I didn't love this - I think it might be a bit like marmite. It was a bit too wordy and experimental for me.

I really liked this book, the story, the characters, the relationship between them.
Thanks for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I wasn't sure what to make of this at the start, is it a book about the emergence of game development? a love story? a friendship saga? To be honest it's a bit of all those and more. The lead characters are brilliant, broken, generous and selfish all at once. The dynamic between them feels believable and I was sad to leave them at the end of the book. (Copy received via Netgalley in return for an honest review)

I struggled at first with this book about gaming and thought, maybe I’m just not of the right generation? I persevered and I’m so glad I did because hiding behind the gaming front, is a beautiful story of friendship, love, trust and loyalty in all their forms - and yes, sadly, along with all those emotions there’s going to be some sadness but it doesn’t detract from what a fabulous story this is.
I think, because I’m not a gamer, I got confused by the part where Emily meets Dr Daedalus but that was a great reveal when I finally understood.
This is definitely worth a read. I’m glad I did.

What a treat of a book! Zevin's latest is a chunky tome telling of the entwined lives of three best friends brought together by loneliness and gaming. A coming of age story, it centers gaming as another form of storytelling. I absolutely loved it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.

Although I am not a gamer, many of my loved ones are, however, I do not think being a gamer is a requirement for reading this gem. This book not only pulled on my heartstrings but submerged me in a world of nostalgia and vibrant characters. Gabrielle Zevin has seamlessly made worlds within worlds and allows the reader to fall head over heels not only for the characters but for the relationships (platonic or otherwise). This story and its characters had me hooked from the first second and kept me all the way to the end. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to experience a world of gaming, love, loss and being human. I will be buying a copy of this when it is out in stores!

Rounding up to three stars.

I think I just wasn't the right person for this book.
There were parts that were just too long for me,and I almost gave up.
There were parts that dragged me back in,and kept me reading.
Not being into gaming at all,I didnt understand some of it.
I do understand friendship though,and this was the main reason I kept reading the book. .

I’ve been lucky enough to read an advance copy of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by by Gabrielle Zevin and it’s really prompted a lot of meandering thoughts. The fiction book is out later this year and while it does focus on a trio of gamers, it’s actually about connection and love and relationships. It’s helped me fall back in love with fiction. It’s not a sappy book but one focusing how complicated life is but also looking at the multiple, complicated lives we all lead and how people come in and out of our lives - not just our real ones but our digital ones. It touches upon disabilities, connections and friendship. There are conversations around multiple narratives and role playing games and also how that ties into our real lives too. I’m not a gamer at all but it was really hard not to get immersed into the world of Sam and Sadie and Marx.

I'll start of by saying I was so incredibly excited to read this, especially when I received an ARC. Zevin's book "Elsewhere" was one of my favourite novels growing up and I hadn't read any of her adult fiction.

This book was incredibly compelling, the characters are unique, messy, sometimes a little toxic, selfish, selfless, ugly and beautiful all in one.

Be prepared to feel sad, you get invested in every moment and feel real loss as well as real emotion. The story explores asexuality, sex, racism, cultural appropriation, grief and homophobia is also done well.

My one criticism is that I felt that the last quarter of the novel dragged a little and could have been tighter (hence the deduction of a star).

4.5 🌟

I absolutely loved this book! I love video games and reading so two things in one was a dream. Combined with a story of an evolving relationship between two friends and how this develops as they get older and their lives change.

I liked the characters, the writing style and all of the cult references to games. I didn’t think that any of the twists were unnecessary or just there for shock value either which I was pleased with, and how the story examines things such as sexuality, sex, racism, cultural appropriation, grief and homophobia is also done well.

It is a long book and maybe there’s a little too much backstory and filler in places. I can also see why some people may not have enjoyed one of the chapters in particular near the end (no spoilers!) but personally I really loved that chapter and thought it was so clever.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow had some beautiful moments and quotes too. I really felt so invested in Sadie and Sam and their journey. Definitely recommend this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book for review.

Good books are fun to read, great books stick with you a little longer, exceptional books have a way of crawling under your skin, digging their way through your heart and creating a home within you.

