'Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow' is an absolutely brilliant novel about gaming and also about so much more which, as many reviews have noted, requires absolutely no prior interest in or knowledge of computer games.

Gabrielle Zevin's novel follows the relationship between Sam Mazer and Sadie Green who connect through their shared love as gaming as teenagers, create a game together as college students and then go into business together. Theirs is a deeply intimate but also complex relationship - at times they are as close as lovers but, as we learn quite early in the novel, they are also capable of going for years at a time without speaking to each other. A third important character in the novel is their friend Marx Watanabe, Sam's college roommate who becomes producer of their games and whose relationships with Sam and Sadie complicates their relationship with each other.

Zevin offers one of the best fictional explorations I have ever read of creative endeavour and collaboration with all its tensions, compromises and jealousies - the only other novel I can think of that manages something similar is Joseph O'Connor's 'Shadowplay' in a very different context. The novel also reminded me somewhat of Hanya Yanagihara's 'A Little Life' in the way that it follows a group of high-achieving college students into adulthood, and also in its presentation of disability - although this is a far less traumatic read!

Although this is a novel about much bigger themes than life, love and loss, it is still at its heart all about gaming, and Zevin succeeds in making the world of gaming completely absorbing and fascinating even to non-gamers. The novel invites us to consider the ways in parallels between gaming and real life, but also the contrasts and the infinite opportunities to start again that gaming offers us, which links to the Shakespearean reference in the title.

Zevin's writing is beautiful and totally assured, and I was completely immersed in this novel from start to finish. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

This was so fun! Thisnwas definitly a pretty cover request, but not just the cover was good. The gaming part is fun, but I really enjoyed the friendships and writing style.

What an incredible book! I finished it a week ago and I can't stop thinking about Sadie, Sam and Marx. You can always tell when an author puts a lot of heart into their stories and this is totally the case. I will be surprised if this doesn't end up top of all the 'best of 2022' lists in a few months, and I will definitely be recommending this to friends and strangers for a long time, for sure.

My god, this book was beautiful. Thanks to being born in the 1980s and growing up with an older brother who always had the latest games console, then spending my 20s playing an MMORPG, a lot of the content in the book really resonated with me. The games references and technical lingo were all like a nostalgic callback to when I used to play.

As much as it is about three friends designing a game, the author has explored issues surrounding the creative process, and how wanting to create perfection can lead to creating nothing. She has written about mental health matters such as depression, suicide, as well as working through trauma, coping with disability, grief, etc. Sadie’s a woman in STEM and the author has portrayed the issues surrounding that nicely.

Take away the gaming and the book is about love and friendship. I found it very well written, heartwarming and at points I cried at how sad it was. I loved this book and will read her others!!

This book immediately drew me in. Sadie and Sam met as children in hospital, and bonded over video games, but have a falling out. They meet later and we learn about both their lives and watch their intense friendship develop over the years. They build video games together, and I loved the insight into an industry I knew very little about. Sadie’ s growth in particular, fighting sexism and the difficulties of an abusive relationship with her university professor, was very well described. It is really a book about friendship and relationships, and I enjoyed the large 1990s/ 2000s setting and the way games were well described and linked into the plot. One I didn’t’ want to put down.

I thought this was really well written, I knew nothing about the actual plot but that didn’t deter me from enjoying it.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

This is proper comfort food - nothing pretentious but perfectly executed and good for the soul. A book to get lost in, like a good videogame.

It is the story of the friendship between Sam and Sadie who become best childhood friends while playing Nintendo in a Los Angeles hospital. They don't see each other for 8 years and then accidentally meet as students in Boston in the mid-1990s and decide to create a videogame together.

I loved my videogames when I was younger, but even if you don't like them the book is still worthwhile: it is a beautiful, warm and moving story about friendship and love.

I don't really know how to describe this wonderful book. It's a book to read more than once as it has so much depth and subtlety that reading only once would do it an injustice.

The story centres around Sadie and Sam, who become friends in hospital. Sam has been mute since the car accident that left him with physical and emotional scars. Sadie's sister has leukaemia and Sadie becomes invisible. Together they game and a bond is formed, that though fractured at times, will endure and become something indefinable. It will define their careers, their relationships and will be challenging in so many ways. But ultimately it will prove that friendships like theirs is something precious and rare.

Really beautifully written, highly original and a book to ponder on and return to.

I loved this book. The side characters supported the main story wonderfully and provided a light relief to the toxic and strained relationship between the main characters.
This book provides an insight into the gaming industry, specifically the experience of independent game publishers, while touching on themes of racism, feminism, disability and mental health concerns. There was so much this book was trying to do, and I really feel it managed to approach it all with a compassion and authentic experience that really comes across in the book.

