In a Nutshell: A moving story of relationships. Great character development. Outstanding writing. Medium-paced. Gaming knowledge not required.

Story Synopsis:

Samson Mazer and Sadie Green first met in the hospital in 1987. One of them has a sick sister, the other is recovering from a car accident. A shared love for video games results in an unlikely friendship but a misunderstanding soon separates the friends. When they bump into each other 8 years later at a crowded train station, many things have changed but their passion for gaming hasn’t. They decide to collaborate on a new game, and with this begins a new phase of their joint story – one that will cause many ups and downs. This is a story of the worlds and connections built by Sam and Sadie, both in real life as well as in the virtual domain.

Where the book worked for me:
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i can appreciate this as decent writing and i think her approach in writing this was interesting. she made good points, and i really enjoyed how she presented love between friends. i think people might read this book and miss the point she’s trying to put across. i’m not really sure i can explain what she’s saying either, but i agree with it. you really can find romantic love anywhere. it’s easy to obtain for most people. but a friend who stays with you for a long time, who isn’t tethered by the same obligations as a romantic partner. that’s something special. that sounds sappy but it’s true. you don’t usually have kids with a friend or things that mess with brain chemistry like sex. idk i’ve always been a fan of platonic love being presented as deeper than romantic. because most times it is. i think ppl are just too blinded by the heat of dating that they think that isn’t true.

that being said. this book could have been much shorter and there were times i became bored with what was happening. that’s why it gets 3 stars. i will say that i think the author intended it to be written how it is. it’s just not my taste is all. not necessarily bad writing ( )

i can appreciate this as decent writing and i think her approach in writing this was interesting. she made good points, and i really enjoyed how she presented love between friends. i think people might read this book and miss the point she’s trying to put across. i’m not really sure i can explain what she’s saying either, but i agree with it. you really can find romantic love anywhere. it’s easy to obtain for most people. but a friend who stays with you for a long time, who isn’t tethered by the same obligations as a romantic partner. that’s something special. that sounds sappy but it’s true. you don’t usually have kids with a friend or things that mess with brain chemistry like sex. idk i’ve always been a fan of platonic love being presented as deeper than romantic. because most times it is. i think ppl are just too blinded by the heat of dating that they think that isn’t true.

that being said. this book could have been much shorter and there were times i became bored with what was happening. that’s why it gets 3 stars. i will say that i think the author intended it to be written how it is. it’s just not my taste is all. not necessarily bad writing ( )

TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, by Gabrielle Zevin, is at it's core a love story, but it is so much more too. Sam and Sadie, who met as children, find each other as young adults and begin to create computer games with each other. While their creativity and hard work creates a business makes their financial lives comfortable, they never seem to be comfortable with each other. There is a magnetism that constantly pulls on them to be together and while their current desires never quite match up their love for each other is undeniable.
Without sounding too corny, there is so much love in this book. For instance: familial love, particularly between Sam and his grandparents, idol love between Sadie and her mentor, Dov. Also, brotherly love between Sam and his college roommate/business partner Marx, and the love of gaming. While that and so much more love is a constant in the book, it's also about dreams and harsh realities and everyone's search to find out what it is that they truly want. Zevin crafts the novel well, bouncing seamlessly between the gaming business and everyone's personal story and then carefully blending them together.
I haven't thought about doing this in a long time, but TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW is a book I might actually read again soon, that's how much I enjoyed it! ( )

I read this as a buddy read with Hilary.

Wow!

This book was a page-turner.

I loved the characters and I’m glad we met two of the characters as children, Sam and Sadie. l also love Marx (a really special man!) and Sam’s grandparents and Sam’s mother and Zoe, and some others too. They are three dimensional characters who always feel authentic and I really cared about them.

I wondered if Sam and Sadie were on the spectrum. It would explain some things. Trauma could account for a lot of those things though.

This is a story about friendship and there were many times when I felt sad about the up and down relationship between Sam and Sadie, but everything seemed believable and I loved how it ended. All the bad and all the good things that happen to the characters and how they dealt with them made perfect sense to me.

I had to look up the definitions of the words cicerone and kenophobia. This is a beautifully written and well told story. There are many great quotes.

One particular chapter Marx’s perspective from before being shot to dying from his gunshot wounds, especially since it seemed he might survive, would survive was excruciating to read. It was wonderfully written but emotionally difficult. There is another chapter toward the end whose style deviates from the rest of the book. It’s an interactive game sequence and I might not normally enjoy this but I actually loved that chapter. I was as engrossed in the storytelling as I was the whole way through the book.

There were a few flaws. One dog and a few human characters that seemed important were there and then they weren’t, one with some explanation, however inadequate, but the others just dropped off the pages never to appear again. Maybe that is also true to life but I thought it was a weakness in the storytelling. Also, at one meal one of the main characters said they no longer eat meat but at the next meal they’re eating oysters and for many of the subsequent meals they are eating meat. There seemed to be no point to include the original comment in the story. I know some people change their minds about their dietary choices but no reason was given for them not eating or eating meat. It was a throwaway pointless inclusion. These things were not enough for me to lower my rating though.

I’ve never read quite anything like this story before and I thought it was brilliant.

I thought I’d enjoy this book in spite of the gaming/games parts but I actually liked those parts. This story made the content relatable.

There were so many great quotes and I’m sorry that I didn’t make a note of most of them. I might do a search and hope that other readers on Goodreads “liked” some of the same quotes in this book that I liked. (I might add some of them if I find any I particularly like.)

“Other people’s parents are often a delight.”

“ To return to the city of one’s birth always felt like a retreat.”

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the book’s title, is a from a soliloquy in the Shakespeare tragedy Macbeth but I like the take here: that with games you can always start over and play again. You play and you lose/die but you can play again and again and again until you might win/live. As long as you’re alive in the real world you can keep trying for happiness, success, etc.

Trigger warnings: gun violence, sexual partner cheating, power imbalance between lovers, hospitalized children, loss of a parent when young, characters with depression and anxiety, physical injury & disability. There are probably many more. The story is so superb and unusual (and most of it is about other things) so I suggest that most readers give it a try even if they normally avoid this sort of content.

This is a lovely and heartwarming story with memorable characters. 5 full stars. I am in book hangover territory. I think books I read in the near future are sure to pale in comparison. ( )