So this is not a book I would necessarily have chosen for myself but the offer from Net Galley and Knopf Doubleday was very intriguing. I am not a video gamer and I avoid cliched romance novels. I have enjoyed some of the authors previous books.
The book was a total surprise and a total WIN!!! Loved it!
It is the story of Sam, Sadie and Marx who started a video game company. We follow Sam and Sadie from childhood. It is a brilliant story of primarily friendship but also a very non cliched romance. The evolution of the characters and their changing relationships was beautifully written. There was a disturbing twist to the story about 2/3 s of the way in , so this is not a rosy or unrealistic story. It is about real human emotion and the difficulties of creative work. These characters will stick with a reader for a long time.
After reading this book, I do see the enticement of video games and I wish the games that Sadie and Sam made, especially Master of the Revels was real!
Publication date - July 12 202. Can't wait for this one to come out! Would make a great film!

I wasn't sure I could get into a book about video games, but I've never been disappointed by Gabrielle Zevin before and this time was no different. The friendship at the center of Zevin's newest was so original and beautifully portrayed. I enjoyed every moment of this book and can't wait for Zevin's next one. I've read them all!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing Group for my ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published July 12, 2022.

This is the second book I’ve read by this author and it was so completely different than “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” which I loved.

I just reviewed Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

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. It was an interesting insight into video game development but it was so much more: loyalty, trust, disability, love, loss and most importantly friendship. I was sucked in immediately and loved it!

My only complaint is the author chooses to use some unusual words (at least to me). Luckily my kindle defined them for me, but given this could be a YA novel I felt the obscure word choice didn’t really fit.

Original review also posted on GoodReads.

This might be the best book I will read all year. (But it's only February.)

I received an ARC of this upcoming novel through NetGalley. It is about two video game developers (Sam and Sadie), but you don't need to be a "gamer" (I'm not) to fully enjoy this book.

Sam and Sadie meet when they are pre-teens. Sam was in the hospital with a severe foot injury suffered in a car accident. Sadie visited him as part of a community service obligation prior to her Bat Mitzvah. The relationship that began then leads to a 30-year odyssey where eventually the two developed games together while having a somewhat contentious love-hate relationship.

These two characters are equally fascinating and intriguing. Sam is the ultimate underdog, walking with a permanent limp and otherwise odd-looking, brought up poor. Sadie is a rich girl. Together they experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows over the years. And their relationship with each other has its ebbs and flows.

The lives of these two characters are quite unique and make for a great read. The kind of book you wish never ended.

This is easily the best book I have read so far in 2021, and it is one of my new all time favorite books. I could not recommend this book more highly.

Zevin's Elsewhere came out when I was 11 years old. I couldn't have loved it more at the time. I can't quite remember all of it now, but I know it moved me profoundly then -- to the point where I am actually afraid to reread it as an adult because I don't want to mess with the magic of it. I read her other works, including the more recent and awardwinning The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. I loved that book too. But this book, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, hit me differently - it hit me in the same way that Elsewhere did as a child.

Perhaps part of this is because on paper, Ms. Zevin and I have a lot in common: we're both mixed race Asian American, we both have spent significant amounts of time in Southern California, and apparently, we've both got a bit of melancholy at times (or at least, she writes as though she has experienced it herself).

But the majority can only be attributed to the strengths of the book itself, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow brilliantly tells the stories of people- Sadie, Sam and Marx - through a story that is fundamentally about making stories - videogames. By the end of the book, you feel as though you are friends with each of them, or at least that you wish you could be friends with each of them. The book covers a twenty-five-ish year period of their lives, from Sadie and Sam's meeting in their early teens to their late thirties. This would be a brilliant book if it were only about these characters.

Yet, this book also creates a beautiful, huge world around them - a world in which obviously, what the characters are up to is not the only important thing, despite how invested in them you are. The world is believable and familiar to me as an adult not quite at middle age - it's complicated, it's often ugly, and it's painful - and the character's journeys through it together properly feels like the center of the world in the way that the best books about this time period feel.

It deals with difficult subjects - sexual coercion, disability, depression- with kindness and generosity. In fact, if I had one complaint about this book, it's that perhaps it is a bit too generous with one of the secondary characters (or at least lacks the amount of pushback on that characters' actions that I would hope to see). While it's not an author's job to force a hard moral point about the wrongness of a character's behavior, it did feel somewhat out of character for the other main characters to tiptoe around the issue (and in one spot, possibly set that character up to suffer more, though that remains ambiguous).

