Name: Anthony Teo's review of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Item: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Rating: 4
Author: Anthony Teo

Gabrielle Zevin

"A modern love story about two childhood friends, Sam, raised by an actress mother in LA's Koreatown, and Sadie, from the wealthy Jewish enclave of Beverly Hills, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry"--

A Novel

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it.

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back— 

I know you won't hurt me, even though you can

. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love.

"But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it."

"How many times can you look at something and know that everyone around you is seeing the same thing or at the very least that their brains and eyes are responding to the same phenomenon? How much proof do you ever have that we're all in the same world."

Steph Lodico

“They die all the time, actually. It doesn’t mean the same thing.”

There is no purity to bearing pain alone.

How much of your life had been happenstance? How much of your life had been a roll of the big polyhedral die in the sky? But then, weren't all lives that way? Who could say, in the end, that they had chosen any of it?

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

Vera Heilig

There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway. 

Jean Catolico

“This life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.”

“people who give you charity are never your friends. It is not possible to receive charity from a friend”

Eneko Uruñuela

"Come on, Sadie. There'll always be another class. How many times can you look at something and know that very- one around you is seeing the same thing or at the very least that their brains and eyes are responding to the same phenomenon? How much proof do you ever have that we're all in the same world?"

they were talking about a dog and it actually explained the trust between human and dogs and i love it

“I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can.”

“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.”

Iris van der zanden

No, that came out wrong. What you meant to express was the existential grief that comes with the knowledge that all things die. You are not dying, except insofar as you have always been dying.

Throughout his life, Sam had hated being told to "fight", as if sickness were a character failing. Ilness could not be defeated no matter how hard you fought, and pain, once it had you in its grasp, was transformational. 

“to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it”

SO CUTE i think this is what it means to have a childhood ? 😭

“I’m always seeing the world with magic eyes,” he said. “I’m exploding with childish wonder.”

In the midst of the crowd, I don’t see nobody but you? 😭

“She scanned the crowd slowly and when she spotted Sam, the smile spread over her face like a time-lapse video he had once seen in a high school physics class of a rose in bloom.”

“Time was mathematically explicable; it was the heart—the part of the brain represented by the heart—that was the mystery.”

Marie

kelly

Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met—he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn't truly understood the nature of Marx's good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know—were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because they were growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before.

as much as i despised Dov he was onto something here

"You go back to work. You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you. You remind yourself that no one is paying any attention to you and it's a perfect time for you to sit down in front of your computer and make another game. You try again. You fail better."

Anthony Teo

Deeply moving and so well done. The premise seems very simple and honestly boring - but the execution is stunning and for two extremely unlikable main characters, I could not put this down. I do feel that Sadie was the more unlikeable and incredibly unfair to Sam almost their whole life while claiming to be the victim which I felt was wild but it was done very well. You really do feel for these two broken people at the end. And Marx, omg Marx, my heart bleed for that sweet baby angel. 

Katie Allard

There’s so much to say about this book and how rare it is to find a story that touches so many different subjects. The complexity of relationships and growing up. I’ve never truly connected with a book but for once I feel a connection to all the characters. Archetypes of people I’ve met and know well in real life, parallels that invoke incredibly strong positive and negative emotions. Sam and Sadie, two star crossed lovers. 

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Southern California and went to college here too but something about this story just made me relive so many different points of my life. I highly recommend that everyone read this book. 

Naveen Sheik

There’s so much to say about this book and how rare it is to find a story that touches so many different subjects. The complexity of relationships and growing up. I’ve never truly connected with a book but for once I feel a connection to all the characters. Archetypes of people I’ve met and know well in real life, parallels that invoke incredibly strong positive and negative emotions. Sam and Sadie, two star crossed lovers. 

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Southern California and went to college here too but something about this story just made me relive so many different points of my life. I highly recommend that everyone read this book. 

Really loved this one. Until the last two chapters. Still. I recommended it to Jabiz right away. And he read it in one night. 