There is a poem from The Second O of Sorrow by Sean Thomas Dougherty that says

Why Bother?
Because right now there is someone
Out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.


That is what Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was to me, a book in the shape of all the themes I love in literature. A bit of technology, a healthy dose of nostalgia, an interesting outlook on an entire generation, a Forrest Gump-esq story of two friends who became part of the digital footprint of the world we live in today.

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”


We follow mostly Sam and Sadie, two childhood friends who connected over video games. Sam was in the hospital after a car accident, Sadie was visiting her sister who was recovering from cancer. They played Oregon Trail, Mario Bros, and other classic titles. They were both relentless and competitive, and one day, their friendship was over.

Many years later they find each other, they are different, older, wiser, they might even be frenemies. But, still, after all, they can't deny an invitation to play. Sam wants to create something new and unique - he wants Sadie to build games with him.

Spaning 30 years, this book is about technology, the gaming industry, how millennials learned how to speak "videogames" and how that not only shaped our lives but also the world that we live in. After all, the gaming industry is a multibillion-dollar giant. But mostly it's about people, a psychological study in humanity and how we earn to connect.

This was also the story of Marx, their close friend and an NPC. A Non-playable character that is essential to the story, the one who will allow the hero to be heroic. Close to the end, Marx is gifted with a few pages in his POV, and they were absolutely beautiful.

Just like Chris McCandless wrote "Happiness is only real when shared", Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow invites the reader to dwell on what truly matters in life. Is it family, friendship, love, collaboration, how we thrive over our own limitations, our jobs, our fortune, our story, or the trails we leave behind?

There is no right answer, this book is deeply moving and I believe it to be a personal experience to whoever reads it. What I can tell you is: this is an instant classic and one of the greatest pieces of literature of our modern generation.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Literary Fiction

I really, really enjoyed the beginning of this, when Sadie and Sam were kids, but as the years went by in the book, and they grew to adults I found I'd lost that spark in the novel that so caught my interest in the beginning.
I'm not a gamer, but with kids that grew into teens in the late 70s, early 80's gaming is something I've watched grow from clunky hand held devices, ( Nintendo game-boy anyone?) through the first gaming consoles ( the excitement of the NES, and then the SNES!) into the sophisticated games available now, with graphics that make those early games look so different.
This book brought back echoes of those early days, of my boys learning programming and how to work ( and work round!) those early games. Personally Legend of Zelda is the only one I could ever cope with....the gaming side of the story brought back many of those memories, of the boys trying to write games, of excited conversations when a new game came out.
As the story continued I started somehow losing interest in what happened with Sadie and Sam and though the story as a whole was interesting, its not one I'd reread. I'm sure its perfect for others, and I'm not really sure just why my attention slipped but it went from being a story that gripped me and kept me wanting to know what happened next, to one where I just felt indifferent to what was happening.

Stars: Three, a book that started well for me but kind of fizzled out.

ARC supplied by Netgalley and publishers

I am an occasional gamer and this book was interesting to me as I've never read a book set in a gaming world before. New author for me too and I enjoyed the read. It is a little different for me but I think it's good to get out of your comfort zone once in a while.
If you enjoy video games then I think this is worth a read for you.
Thank you to netgalley and the author for allowing me to read this one.

This is the second book featuring gaming that I have read this week, despite not being at all interested in the subject. The first one was a light romance which featured playing a virtual game. This one is very different. It is about the complex issue of creating games from the concept to the engineering and business side of it, and how it developed from the early years. Which is more than I wanted to know but it is interesting. However, at the heart of it is the story of Sadie and Sam and how their relationship grew from their early teens to their late thirties. It is billed as not a romance but a love story, and it is just that. Sam stays steadfast from the beginning but Sadie's mental state forces periods of estrangement during which they lead totally separate lives. But Sam does not give up hope. I loved how the plot flowed and the writing style is assured and competent. I did think it was over long and the periods where Sam and Sadie were apart could have been shortened by a long way. The final game description went into too much detail, but you can feel the author's enjoyment of this new world she had created so t was forgivable.

This is a stunning book - so imaginative and epic, and yet intimate. I loved each character and inhabited their worlds so deeply. It was devastating, but also beautiful, I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

This was a pleasant read, I wouldn’t be a gamer but yet this book caught my interest and was a good read….

