Review of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

I have been a fan of Gabrielle Zevin since she wrote YA books. Her latest is a book about video game designers, something that didn’t really grab me. But did I change my mind after I read it? Check out my Review of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow!

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Published on July 5, 2022 by Knopf. Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for review.

Synopsis: On a bitter-cold day in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees 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, intimate since childhood, create their first video game 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.

What Other Books Has Gabrielle Zavin written?

I’m a big fan and thought I knew all Gabrielle Zevin‘s books, but no.

In 2005 she published two, Margarettown, an adult book that was selected as a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great Writers” section, and Elsewhere, a popular YA novel.

She followed that in 2007 with more YA: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (which has been adapted into a Japanese film) and then a trilogy (All These Things I’ve Done) set in a futuristic, dystopian version of New York.

I interviewed Gabrielle on my former blog in 2014, and I decided to re-publish my interview with Gabrielle Zevin here so you can read it if you want! Clearly her love of Boston, Shakespeare, complicated friendships and characters facing adversity is a continuing thread in her work!

Gabrielle Zevin moved back into adult fiction in 2014, with The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, about a widowed bookstore owner. In 2017, she published Young Jane Young, loosely inspired by the Monica Lewinsky story.

Review of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

I have to confess that I was pretty reluctant to read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I’m not a gamer and didn’t think I could relate.

But by the book’s first scenes, I was hooked. The book’s two main characters, Sam and Sadie, run into each other on a platform of the Boston T. The two have a decade-long friendship that began under unusual circumstances, hit a rough patch, and now has the chance to resume.

The book made me see video game design as another form of world building, and of gamers as a community like readers (with some overlap, I’m sure.) I generally love stories about the creative process, whether that’s reality shows about fashion design or books about artists.

But Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow isn’t just about the creative process. For me, it was about the interconnections between the creative process and life. The book made me think about how imaginary worlds can sustain us when real life becomes too painful or difficult. How lengthy friendships can be messy and difficult but also filled with shared experience that nothing else can replace. That the synergy and collaboration that exists in a friendship or partnership can be life-altering. How hard it can be when you need something from someone else and they can’t or won’t offer that.

It takes a lot for me to be moved to tears by a book but it’s happened to me twice recently: once with Carrie Soto Is Back (review coming soon) and also with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. (Maybe I’m just getting soft or maybe I read too many thrillers!)

In any case, if you think you won’t like a book about gaming, do NOT let that discourage you from reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. It was one of my favorites of 2022 so far!