Paula Plaza Ponte 

Comfy wholesome friendship book, chewable and tasty, lagged a bit for me in the end 

maddy rowley

Jenny Qian

I didn’t get the fights tbh

I see what ppl mean when they say it’s kinda like a lil life, but the YA version?? 

also agree on the book dragging at the end…, such a dull ending 

it’s so silly that ppl realise love too late…

Riley Bell

4/10/24: Can’t believe I read this book over a year ago. It’s actually one of my top favorite reads. I will have to do a reread so I can give a proper review, not sure why I didn’t in the first place.

brie

how do you convey in words, a feeling you do not know the name of? i bet this author has never had this problem before because this book called me dumb in so many words. literally. i’ve never had to look up so many words as much as i had to for any book i have read when reading this. someone needs to put their thesaurus down damn. but i digress.

back to how this book made me feel. this is one of those books where after you’re done reading, you feel like you have lived the characters’ lives with them from beginning to end. you feel their joys, their triumphs, their pain, their accomplishments, their losses, their mundanity, etc. you feel. heading into this, that is exactly the experience i was hoping for and i got a full serving of that with some dessert on the side. 

the execution of the games aspect was masterfully done to the point where even if you’re not into video games, you’ll still love and appreciate it. personally, i’m into video games so this was completely delightful for me and agonizing at the same time because i literally wanna play every freaking fictional game mentioned in this book. like why would you write about such great games that are not even real?! i have serious beef with her. 

one of the things i really loved about this was how during the  present  in the book, there are little flashbacks through a character’s reminiscing of something or them remembering a minor event and the way those are written because they perfectly mimicked real life and how as you’re going about your day you suddenly remember a memory and think about it briefly and then you draw some sort of joy or comfort from that memory.

a moment of silence for that npc chapter because it utterly destroyed me and i will never ever get over it. 

i truly enjoyed annotating this and discussing this in depth with Steph, whom i buddy read with. i have so many favorite quotes from this but i can’t write them all so i’m just going to leave one of my favorite quotes from the book:

 “What is a game?” …. “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.” Marx Watanabe (best boy).

Darice de Cuba

A story about friendship, love and video games. The book and Sam reminded me a bit of ‘A Little Life’ and Jude, but with way less soul shredding trauma.

The video games details were just right, the writer did her research and it doesn’t feel too technical or superficial. Just right.

A contemporary fiction so close to reality I can’t really say this book falls under escapism for me. It was just nostalgic, the coming of age, how technology changes so fast and the generational differences. I will wonder for a while how Sam and Sadie lives will be connected in their 40’s and 50’s.

Let the games begin! From the New York Times best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry--a glorious and immersive novel about two childhood friends, once estranged, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

Taha

Review
Perhaps it is simply because I have not read many books, or because the book's narrative felt strangely familiar - but while reading this, I had the thought that I might have never read a truly great book until this one.

I found this book to be incredibly moving and enjoyed its celebration of all kinds of love.

The writing was lyrical yet accessible. I enjoyed the way the author jumped around the chronology, revealing and foreshadowing elements throughout the book, sometimes simultaneously. It created a sense of longing during joyful scenes and nostalgia in sad ones. 

The characters were flawed, lovable, frustrating and hateable altogether. I feel like I have lived my entire lifetime with these characters, which I have in a way.
 
The video game references felt purposeful rather than like fan-service and celebrated the art form which I appreciated too. I wonder how accessible certain metaphors and references are for everyone, as I personally found that they gave the book incredible depth.

I sometimes found I had to reread sections to reacquaint myself with where we were in the narrative when there was a jump, however - this was not a big issue. I thought section 9 could have been shorter, it felt far less considered than the rest of the book and was a little contrived. However I did enjoy the way the narrative revealed itself to the reader so I can't complain too much. I can see myself skipping that section on rereads. Also, I hated reading anything with Dov in it - but that was probably the point.

I do think that this book could be even better on a reread given that knowing the ending would change how you'd experience the context of the scenes.

NOTE: I both listened and read this book, sometimes both, sometimes either. It was a really fun experience and the audiobook is incredible.
Recommend to a friend? Yes
Read again? Yes
Inspired me to create? Yes
Filled me with the inescapable dread that I will never be able to make something as good as this? Yes

Jane Keal

I can’t tell if this book leaving me just a little bit unfulfilled was part of the overarching theme she was going for. Overall there are so many important topics that she covered and I commend her for it, but too often I just wish we could have gotten to the point. Yet I still find myself rooting for this book. 