I'm not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination so I was nervous about this one. I needn't have been, there was much to love here. Don't get me wrong, it's very much centred on games. Playing them, building them, philosophising about them.

But all of it is wrapped up in so much humanity. I've actually found myself having quite an emotional reaction to this. Really it's the characters who kept bringing me back. Across the board, they're tender and angry and messy. Yet between failures and triumps, fights and falling in love, betrayal and loss, they keep coming back together.

Need to reflect on it for a bit but it's getting hype for a reason.

This was nothing like what I was expecting - I'm not sure what I was expecting but this book really was fantastic. Whilst it is clearly a YA book in many ways, it is destined to become a classic for all ages. I've never been a gamer but was born just before Sam and Sadie so it took me right back to that era as I had a boyfriend who used to play some of the games they referenced. Moving, beautifully written and thought-provoking, this book will stay with me for a long time.

So to preface, I am not a gamer. I was born in the 90s but we didn’t have games or a lot of technology in the house. I have only occasionally games but my husband loves gaming.

This book offers an insight into the world of gaming that is accessible for non-gamers like me. It’s full of nostalgia from the 80s 90s and early 2000s and is great as a social commentary to the changing world through those decades, especially technology but also other areas as well. The book focuses on two friends initially who bond over their love of gaming as a child. They lose contact and reunite during college where they meet another friend Marx who between the three of them start to create games together. The book shows their developing friendship, relationships and their careers. if you love retro gaming I think you will love this book a lot. If you don’t, the book is really enjoyable and has taught me more about the gaming industry and games. A unique story, I found it a bit slower paced than other books but I feel like it has such a unique quality and it’s a topic I have never read about before.

Despite knowing nothing about gaming, I absolutely loved this clever, poignant and inclusive novel. The story follows childhood friends Sam and Sadie over several decades, as we see them navigate friendship, love, illness and disability, all the while creating immersive video games that offer an alternative reality. Ultimately this is a novel about different kinds of love; it will undoubtedly speak to many readers, gamers or not.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a book about gaming but it is also a book about friendship.
Our key characters are Sadie Green and Sam Masur. Both reserved, they have a shared love of gaming. Their bond is almost obsessive, and from the moment they meet in hospital to the closing pages of the book, we see the role gaming has in their lives.
While in college they design a best-selling game…and with some help from Sam’s room-mate, Marx, game design becomes their world. A start-up created through shared passion, and though there were sections of the book where the gaming talk became a little much there was plenty to keep our interest.
While we’re immersed in the world of gaming, Zevin’s focus is also the dynamics between the key characters and the relationship shared by Sam and Sadie. Complicated, fragile and prone to over-reactions, these two seemed to have a closer relationship than most lovers. Marx’s role seemed to be to bridge the gaps between the two, and yet it seemed rather cruel to dispose of him in the way Zevin did.
This was a solid 3.5 star read for me, but I’ve rounded it up because there were some moments within the book that resonated. Of all the games mentioned within the book I’m surprised that they went with the Emily poetry one to help generate interest…
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review this.

I was nervous to start this as I had heard so much about it, how amazing it is and it just sounded like it ticks all of my boxes. Bildungsroman across decades of friendship, literary references, centred around gaming…I wish I hadn’t waited so long to start! At first, I thought it was set somewhere in the 1920-30s and I’m not sure why, as I knew what it was about. Maybe something in the opening writing that made me think of a fleeting moment in the glamour of a New York crowd.

Sadie and Sam are childhood friends who have fallen out of contact until one day, Sam passes her in the subway station. They reconnect and she passes him a demo of her video game and asks him to play it. The subway station, by the way, has a large crowd around a poster because it’s a new fangled ‘Magic Eye’ picture - which Sadie can do but Sam can’t. In this way this short chapter foreshadows their partnership. I also felt ‘seen’ as I can’t do them either.

Sam doesn’t play her game for a while though, until his roommate Marx picks it up. Their relationship is so beautifully communicated in just a few short references - Sam is poor, Marx is rich and he tries to find ways to help without it seeming obvious while Sam tries to ignore the clothes and food that turn up next to him. Despite their surface differences there are similarities - both grew up in an Asian American household, struggling to fit in no matter where they are. They also both love video games.

