's current struggles and growth.

You don’t have to be into video games to appreciate the intricacies of the delicately woven narrative from each perspective. Every character is carefully inserted into the story and has a purpose in the overall plot. Even the “NCPs” are essential to the novel’s progression and aren’t just haphazardly thrown in to create an interesting shift in the story. I could tell there was some thought into who/what would bring some added sparkle to the book's overall theme.

With that said, I was hooked from the first page and can honestly say I was sad when the story ended. I don’t believe I have been this invested in a novel since “A Little Life.”
Bravo!

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This story is about Sam and Sadie. They form a bond over their love of video games when they meet as kids in a children’s hospital. A misunderstanding causes an unfortunate falling out but we follow these two over the span of decades to see them eventually find each other again. Their gaming skills and interests help reform their friendship. While this book is heavy on the gaming aspect, I feel it can still hold the interest of even those normally bored with the subject through its characters. A great read about friendship, relationships and just growing through life in general.

I was completely consumed by this story of love, friendship, and the very hopeful, very human desire for infinite possibilities that leads us to play. Sadie, Sam, Marx… I loved every minute I spent with them. I laughed. I cried. My heart is full.

I can't believe that this book is already going to be made into a movie by Paramount and it hasn't even been published yet! I'm so excited - while I'm not sure how well it'll translate to the big screen, I really enjoyed reading this book. The different narrative styles in each section kept my attention and the in-your-face "we are brilliant" vocabulary of the main characters definitely had me using the dictionary function of my Kindle WAY more than I normally do. I can see that this will turn some people off, but to me it fit with who the characters are. The cover is also perfect, I can imagine this book with black spine and the endpaper being a functional Magic Eye picture.

(Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.)

This book is going to be a major hit in the summer. It blends Ready Player One with a lot more heart and is a study on deep relationships. Zevin brings the same wit and ease of reading from her previous novels but goes further into her characters’ minds and motivations. The book dragged a bit around the 70% mark with a journey into a video game that was difficult to orient in, but it picked up nicely toward the end.

I really enjoyed this sweet story of two friends over much of their young adult lives. As a child of the 80s this book brought back a lot of nostalgia for the time and the kinds of intricacies that entail a life long friendship. At 400 + pages I did feel some areas of the novel dragged a bit. Overall I liked this book and would absolutely recommend it to several genres of readers.

I am a real fan of star-crossed love story thing. Circle of Friends, Atonement, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Royal Tenenbaums… and on. I eat that stuff up! Throw in some brilliant characters and video game programming, and we have pure gold in the form of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
Sadie and Sam are super-close male-female best friends, the weirdness of which Zevin captures perfectly. What is going on here? Aren’t you guys in love? What happens when handsome, charismatic Marx enters their creative partnership? Will their friendship and company survive?
This was a real treat, especially for lovers of language and video games. The author’s allusion game is on point. Her command of language is impressive.

I have such complicated feelings about this book and I think it's going to take me a long time to decide what I actually thought about it. On the one hand, I absolutely loved the underlying story. On the other hand, there was so much covering up the story that I wanted to stop reading.

Let's start with the good - the story. Sam and Sadie meet as childhood friends and quickly bond over their love of playing video games. As they grow up, they decided to make their own game together which does so well they decide to form their own gaming company and continue making games. But underneath the success, Sam and Sadie have a sometimes strenuous relationship, and they both go through a lot - medical problems, hard romantic relationships, their own feelings of growing up and who they are. And after one specific tragedy, they are forced to examine their relationship on an even deeper level to determine if they can ever be the way they once were.

That storyline, I was wholeheartedly into. It's a beautiful, realistic look at love, but on so many different levels - romantic, friendships, partnerships. I found both Sam and Sadie both odd and also intriguing. I can't decide if I actually like them as characters, but regardless I was rooting for them throughout. This is a story, also, about video game culture - I am not a gamer, I never have been, but I still found all of this (especially the behind the scenes of building a game) interesting.

Now onto the things that made me not want to keep reading. I found the word choices throughout to be unnecessarily complicated. I've never had to look up so many words while reading in my life. I can't decide if this was intentional to go along with the environment, or if it was just complicated for no reason, but either way, I didn't like it. I wanted to scream "JUST SAY GREEN!" I also thought this book could've been shorter had some of the more unnecessary, fluff parts been removed. There was an entire 30ish minute chapter near the end that while reading I couldn't figure out what I was reading, nor the point of it. Though it all came together and made sense, it felt like it took too long to get there. I also found that when we jumped back and forth in time sometimes it felt hard to get my bearings of where in the story I was.

I do think, though, that this is a book that will stick with me and I'll be thinking about my feelings on it for a long time. Would I recommend it? Yes, I think I would. The underlying story between Sam and Sadie is worth it. And maybe others will find the complicated language refreshing.

This book will be reviewed on the Reading Through Life podcast, episode 37, on May 4, 2022.

This charming book is a story about video games and relationships and you don't have to be a gamer (I'm not) to thoroughly enjoy it. Sam and Sadie are brought together and driven apart again and again by their own disparate personalities and their love of video games. Their relationship is part business partners, part best friends, and romance is there but I liked that it's not actually that important. The cast of supporting characters are diverse and loveable, particularly their partner Marx. Zevin also has fun with form, narrating from multiple POVs, from the disjointed perspective of a character in a coma, and from inside video games. Recommend.

This book is FANTASTIC! Don't let the video game theme worry you if you aren't a gamer. I'm not a gamer at all, but I did enjoy the game aspect more than I thought. It's ultimately a fresh story about friendship and love. I loved the characters and enjoyed the almost thirty years we spend with Sam and Sadie, as well as supporting characters like Marx, Ant, Zoe, and others. I smiled, laughed, became frustrated with them sometimes, and cried. I'm already a fan of this author, but this book cemented her as an auto buy author for me.