Kaitlyn R

Clive

** spoiler alert **
           May everyone be as amazing as Marx is.

Pierre

Cute and generational. Not sure I can recommend it other than for the journey. It's a good journey.

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. "Utterly brilliant. In this sweeping, gorgeously written novel, Gabrielle Zevin charts the beauty, tenacity, and fragility of human love and creativity. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is one of the best books I've ever read." —John Green On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

A novel

Bella Baxter

The people who didn’t like this book probably loved Normal People and thought it was the most impactful piece of modern literature they’d ever read. This is what Normal People failed to do, for me.

Update: After doing a bit of research combing through 1- and 2-star reviews, can confirm that the people who did not like this book raved about Normal People LOL. Weird, considering they’re pretty much the same characters, but written better/more believable.

Found the middle quite boring, liked the last 1/3. Found it interesting - as was quite different to other books I have read (enjoyed how the book did not follow traditional love story narratives

Fumi

Eugene

This is absolutely beautiful. It almost perfect hero’s journey - when they return to the starting point to never be the same again. This thorny path, the immeasurable amount of happiness entwined with the same amount of pain that characters went through made me empathize so deeply with them. It’s truly one of those cases when you live a life within a book. It made me happy, made my sad, made me live a life and experience it with them. Lovely book

Teresa Bonifácio

** spoiler alert **
           I don't know if I expected more from this book but even though I liked it, I didn't feel it completely. Marx death was lazy and happened just for Saddie and Sam to "make up". He didn't have an arc. He just existed to be Sam's best friend and then Saddie's boyfriend. I think his character should have been more developed. 
Some chapters were well written and others just seemed lazy and sometimes I felt the writer wrote too much just to say one thing.

It's a good book in my opinion, not an amazing one.

Maria

** spoiler alert **
           "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."  

i knew i was gonna love this from the moment i found out it details the story of two friends, of how their friendship heals and breaks over time, starting from their childhood to their late 30s. it's a theme that i will never get enough of (i devoured Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Series at the beginning of this year for much of the same reason). from the perspective of someone with very limited knowledge of gaming, the video game aspect was handled well. i wasn't overwhelmed, and it wasn't overly technical, but the sections detailing the stories developed in the games made by sadie and sam felt immersive, and it made me want to play those games. zevin's writing is nice and polished, and i feel like even though we occasionally jump from one point in time to another, perhaps in the past or future, this doesn't feel forced; zevin makes this jump feel natural and effortless, which isn't an easy feat. i also think zevin is really good at giving life to her characters, even secondary characters that we might only meet for a while - i loved, for example, reading about sam's mother, anna. and mostly i think i loved the idea of being able to start over, again and again, because "nothing is permanent, ever". 
now, the whole story was kind of a rollercoaster for me in the sense that i was convinced for a good first half of this that it was going to be an easy 5 stars for me, only to start getting frustrated somewhere in the middle then again around the 70% mark, only for it to pick up again towards the end. i was entranced with the first half of the book, and i think that makes sense - this is the part where we got to see a bit of backstory from our main characters and they set off creating their first game and, like them, we are also giddy and excited for the newness of all this. this starts to gradually fall apart as the fault lines in their relationship become more pronounced and harder to ignore, which, again, makes sense. we have two people who ultimately set out to do the same thing, but clearly want different things out of it, and fail time and time again to communicate in any way about any of this. now, here is probably my main gripe with the story: i enjoy miscommunication, i think it's a really misunderstood narrative device; after all, no one really ever says what they truly think, and if they do, things will be omitted for various reasons. it is realistic. however, while i could understand the issues of miscommunication or incapability to properly communicate their fears and wants and needs, i wish it wasn't the only driver of conflict. and that is mainly because somewhere around the second half of the book it not only becomes frustrating seeing them run around in circles, and frankly sometimes be downright awful to one another (and in some instances to marx), but because it becomes clear that there's not a real resolution to this. they never really have an open discussion about any of it, or forgive each other, they just ignore it until it goes away or let time do its thing, until they can't even remember what they were fighting about. 
my second point ties into sam and sadie being terrible to each other at times, and sometimes even to marx, which, again, can be realistic, especially when there is so much left unsaid. in contrast to them, marx is the perfect friend, he loves sam and sadie so much, he is sweet and easy to love, he plays referee, he takes sam's insults like it's nothing, and this is never balanced in any way. this kind of ties into marx's fate, i think, because i felt like marx's exit out of the game was a little too convenient as a plot point, but something that could have been achieved without it needing to happen. sam & sadie's frazzled friendship, at that point in time, was already heading towards a fallout naturally, i don't think it needed the added tragedy of marx. i think a more natural, not-so-abrupt fallout, could have also forced marx to be more balanced as a character, forced now to either continually dwindle between the two or to take a stance. 
the last thing on my list is dov. i just don't understand how he's still in the story by the end of it, and there doesn't seem to be any resolution there either. sadie points out countless times how awful and downright abusive he was towards her and it's just always brushed off by dov saying "i am a terrible man, i know it"... alright? i don't think everything in a story needs to be neatly resolved, but this was such a huge part of sadie's story that is, especially towards the end, almost treated comically. dov treated her terribly but he is a terrible man so what's there to do? c'est la vie! it rubbed me the wrong way. 
i don't want this lengthy review to make it seem like i actually didn't like the story, because i did! terribly! and i think, overall, it's a good thing that i came out of it with so much to digest. i also think i will have to reread this at some point, and i might even enjoy it more as time goes by, perhaps in ten years, when, like sam and sadie, i will probably look at the way i am now, and won't be able to remember what i was so strong-headed about.

