What a read! So much imagination went into this writing, I was captivated from the very start. Unlike anything I've ever read, excited to see what else Zevin produces.

This is not the type of story I would normally gravitate towards. The gaming world is not my niche but I was so enthralled in this world. This is a brilliant coming of age story that spans about 30 years. I never lost interest in the story of Sam and Sadie, their at times, wavering friendship, the games they built together and apart, and their personal and professional growth. Do not let the gaming setting deter you - this is a story about identity, disability, relationships, connections you make, betrayal, motivations, companionships, and surviving loss.

A couple interesting choices in this book - switching to second person POV and dumping you into a video game (not my favorite section), and quite a few obscure words I had to look up. This is also over 400 pages. It's long. However, while it did feel long, I also was ok with the length and being able to see these characters through decades.

This is a story I am so excited for and will be thinking about these characters for a long time. I cheered for their success, empathized at their failures, and wanted to see their friendship last through it all. Sadie struggles with the recognition of her work at times in a male dominated industry. Sam struggles with a physical disability, his racial identity, and finding companionship among his success.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing Group for my advanced copy. This book will be published July 12.

Spanning a 30 year friendship, this novel follows Sam and Sadie, childhood friends, co-workers, friends and gamers. I was so excited to read this new Zevin novel. I gobbled it up in less than 2 days!

Umm hello I LOVED THIS BOOK. And I'm not going to lie- I'm kind of confused as to why I liked it so much. The book is largely about video games. I'd say 80-90% of the plot is video game related (the main characters make games together, starting in the 90s I believe), and I don't play video games or care about them at all. It's kind of like Beartown by Fredrik Backman. I don't care about hockey, which is a huge plot point but I LOVED the book.

I think I loved how unique the story was, the unique writing style, the characters were all likeable yet flawed in their own ways. Their dynamics with each other. How their friendships evolved over the young adult lives. I'm hoping this will be a hit, but for those who need a fast moving plot, it won't be a favorite.

If you are a gamer and enjoy character-driven sagas, this book is a love letter to you. If you are not into gaming, it does not make much of a difference because it is ultimately a story of three friends and their traumas.
The novel is quite a journey starting slow, then popping back and forth in time. It suffers from both too much detail and not enough. The pace picks up as the characters get older, events unfold and lives are irrevocably changed. I was initially very confused by the Pioneers section but it is “revealed” in the next section. (It is okay to skip if you are not into it). The last section seemed different in tone-a little rushed and dialog-heavy, but everything must have its ending sometime.
This is my first book by Gabrielle Zevin and wow, she is an amazing writer. I think we have a lot to look forward to in the future.
#NetGalley

What an extraordinary narrative about the power of passion, creativity and relationships! Sam, Sadie and Marx - imperfect though they may be - are simply the best characters I’ve encountered in years. Not a gamer? Don’t let that stop you from entering this world filled with references ranging from Shakespeare to Japanese art to “ The Oregon Trail.”

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a book about friendship, love and video games but the overall theme is love but not romantic love as much as friendship love. Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital as 10 year olds but life gets in the way and they go years without seeing each other due to miscommunication but reconnect in college. Video games are part of the story but I am not into video games and I loved this book. It will probably be one of my top ten books this year.
Thank you so much NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday for my ARC of this book, it's a keeper!

I can't define why this story hit me like it did because it shouldn't have. I'm not into, nor do I understand the gaming world. There is no fantastical plot to drag you along. Nothing amazing happens, yet I was so wrapped up in this. I more than loved Sam and Sadie and Marx and all the side characters (Dong and Bong and Sadie's amazing and spunky grandmother with her practical words of wisdom). There is so much to unwrap here, yet I could not condense this down and tell you what this even about. If I had to say, it would be love. It's about all the forms of love and how beautiful and complicated each and every one of them is.

I had to wait a full day after finishing this spectacular book to collect my thoughts - man, this one is so good. So often, characters in books are written as a type: the selfish one or the damaged one or the one we are rooting for. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a novel with complex, nuanced characters who don’t fit in by one box. The author presents the complexities of people in a way that felt triumphant and as authentic as I’ve read in any book. I didn’t know a thing about this book going in - I hope you’ll read it that way, too. Books clubs! Choose this one. So many layers and meaty themes to unpack and discuss. I cried several times while reading - the beauty! The raw complexity of being human! Masterful writing and vocab choices that were delightfully-interesting. I loved it so much. What a gift from Knopf Random House - go read this one.

Special thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for allowing to me read and review this digital ARC of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

I thoroughly enjoy this book - it really gives you an inside on the creating behind video games; the good, bad and the ugly. This is a complicated and generous book about friendship, creativity, betrayal, time, identity, connection, and love. Those who love gaming may appreciate this book even more but as a non-gamer I still loved it!