This book made me think about friendship, love, and pride. It was so remarkably human that sometimes I shouted in my apartment at the characters, and I cried at the not-sad parts as much as I cried at the sad parts. This book is nothing short of a wonder.

[5] This may be my new favorite book. Was able to get an ARC and I DEVOURED it - what a creative book full of endearing characters. I just wanted to spend more time with Sam and Sadie and Marx, despite them being sometimes described as not-likable or seeing them do foolish things. I couldn't help it. I liked them anyway. And I loved them together. Plus I learned so many new vocabulary words, just casually thrown into the text (swipe to see the list I started...) There is one particularly devastating chapter that is so beautifully written and keeps you on the edge of your seat - could this really be happening? And another chapter towards the end inside of a game called Pioneer that is one of the most creative things I've ever read. This book is, I suppose, about video games and the designers who create those virtual worlds - but it's also about love and friendship and figuring out what matters most in your life. A stunning read - I can't wait til it releases this summer as I plan to re-read it as an audiobook.

This is the first novel I've read by Gabrielle Zevin, and halfway through I added several of her others to my TBR. Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow is a smartly written story of love, friendship, and human connection, spanning three decades. What I found so unique here were the sentiment, art references, and nostalgia evoked revolving around something I'm not very familiar with- gaming. The world-building was so interesting and vivid. I never got bored. This was a lengthy read, but not in vain. The cover and title were perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed this piece of literature, and would highly recommend to anyone who connects with friendship, love, loss, grief, abusive relationships, and the need to belong somewhere.

I loved this, it was such a lovely story with interesting characters. I enjoyed it right from the start and thought it would appeal to many types of people not just readers interested in gaming too.

A story of friends, gaming, and the political issues it creates. I’m not into digital games so this book although enjoyable wasn’t up my ally. If you’re a gamer, I’m sure you’d love it!

Thank you Net Galley for the free ARC. If you are a gamer and you liked Ready Player One, you will love this book. It is basically how a group of misfit friends produce and publish games and deal with their own relationship issues. I enjoyed this!

Plot: 4.5/4.75
Characters: 4.5
Writing Style: 5
Cover: 5 (based off the actual cover and not what is displayed here, because it appropriately resembles a game case - otherwise, I'd have given it a 4 without the dedication to detail)
Enjoyment: 4.75

Ample amounts of vulnerability and intimate relationships, chock full of pop cultural references both recognizable and not (I enjoyed Googling while reading, and also looking up the handful of words I was previously ignorant of). I had such an enjoyable experience reading this for most of its duration. I did find frustration with a few decisions (or lack of action) that Sadie and Sam committed to, especially the former, but at times it fit, even if it left me grumbling. It's Sadie, though, that knocks off a few points from the fun novel, but revealing why would be a spoiler. The characters, even the side ones, are so well developed. A lot of natural feeling to it, plus exciting insight on how to create a game through a certain lens. Format is well done, and again I'm reusing the word, fun. Zevin mixes it up a few times, and I like how the book is divided up. I laughed, I teared up (and would have possibly cried had I not been consumed by a recent death in the family), I cringed, I nodded along. Mostly, I was smiling whilst reading, though I don't one hundred percent get behind everything about the ending.

If you like video games, or tabletops/RPGs, or hobby board games, and/or "Ready Player One", this is the novel for you.

This book is different from anything I have ever read. The introduction claims this does for video games what “Cavalier and Clay” did for comic books… and I thought Zevin’s world building was intriguing. We have a kind of romance between two or three characters set in the world of games… and games is what our characters- especially Sadie and Sam- come back to. (I also really dug the Macbeth allusions.)

I have to say though… I really dislike Sam. Sadie has her moments, but I didn’t find anything redeeming about Sam.

I began playing EverQuest shortly after its release. Before that, I had been involved in various text-based D&D themed games, among other arcade games, since the late 80s. I loved Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, but it felt more fantastical than real.

In comes Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Zevin takes the 80s, 90s, and 00s, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Ultima, adventures, platformers, shooters, and more and she has molded them together with the story of three characters, Sadie, Sam, and Marx, and created a masterpiece of writing for "geriatric gamers" like me. In fact, this is the only book I've seen EverQuest mentioned in (thank you, Zevin!).

I loved every minute of this 400+ page journey. I found some parts to be a bit reaching (I don't recall some of the more gender-inclusive stuff as being around in the 80s and 90s), but it was nice to see it there. I loved the ideas of the games introduced and the way that storytelling seemed to weave in and out of reality and alternate reality, something those of us who have spent half their lives in the gaming world understand on a deep and personal level.