Sadie’s game is short but genius, and offensive - the two are intrigued and a partnership starts which sees them enter the game stratosphere alongside Donkey Kong and Doom. I really liked the game references - enough for someone like me with a passing interest but with plenty of nods and injokes for the more passionate gamers, I’m sure. It was also nice to see the smaller games celebrated too - -at one point the trio are playing Braid. This is a game which is perhaps known as an indie title but broke into the big time, proving you just need some good coders and a great idea to do it. It also fits the character preferences as they all like a puzzle to solve. Sam has been drawing mazes for Sadie since they were in their early teens. The enthusiasm made me want to play more computer games than the ones on my phone!

The literary perspective was interesting too, an investigation into the intersection between puzzles and prose - the story makes the game and without a good one, it’s not interesting to play. The title is a reference to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and even that quote is another reference to a lynchpin in literature - Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.

The narrative spans decades and countries, moving from the East Coast in Boston and New York and to the West Coast with California and back again. You’re taken on the journey not only geographically but temporally as well, where more is revealed about childhoods and future dreams.

One of the major themes is existence - can we transcend reality and avoid time and space by living in the internet? When gameplay’s being described the player is drawn into the game quite crisply, where their character takes on their actions (or vice versa). So computer game triumphs and losses become Sadie, Sam or Marx’s.

For fans of the Apple+ TV series Mythic Quest (which actually has a couple of story arcs that cover similar topics), Yanagihara’s tear jerking page turner “A Little Life” and/or the optimistic comic book novel by Chabon “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”.

Thanks to Netgalley and to the publisher, Random House UK,, for the DRC. I’m on the lookout for the special edition hardback with the beautiful coloured pages so let me know if you spot one

I loved this book so much. I loved the nostalgia of the 90s video game chat (and I wasn't even that big into video games!) Its such a heartwarming, unconventional love story and that is one of the things I loved the most about it. Sadie & Sam's character development was amazing but I also loved every character in the book! 5 stars from me

I haven't read anything by Zevin before but I know this book was hotly anticipated by many so I was excited to get my teeth into it. A coming of age story through the lens of gaming? Sounded intriguing. Since it has been published I've read a few mixed reviews of this book and those who tend towards the negative seem to be those who aren't gamers. If you aren't a gamer will you enjoy this book? Sure, possibly, but gamers will be able to tap into aspects of it that those without the same knowledge. The timeline of the book also happily aligns with my age, experience of games growing up etc so I found this aspect of the novel (and it's a big part of it) really enjoyable. Some people might find this annoying and alienating however, different strokes and all that.

For the most part, the book tells the story of Sam and Sadie. Two childhood friends brought together by tragedy, and the trials and tribulations they face through their lives, coming together and falling apart again. Where things fell apart for me was the characterisation of Sadie and Sam themselves. They just weren't particularly interesting to me. Sam in particular was hands down a complete dick sometimes. I know we are supposed to sympathise with him due to his life experiences, but he really is just a complete chode sometimes, particularly to Sadie. The supporting characters were great, even those we aren't supposed to like e.g. Dov. It's refreshing to see a book in which characters actually grow in a meaningful and realistic way. Lots of books now have these black and white, good or 'bad' characters but Zevin has done a great job of capturing the nuance and subtlety of the human character.

There are some really hard-hitting and touching moments in the narrative. I can't really say what these are without spoiling major plot points, but the part of the book that explains the book's title just broke my icy little heart.

A love letter to gaming and a nostalgic journey through the millennial experience. I had a lot of fun reading this book.

5 stars, no doubt!
I absolutely loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I knew I was going to love it from the start. The video games references,, the characters, the plot - all perfect.

Unlike other books of the same genre, this one wasn’t crammed with video game and pop culture references. It was a really nice balance.

The story was incredible, unfortunately I did have a major bit of plot spoilt for me around 80% into the book. So I felt like I couldn’t feel the emotions that I would have, if it wasn’t spoiled? But I do know that it would be 5 stars if not anyway!

I'm not a huge gaming fan, but I still loved this book. Its about love, but more friendship love than 'relationship' love. I felt like I grew to love the three MCs myself, and liked that they were fully fleshed-out and weren't 'all bad' 'or 'all good'.

Sadie and Sam meet as kids in a hospital and bond over their love of computer games. Tomorrow x3 follows their intertwining lives as they go on to produce a range of well-known and loved computer games - alongside Sam's friend, Marx. Gabrielle Zevin immerses us in the complex and imaginative world of computer game production with plenty of gaming references, though don't let this put you off! I enjoy the odd game, but am by no means a gamer. However, I was incredibly interested in the novel - it's not often I hold off on reading because I don't want it to end, but I really did not want to pick this book up and finish it.

Tomorrow x3 was both entertaining and heartbreaking. This is one of those books that I will be thinking about for a long time.

(Review also posted on Goodreads)