A surprisingly poignant, sensitive novel that spans the relationship of two flawed but entirely authentic protagonists. I didn’t expect to enjoy the novel as much as I did, and there was something nostalgic about the 90s/gaming theme that really impacted me (despite knowing nothing about the gaming world!). Sadie’s character, in particular, was so refreshing. Something about her resonanted with me in a way I can’t quite explain, but I imagine I won’t be alone in this…

Thank you so much to NetGalley and RandomHouse Vintage for the privilege!

I’ve been a fan of Zevin’s work for many years. She has the ability to write freely in any genre and doesn’t fit into a mould. Every book is something completely different from the last.

I was drawn to this one as it was set in the 1980’s (an era I know very well). It follows the lives of two gamers brought together by fate. Sam is in hospital after a serious car crash and Sadie is visiting while her sister undergoes cancer treatment. Their mutual love for video games sets them on a path where they eventually become working partners, creating some of the most popular games of the period.

I loved that Sam and Sadie’s relationship was based on friendship all the way through rather than romance. They are like minded and can bicker like siblings. Through their lives their relationship swerves from amicable to tempestuous, but by the end they realise how important their friendship is.

I’ve never read any books about gaming and I felt like I learned a lot about how they are produced from this book. I could never see the attraction of games before reading this, but through the story I realised how important video games are for people, especially when times are tough. The video games created are an escape from reality.

You can’t help but wonder what would have happened if Sadie and Sam had never met. If appears they were brought together after a couple of horrendous events and if they hadn’t happened, would they have found a way to meet.

This book deals with some hard topics but it shows how important friendships are in life.

Bookmarks asked for a review based on some specific questions:
1. What did you like about the sample?
2. What did you dislike about the sample?
3. Imagine you were tasked with pitching Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow to a friend. How would you describe it, in one sentence?
4. What themes did you feel were the most prominant / interesting in the sample? E.g. gaming, friendship, identity / culture, love, nostalgia...
5. What were your favourite moments / did anything stand out?

First Impressions:
The first thing to note is that the Netgalley tool really didn't work for me. It failed to send the book to my kindle app (though without error message) and the Netgalley app itself was borderline unusable because its scrolling across pages was awful. You'd try to scroll down to read the end of a page more easily and the app would jump 2 or 3 pages at once. I almost gave up after the 3rd attempt to get Page 3 to stay put and let me read it.

First impression of the book is that it's overwrritten. The language is dense, static and keeps getting in the way of the story, like the crowd that Sam has to walk through in the opening chapter. It also tries to load far too many ideas into too few pages. By page 6 we know that Sam will eventually go through several changes of name but at this point is still just Sam. He's small, not good looking and wears a ridiculous coat several sizes too big for him. When you boil this and the name change thing down, it makes him sound like a rip off of Douglas Adams' Svlad Cjelli.

We also know that he's come from a humble public school background via the West Coast "smart kid scene" to Harvard and has a lingering obsession with Sadie Green, who may or may not have ever noticed his interest. There's just loads of detail packed into these pages that could easily be revealed much later in the story. It feels a bit as if the author wrote the backstory, cut it off to drop us in in media res, and then had a crisis of confidence and crammed a whole load of backstory back in.

There are also details that don't work: the story starts in 1995 but references Chai tea and Kombucha. Maybe they were prevalent in Cambridge, Mass. as long ago as 1995, but they're much more recent trends in the UK and it doesn't ring true. Likewise "digitalization" and the information superhighway - these didn't really start to happen until later - Amazon and Yahoo were less than a year old in 1995 and Google was three years away.

So far (on page 14) there's *just* enough to keep me battling with the NetGalley UX to keep reading. But only just.

Full Feedback

1. So... two days later, I've finished the book and I really enjoyed it. (I was expecting a sample, but it was a whole 395 page novel which I read in just over 2 days - initially out of a sense of duty but from about 50-60 pages in because I wanted to know what happened).