Sadie and Sam's relationship is one of strong love and devotion. They are diverse, mixed race and physically disabled. Very engaging writing, I highly recommend this book

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a story about love, but it is not a story about two people in love with one another. It is a story about the power of loving another person in every other way imaginable: as a friend, a kindred spirit, a counterpart. It is the story of Sam Masur and Sadie Green, and how video games kindled a friendship that lasts through the ages, despite everything that life throws at them. Sam and Sadie find themselves parted and brought back together again through circumstances, fights, moves, and throughout it all, their love never fails. I absolutely adored this story by Gabrielle Zevin, who penned a world alive with compassion, empathy, laughter and heartache. My emotions lay in a tumbled mess at my feet by the end of this book and I have not connected so strongly to a novel in a very long time. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes books, doesn't like books, passes me on the street or just stares at me for slightly too long. 10 out of 5 stars.

Unlike any novel I've ever read, I enjoyed many parts of this unique story, however there were several things I took issue - mainly the length, which just seemed way too long/long winded, and the angst. While far from YA, much of the conflict feel very young adult (more even more new adult) in a cringey way that made this book hard to get through.

That being said, the writing here is amazing, with so many beautiful and creative passages. It is FAR more literary than previous Gabrielle Zevin works, but it worked.

I will also say that while you don't need to be a video game fan, I think it would certainly help. A LOT (basically all) of the story is very focused on gaming, and would be far more interesting to a fan.

I am not a video game lover and I loved this book. It was not what I was expecting in the best possible way. It is rare to have a book focus so much on friendship in the way this book did. I might start playing video games after reading this book! Sam, Sadie and Marx will be in my mind for quite some time.

Love Love Love this book!
This is a very special story, beautiful, enthralling, spinning out and around and back - I just do not know if I can do it justice!

This is the story of Sadie and Sam, a story of kids growing up in the 80's, a story of game design, of work, of American culture and identity. I absolutely love rolling stories such as these, and this will forever be a favorite.

Sadie and Sam meet in a hospital. This is the ground zero to this story; the first miscommunication between the two main characters and a setting that Same can never seem to shake, From there, they meet again, and again. They collaborate on a game, or two. I won't tell you more -just that you will enjoy it.

There are tons of characters and concepts and discussions, and realizations! Realizations that I bookmarked to return to. You certainly do not need to know a thing about games or even enjoy them (like me:)) to hear the poetry of this book. If you like rollicking and rolling stories, stories that span decades, or stories that encapsulate our American experience then this is a book for you! #TomorrowandTomorrowandTomorrow #Knopf #Netgalley #Netgalleyreads

I accidentally read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, over a game convention weekend, while I spent the rest of my time demoing my games, playtesting a new game, and talking about game design. We also did a panel where my husband/co-creator explained his workflow as a wind-up robot, that gets keeps going and going, and I had to say that I have 10,000 ideas in all directions, but not every idea is a great game. Then I came home and read this story about gamemaking creativity and relationships.

In Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, childhood friends (and sometimes frenemies) Sadie Green and Sam Masur agree to spend a college summer making a game together. With Sam’s college roommate, Marx, as their producer, their first game, Ichigo, becomes a massive hit. This is the goal for all of us making indie games, but the novel is actually about long-term creative collaboration, not about the magic of a success.
Their game creativity is a special kind of work, there’s a lot of time between Cool Idea and Finished Game, and that’s when we see our characters grow and change, fall in and out of love, struggle to understand and be understood. I particularly loved how Marx, the producer, was described as doing all the invisible work that let Sam and Sadie do their work better. There’s a lot about inspiration and accidental inspiration, with game journalists making connections the developers didn’t see. The book has a couple experimental sections, and they’re not all quite as engaging as the main narrative, but I think in any book about game dev, a chapter set inside the game world is basically obligatory.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is not just about games, it’s also a story about disability and trauma and overcoming the past. Mazer’s injury, and the way he feels about his body play a major role in his personality. (It’s not exactly pleasant to read about his injury and amputation, but it’s not too gross, either.) We can see him developing and changing over the years. Overall, I think seeing our characters develop over time was one of my favorite parts.
You needn’t know a lot about games to follow the story, but some moments resonated for me, and maybe they will for other gamemakers, too. Sadie starts out making Solution, which is not exactly Train, but has a similar feeling (Weirdly, this same weekend I directed some younger game designers to this talk from Brenda Braithwaite). and EmilyBlaster, which is not exactly Stride and Prejudice, but has the same feeling. For me, this
made the whole story feel like it was grounded in real games.

Those of us in the Oregon Trail generation often joke about how the best part of playing games these days is a character waking up fully rested or facing only solvable puzzles, so I enjoyed the novel’s comments on the achievable goals and restarts of gaming. The characters are the right age for Oregon Trail memories too, and there’s a running joke about the classic you have died of dysentery line. But this is about friends riffing on a shared experience, this isn’t a book about getting the gamer jokes. I liked Ready Player One, but ultimately found the barrage of pop culture references exhausting. It started to feel less like fandom and more like a fandom test — did I like the correct cool things? was I the right kind of player? had the correct lines and bits of trivia made the correct impact on me? Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow uses games to tell a story about love and creativity, it’s not a story about liking the correct games.

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.