Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

After reading this book's blurb that describes a story about friendship, redemption and betrayals (oh my!), I was eager to read this new book by Gabrielle Zevin. But this was not the book I was expecting, and I didn't connect with it as I had hoped. 

You see, I am not a gamer. At all. I suck at MarioKart and my only flex is that I used to kick butt at JumpMan (a PC game no one probably knows anymore) and can hold my own in PacMan. That is where my interest and talent with video games abruptly ends. And that's okay. Except when a book like this spends a lot of page time detailing the design, terminology, and features of video games. Some reviewers say you don't have to love video games to love this book, but I strongly disagree.

I enjoyed the first quarter of this book that focused on the sweet early friendship between Sam and Sadie. But soon the story became heavy with video game terms and descriptions which took me out of Sam and Sadie's relationship. My attention soon dwindled for the rest of the story and the part of the book that was written from within a game lost me completely.

The characters are well-drawn but not likeable and it didn't feel like they changed much over the course of the book. I enjoyed the 1980's and 1990's nostalgic feel, but I found it odd how the author used big (kinda pretentious) $10 words - like she wanted her thesaurus to get a workout. Words like verisimilitude - which was used at least 4 times. It was weird. 

This book has a unique premise, and I liked the focus on friendship, loss, failure and redemption, but I had to push myself to pick it up because its pacing was too slow, and it was simply too literary (and video gamey) for my tastes. I loved Zevin's Young Jane Young but clearly, I was not the ideal reader for this book. 

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Knopf Publishing Group for my complimentary copy of this book which was given in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 2.5 stars

Author: Gabrielle Zevin

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Type and Source: Hardcover ARC from publisher

Publisher: Viking Books

First Published: July 5, 2022

Book Description from GoodReads: 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.

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.