I loved this book! A touching and heartfelt store of love and friendship between two gamers and nerds who traverse the gaming industry together after knowing each other since childhood. This book is so rich with thought-provoking themes from grief to race, mortality and beyond. The characters are very real and really resonate. My favorite book of the year so far, the kind of book where you cant stop thinking of people to recommend it to.

Sadie and Sam are the brilliant protagonists of this novel. They first met at a hospital in California when they were preteens and Sam was a patient after being in a car accident that killed his mother. When young Sam felt that Sadie betrayed him, a pattern of mutual misunderstanding began that would continue into adulthood. They reconnected when they were both students in Cambridge (Harvard and MIT), and their love of video games continued to be a major part of their lives. They went on to invent and market a hugely successful video game with the support of Sam's room-mate Marx and Sadie's boyfriend/professor Dov, and their company brought them wealth and fame. Their relationships ebbed and flowed through the years, with game development always at the center. Zevin is always skilled at describing complex and believable characters, but the glimpse into the world of gaming and software development makes this all the more a memorable novel.

I was ready for a unique read from the author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (which I enjoyed!). And it was indeed unique…I enjoyed learning about the gaming world and the references to older games (Nintendo, Oregon Trail, etc.) and coding programs. The book was primarily about friendship, and there were some touching moments. But the story felt long and convoluted to me for the most part. If it had been shorter and more focused, I would have liked it more. I hope others give it try and feel more positively about it!

Thank you very much to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a complimentary ARC for an honest review.

DNF 15%-I can clearly see I’m in the minority on this one. I wanted to like this book so much, and it had all the things that should make me like it. Gen X characters, end of the 90’s, video games, and an author whose previous books I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately this one didn’t grab me. I was having a hard time rooting for the characters and the story was too slow to really get off the ground and I didn’t want to keep trying to slog through it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Knopf, and Gabrielle Zevin for this digital advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a love letter to the generation that grew up with the earliest PC games. It is written for those of us who died of dysentery every week in computer class after Mavis Beacon taught us typing. Sam, Sadie, and Marx bring the evolution of game programming from the 90s and early 2000s back to life in this heartwarming tale of friendship and ultimately what it means to be in a true partnership.

Full of representation, Zevin crafts characters that are flawed and complex, yet loveable. Their losses punch the reader in the gut and their wins make you want to break out the champagne.

If you grew up in the 90s, this is one novel that you do not want to miss.

5 star cover!! Love a good cover!

This was a rollercoaster. I'm not sure I am the ideal audience for this one, but overall I did like it. The pacing was so off. It was slow to begin, picked up, lulled down, picked up, slow then BAM it ended.

The decades long friendship was sweet and annoying all at the same time.

I dont really know how to review this or summarize it. I just think that I was the wrong target audience for this!

I really enjoyed this tale of lifelong friendship - the struggles, the found family. I alternately cared about, worried about, felt frustrated with, and cried for Sam, Sadie and Marx. Although I'm not a gamer, I loved the backdrop of the gaming company, the deep dive into the creation of a game and the evolution of the gaming community over time. Fans of The Storied Life of AJ Fikry will appreciate the similar feel of this book, but fans of Ready Player One and The Animators will also find a familiar place in this story.

What a great story! I was very happy to have been able to read an advance copy and would like to share my thoughts about it. I truly loved the characters and the story. When I wasn't reading, I was worried about Sam and Sadie and Marx. They felt so real. I missed them when I wasn't with them.

Computer game design and friendship are the two main areas of focus for the story, but attention is also given to romantic relationships, education, chronic illness, and loss.

I appreciate the author's intelligence. Her vocabulary is tremendous and there were several instances in which I stopped to appreciate the perfection of a word or phrase. Very nicely done!

Whether or not you're a gamer (I'm not, except a little crushing of candies), if you enjoy a smartly written coming of age story of friendship you'll like this book as much as I did.

A book of friendships with love in its many forms, families made of love, not always DNA, physical and emotional disabilities, and resilience. I’ve just finished reading and I’m ready to start at the beginning again, like a gamer, because Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow needs to be read more than once. A beautifully written emotional journey spanning decades for Sadie, Sam and Marx, their many forms of love for each other and the world of gaming. I could not put this book down. The pivotal scene with Marx is brilliantly and poignantly written. After that the book seems to drag a bit, but all in all the book is a treasure.

