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.

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.