Rodrigo Figueiredo Severino

NPCs can’t hurt you they said

Although it lacked a little something to be a five star (maybe Sadie and Sam could be less annoying at times, maybe they could not abandon the Lola plot line so suddenly), but this book has one of the most gorgeous chapters I’ve ever read, referenced in my bit above this paragraph

Vicky  Nuñez 

It's been over a decade since I last read any Gabrielle Zevin, but I'm glad to report I love her writing even more than I did back them.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow is a story spanning decades between the friendship of 2 people: Sadie Green and Sam Masur, their life story from small children meeting at a hospital to decades later working together. 
This book is so moving, complex and real. I think that's makes Gabrielle Zevin's writing so good and so prone to make us burst into tears, her ability to make her storytelling so layered just like real life and make us relate to this characters.

I loved following this cast of characters  through the years of their lives. Each seemingly flawed, except for Marx—of course that sets up his death to be perfectly heartbreaking. Also loved the thread of thinking who has fumbled the bag as badly as Sam! Then the thought that perhaps it was better that Sadie and him just worked together. How would have things turned out otherwise? Stories that convey a deep sadness, but have a hopeful ending are my favorite.

Jevin Sidhu

I grew to like the symbolism and metaphors nested in video games more throughout the book. The apex of the action was a hard right I didn't expect and was my pivoting point where it all started to make sense

Eric Drake

Isabella 

this book is so engaging i have never read such a book written like this?? it might be a little confusing, but somehow it is still cohesive. incredible story!! i loved the read and human nature of this book. mourning the end of it.

Some books steal your hearts. And some books steal your soul. And this book stole them both. Romances are everywhere. But books that focus on friendship and platonic relationships are rare. For me, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a diamond out of gems.

Many people think that this book is just about two programmers who make games together. So did I until one of my friends forced me to buy it. This book is more than what people think it is. I love how the author has arranged the plot line. No character in this book is flawless and it shows what "life and love" is . My favorite character is neither Sam nor Sadie, but Marx , The Tamer of Horses. 😩 I wish I read this sooner because I've been putting this off for weeks assuming that this would be boring and not worth the hype. If you read this far.... go grab a copy and find out why I'm struggling to write a perfect review for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Senali Senanayake 

Some books steal your hearts. And some books steal your soul. And this book stole them both. Romances are everywhere. But books that focus on friendship and platonic relationships are rare. For me, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a diamond out of gems.

Many people think that this book is just about two programmers who make games together. So did I until one of my friends forced me to buy it. This book is more than what people think it is. I love how the author has arranged the plot line. No character in this book is flawless and it shows what "life and love" is . My favorite character is neither Sam nor Sadie, but Marx , The Tamer of Horses. 😩 I wish I read this sooner because I've been putting this off for weeks assuming that this would be boring and not worth the hype. If you read this far.... go grab a copy and find out why I'm struggling to write a perfect review for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Anthony Teo &
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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