When two kids, Sadie and Sam, meet in the hospital they become unlikely friends, bonding over video games as they passed the time. Their friendship and shared love would keep them in each other’s orbit for years.

Zevin’s The Storied Life of AJ Fikry is one of few books that brought me to tears and she has accomplished the same end with Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. I loved these characters. I loved to read about their accomplishments and I loved to be infuriated by their actions. In the end, they were nothing but perfectly flawed humans.

This is a story that spans decades; that beautifully depicts the good, the bad, and the ugly of friendship; that offers a realistically drawn life with disability; and, that also grapples with grief. I appreciated the exploration of friendship across time, the portrayal of sacrificial familial love, and the depth of the emotions on display (and there were lots of emotions). The book felt a little on the long side and dragged a bit towards the end, but the author wrapped the story up in a satisfying way. It also seemed to by trying a tad too hard to be all-inclusive. But, the writing was beautiful and kept me in the story even in the parts that lagged.

This is the third book I’ve read by Zevin (The Storied Life of AJ Fikry & Young Jane Young being the first two) and each book is so incredibly different from the others, but equally amazing in its own right. Without a doubt, this will be on my favorites of 2022 list and it’s only March 🤗.

TaTaT takes us on the journey of Sadie (bonus points for the Jewish representation 🥰) & Sam’s friendship since the age of 12, when they first meet in the hospital, him a patient, her a visitor. In their college years, they decide to start a gaming company and this propels the rest of their future.

Upon finishing, I immediately discussed with @ashleyspivey & we both agreed that this amazing book was unlike anything we had read recently and truly amazing. This releases in July, so be sure to get your pre-orders in now, or request that your local library order you a copy!

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Kimberley Weaver's review Mar 20, 2022

I received a copy of from NG to review. The opinions are my own. I enjoyed AJ Fikry and was intrigued by the premise of this book. I was drawn in right from the beginning. It was such a unique tale of the ups and downs of friendships, video games, and the turn of the millenium. Sam and Sadie’s personal history and professional relationship were complicated, which translated well from start to finish. Sometimes the thrown in descriptive “big words” detracted but they stood out less as the book progressed. I highly recommend this book!

This book was a roller coaster ride for me. It started off slow, then I liked it for a while, then I got annoyed with it and I think I liked it at the end. I did not like this book nearly as much as I liked Zevin's other book I read - The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. I really loved that book. So I had really high expectations of this one and they weren't quite met. I will say, I think someone who is either a gamer (which I am not) and/or about ten years younger than me will probably really love this book. It's obvious Zevin has a great fondness for gaming, esp games of her youth and that does come through.

I will also say I really liked Marx, and I'll just say I didn't like how his story ended. It felt cheap, a way to make something else happen. I don't want to say too much because it would be a big spoiler. But yeah, not happy there. Esp since Marx is my favorite character.

So Sam and Sadie. The story starts off slow, with them meeting in college after not seeing each other for years. Then it delves into when they met and got to the point where they were no longer speaking to each other.

And that's where things started to annoy me. Specifically Sadie. I don't like her. At all. I can't tell if she's supposed to be a sympathetic character, but really, I just find she acts badly throughout the entire book. And when we get to the end, and she has certain epiphanies, I thought they came much too late and I just didn't buy it. And throughout the entire novel, people tell her she's acting poorly and she continues to play the victim, often blaming others for her poor choices and poor behavior, and I found that a real turn off.

I don't know if I liked Sam, but I really did sympathize with him. Life gives him a lot of crap, and he finds ways to just deal with it and go on and try to live out his goals, despite his limitations. I couldn't tell if he's supposed to be on the spectrum or not, but I suspect he is. In many ways, he's somewhat a stereotypical gaming kid. But one with a a real honesty to him that I responded to.

So on the whole, I think this book will appeal to a lot of people. It was well written, but it just didn't quite appeal to me. But I also think I may have gone into this hoping I'd react to it the way I did A. J. Fikry. And I didn't.

I'll try my best not to spoil the story. This book is about two teenage friends, Sam and Sadie. They both love video games and decide to create their own games and start their own company.
This book took me through an array of emotions. It's difficult not to become invested in the characters. I'm not a gamer, but the book made me wish I was. This book will bring some nostalgic value to us kids who grew up in the 90s! This is one of those books you will think about for many tomorrow's to come.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ebook of this title, received in exchange for an honest review.