It's accessible, readable (once it gets going), has some interesting themes, is cleverly structured in the way that themes and images recur but also in how the games in the book mirror the themes and events in the "real world" and the narrative itself turns around the game "Both Sides" so that the second half reflects and inverts some of the events of the first half. The central characters, with a couple of gripes, were strong, well-drawn and believable, and were definitely characters you wanted to spend more time with.

2. What didn't I like. These are relatively small points once you get past the opening - but if there's still time to edit it, they're worth considering.
- The opening is overdone - the prose is dense, there's a lot of backstory packed in, and overall it comes in as trying too hard. The first scene in the station could be pared back quite a bit and just used to get you into the story, with much more left unsaid and to be uncovered or explained later. The book starts to grab you once you meet Sam and Sadie in the hospital so get to that faster. All you really need to know from the first scene is that two former friends have made a tentative reconnection.
- Detail of timings of things. The book has clearly been well-researched in terms of what was available when, but as someone who lived through the same time period, there's quite a lot that doesn't ring true about how characters react to different things. I'm not sure Magic Eye was new or exciting enough in '95 to bring a subway station to a halt. Having email in the mid 1990s or Nintendo in the mid 1980s - let alone an actual laptop, however large - was new, unusual and pretty cool. But Sam and Sadie's reactions are far too normalised. It would be worth checking back on adoption figures for the new technologies that are mentioned and how people reacted to them and making sure that that's correctly positioned

- Authorial voice. The book is (mostly) written in a 3rd person omniscient style with a non-intrusive narrator that just describes what is happening and occasionally drops in a reference to a future or past event that we've not yet read about. And that works well. But there are two or three places where the authorial voice drops in a factoid of contextual information - e.g. the comment about how the area of the LA office would change over time - that has a different tone and feel and breaks the spell a bit. You can do that if you do it all the time (per, say, Douglas Adams), but not if it's sudden and unexpected

- Foreshadowing. There's a good amount of foreshadowing in the book but it can be a bit heavy handed. It's very easy to spot Chekhov's gun being put on the wall, and the payoff isn't as effective. It's also a little inconsistent. Sadie's pregnancy comes as a surprise within that passage and isn't hinted at beforehand - it might have been more effective not to have the attack on Unfair trailed so clearly so that the contrast between new life and uncertain fate is heightened. (Marx's coma - though is it really a coma if he's that aware? - is well done, though, with a real tension over whether he will survive)

- Timeshifting. Most of the shifting between timeframes is done clearly and confidently, but occasionally it's a bit confused. With Sam's finding of Tuesday we're introduced to the idea that he has a dog, then the time shifts and it's not clear how much of it is in the "past" vs him driving around in the present, and whether this is a second dog or (as it turns out to be) his first encounter with Tuesday. Similarly there's an early reference to Freda's death and then she crops up again unexpectedly at a different point in the book and then is dead again, offscreen, later on.

- the bottom of p132 has a "pubic" where I am pretty sure it should be "public"

- Sadie's long grudge against Sam, triggered by the message on the Dead Sea CD, doesn't really ring true. I can see how it's necessary to drive the plot but it's too sudden a shift to be plausible. We either need to see more of her feelings over her second time around with Dov and resentment about how she got into it so that having someone to blame for it is a way of masking her own guilt and self-loathing over it, or we need more of her building the realisation into a barrier between them - it's too sudden a shift.

3. A book about the games we create, in real life or on the screen, and the people we create them with.

4. The use of gaming as a way to explore how we live and relate was well done and thought provoking.

5. Solution. The creation and promotion of Ichigo. Anything to do with Marx (but why did an arch-capitalist call his son Marx?), including his end and the other characters' reactions to it. The final chapter. The sequence with the other Anna Lee.

(Oh - and is the title Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow (per this discussion room) or Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (which is what's on the header in the galleys))

I somehow went into this expecting sci-fi - however, despite that misunderstanding (and spending the first third of the book waiting for that element to kick in!) I found this really compelling. I was enthralled by Sadie and Sam's story (and adored Marx). The writing is beautiful, and really flows - I underlined lots of passages as I was reading, which hasn't happened in a while. I also found that this novel stayed with me after reading - it gave me lots to think about, and I was especially intrigued by some of the comments on the effects of being a regular gamer upon your life outlook.