I highly recommend this story. I recommend it even if you don't game, because there's a real story there about relationships and love and how messy it is to be human. I couldn't put this one down, not even to play a video game.

I loved this magnificent book! Even though I have no interest in video games, the book completely absorbed me. The author brought the unique characters and relationships to life, and I loved her vocabulary. I can't wait for the book to be released so I can buy it for people in my life who are gamers; I can only imagine that they will appreciate it even more than I did. Readers, please don't let the subject matter keep you from reading this- it is a wonderful book about relationships, more than anything. I was also happy to learn more about the video game industry.
I was delighted to have the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book because I loved AJ Fikry and Young Jane Young. The books couldn't be more different, but all are outstanding. Zevin is such a talented writer! Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher. I highly recommend this book and I think it would be an excellent choice for book discussion groups.

Extremely well written. Believable and realistic characters. A unique storyline. A modern love story.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58784475

I flew through this! It had a sort of old-fashioned, saga-of-decades feeling that I really love in a book. In this way, it reminded me of Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers and John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies, which are two of my favorite novels and at least to this reader, don't seem to be the typical style anymore even though they used to be the norm. It also reminded me a bit of TJR's Daisy Jones and the Six, and Dawnie Walton's The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, and so I was expecting more interviews like we saw in the beginning and was surprised when they petered out. I liked that there were some experimental chapters, but I also didn't understand why Marx's chapter was in the second person and found it a bit distracting. Similarly, I thought the Emily B. Marks section went on a bit long, although it was an interesting device. All in all, though, I really enjoyed it! I even had dreams about Sadie, Sam and Marx.

This book was fantastic! It is about love and relationships and grief and life. It is also about video games, but it has much deeper themes. If you don't like video games that fine, you'll enjoy this book. If you love video games you'll find this story enjoyable as it weaves the characters experiences into the story.

There are two things that made this close to five stars but just missed the mark for me. Right off the bat the narrator uses several very large vocabulary words that I feel like are unnecessary. It happened so many times that it caught my attention. I have such a pet peeve for using SAT words when a simple common word would do the trick and be more impactful! You can say more by saying less. I can understand when the characters speak this way, it's part of their intelligence as students of Harvard and MIT. For me, the author could have kept it simpler. If I was recommending this book to students I would also need to lend them my kindle so they could look up words as they read.

My second, smaller grievance was the length of the book. I really loved the book and the story I just felt like some parts dragged on. It took me a long time to get through this one.

Overall it was a fantastic book and a creative story. Different than a typical fiction book. A story about a relationship that is deeper than love.

Normally when I finish a book I have some strong opinions either pro or con. I am of two minds with this novel, which is excellently written and an epic tale of its three principle characters. We follow their exploits for the next 20 years, starting when they are all in their late teens. If you are interested in computer gaming, the book portrays the world of game creators and the gaming industry very realistically -- I covered this world as a tech journalist once upon a time. And the relationships of the trio -- who form their own gaming studio and quickly become successful -- is also very believable and interesting as they and the industry matures. The downside is that the ending is less than satisfactory as the author takes us inside a game itself that the characters play new roles. It just felt off somehow. Nevertheless, this novel is one of hope, of loves found and lost, of how people work together and work against each other in interesting ways that drives the plot forward. And maybe one day you will find those secret underground LA freeways that are posited in the book. (You 'will have to read it to understand this reference.)

This book has been one of the hardest books to get through. I felt as though half of it was written in a different language because of all of the “gamer” references and this was quite disengaging for me. The characters were easy to understand but a lot of their interaction was choppy.

Thank you for allowing me to preview this book, using NetGalley.

Introducing the book.
Dear reader please meet Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I hope you read this book and love it as much as I did. It is brilliant. I was moved, emotionally involved. The characters are unforgettable. You will be sad to see them go.
Outlining the contents.
This is the story of a lifelong friendship. Sadie Green and Sam Masur build games and a company together. They are gamers. No one here is perfect. There is pain. There is joy. Bumps, craters, in the road along the way. Their connection is well told. You can feel it. Marx is another character to care for. He keeps them focused. Feeds them. Looks out for them. Lets them be Sam and Sadie.
Highlights.
Sam and Sadie are the highlights of this story. Their friendship. The connection to each other. My heart was involved in their retionship. They are creatives. Dedicated to their craft.
Evaluation.
I loved reading this book. Writing is brilliant. It is special. I am ready to read it again.
Thank you #NetGalley #TomorrowandTomorrowandTomorrow #GabrielleZevin