I 5-starred the author’s The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry so I was thrilled when this popped up in my review shelf. Like Fikry, Tomorrow is about interestingly complex people leading interestingly complex lives, though here there is more heightened drama and there is a wistfully elegiac tone, particularly later in the book. There is a whiff of Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings as well, another book which I gave 5 stars to.

The spine of the novel is the relationship between Sam Masur and Sadie Green who meet in a hospital when 12 year-old Sam is there with a damaged foot that needs multiple surgeries and Sadie is visiting her sick sister. They immediately connect over videogames and, though there is a schism, they later reconnect as college freshmen, eventually becoming a hugely successful game designing team. The story moves fluidly backwards and forwards in time, from childhood through struggling studenthood, to success and post-success.

But this is not, of course, a novel about videogames, though clearly the author did her research, and I found the descriptions of the games that Sadie and Sam design to be quite fascinating. Rather this is a novel about imperfect people living in the real world. Games have “the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption” but IRL, failure cannot be resolved with a quick reset and divisions cannot always be repaired or fixed seamlessly. Mortality looms over Sadie and Sam’s lives but not the sort of brief and spectacular death you get in a game that can be quickly forgotten with a respawn. After all, as Sam thinks “the best thing about games is that they could be fairer than life….“The “unfair game” was life itself.”

I was thoroughly immersed in this world. I loved all the characters: their intelligence, their energy, their creativity, and their hidden longings. Even though Sam can be too oblique and Sadie can be too spiky, even though neither of them will say what they want or what they mean, I still loved them. There are secondary characters that I loved too: Dov, Marx, Bong Cha and Dong Kyun, Ant and Simon - all flawed, all vividly alive. And, as a sidenote, the characters are a whole range of ethnicities.

A couple of small grumbles. There’s a long detour into a role-playing game which perhaps feels a little misguided as it so blatantly reflects real life. Also the author has a game of her own, throwing in sesquipedalian words like “oneiric” and “kenophobia” which meant I had to keep stopping to look them up.

But these are only slight glitches in an otherwise flawless and highly readable world. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

Simply delightful. It felt tender and real and I wish Sadie and Sam were real people I knew. It reminded me and gave me the same feels as Zevin's earlier work Margarettown. Full of complexities of the human experience.

This book blew me away! I was unable to but it down. Perfect, dazzlingly, very well written. The details the author described throughout the book was so amazing. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! No spoilers. Beyond amazing I enjoyed this book so very much. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Could not put down nor did I want to. Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Maybe even a book club pick.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin

Zevin’s latest novel was a very satisfying immersive read. Sam Masur and Sadie Green are childhood friends who first meet playing video games on a children’s hospital ward. Little do they know that this is the beginning of what will prove to be a life long friendship. The story really takes off when they are reunited as adults. Sam is a disheartened lackluster math major at Harvard and Sadie a restless video game designer at MIT. By chance, while catching a train, they are run into one another. Sam is searching for his life’s true passion. Meanwhile, Sadie, as one of only a few female game designers, has something to prove. Together they find what they are looking for. Sam suspects he would be happier designing video games and soon convinces Sadie to take a risk. Their first game, Ichigo, launches their meteoric success. In the manner that art reflects life, in all its glory and imperfections, Sam and Sadie’s games reflect their lives’ preoccupations and personal struggles. Through their games they find meaning, comfort, connection, are broken and find healing.

Like all great fiction, Tomorrow explores universal themes that we can all connect with whether or not you are a gamer : coming of age, the many complicated facets of love and friendship, the creative process, racism, disability, violence and life’s big and small traumas. Tomorrow is a book for everyone, but it will be particularly meaningful and warmly nostalgic for the gaming generation. In her afterword, the author shares that both her parents are in computers and she, a lifelong gamer. One can feel her personal passion for gaming and that she is a gaming insider. Zevin seems to have hit a comfortable stride with Tomorrow, freed up to experiment with time line, playing with shifts in person, quoting Shakespeare and dabbling with world building. I was happy to be along for the ride.

Add it to your summer reading list - pub date 05 Jul 2022. Many thanks to @netgalley and @aaknopf for the gift of this digital ARC. It was a delight to read and will not soon be forgotten.

Overall, this was a well-written and enjoyable read especially if you are at all into gaming. I think it has a bit of a slow start but once it gets going, you get invested in the story and the characters. If you're looking for a story about friendship, I believe this might fit that bill.