Reviews with content warning for Cultural appropriation - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

A tale that follows friends through multiple coming-of-age stages over 25 years.

Unique plot based around video games, which may put some people off, but like books, the games are stories and have sublime scenery that draw on Japanese, Korean, Jewish and American Culture.

Clever, but another book where you want to bang the two leads’ heads together. The “in love but not lovers” trope is getting a little tedious.

*Spoiler*
I found the first half cliche and starting to drag, but it was almost redeemed in the second half until Sadie’s closing monologue moaning about Gen Z.

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theirgracegrace's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The faux biography Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin astounds at every possible juncture. Centring a pair of marginalized video game developers and their rise to fame, her book delves deep into the psyche of both major characters. She plots their success at forming their game company Unfair Games, their fights (creative and personal), the consequences of their success, their separation and their reunion. Every character leaps off the page and demands to be a player, not an NPC, and the characters' pasts heavily influence their development and their actions. I have never read a book so enthralling, so personal, or so realistic. I eagerly await more from Zevin and her incredible mind!

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jpn99's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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adragoninspace's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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robyn_fenix's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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augustar14's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The characters and their relationships are well written. Ultimately, though, there are times when the detachment the characters feel made scenes more disturbing, not less.

Spoiler

The biggest example of this for me was the scene where Dove handcuffed Sadie to the bed. Her non-reaction made it almost feel more traumatic. I nearly stopped the book there, about halfway through.

This book has a lot of pain, and heartache, and characters who don't know how to communicate and don't ever really figure out how. It's important, I think, to be prepared for that going in. It's not a feel good book. It has some fantastic quotes about life, play, and relating to other humans. It is very clever at times. But I can't say I fully loved it. Or that it was exactly what I needed or was looking for. Despite that, I don't regret reading it. I don't think there will be a reread, though.

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bisexualwentworth's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Okay, I put off reading this book for a long time because it's so popular and so hyped up and I am a contrarian, but Tomorrow x3 is in fact EXCELLENT.

This novel tells the story of the relationships between Sadie Green, Sam Masur, and Marx Watanabe in an occasionally non-linear and experimental way over the course of about three decades. I've seen a lot of people describe this book as just the story of Sadie and Sam's friendship, but I don't think that's wholly true. Marx--and Sam and Sadie's relationships with him--is just as important as they are.

We meet Sam and Sadie as long-lost friends reunited and quickly learn why their initial tween friendship ended. Marx is at first Sam's roommate and then becomes generally the backbone of everything when Sam and Sadie start creating videogames with each other.

The games in this book--Solution, Ichigo, Both Sides, Mapletown, Master of the Revels, and others--are intriguing and add a lot to the story in the way that they use literary and pop culture references, show changes in tech and cultural norms over time, and help to show us things about the characters. This is not, however, a book about videogames, so I'm not mad at all that none of the games are particularly original in the grand scheme of things. Of course they're not. If Gabrielle Zevin came up with a fully original videogame, she'd probably use that concept outside of the confines of her novel. However, I do know that there is controversy around the resemblances of certain games in this book to certain games in real life, and I don't want to invalidate the feelings of anyone for whom that is a significant issue here.

Sadie is, I think, who I would have become if I'd grown up with more privilege and gone into STEM in college. I see a lot of myself in her, in her flaws and her literary interests as well as in her struggles with misogyny and her relationship with Dov.

Sam is in many ways a classic quirky character, a nerd who struggles to express his feelings and doesn't always know how to do interpersonal relationships. He's not explicitly autistic in the text, but he reads as autistic to me in a lot of ways, and I also resonated with him a lot.

Marx is the producer, the mom friend, the glue. He is a lover of Shakespeare and Homer, a man with expert social skills who struggles with romantic relationships and is doomed to forever be a side character because he is an Asian man living in America in the 90s and early 2000s. I love him just as much as Sadie and Sam do.

The book is named for Marx (it's a Shakespeare quote, Macbeth to be precise, and it is in Marx's honor), and anyone who thinks the title should have been Unfair Games was focused on a VERY different part of the story than I was. Unfair Games the company is a supporting character at best. Marx IS the story.

There are some very harrowing depictions of domestic abuse and gun violence here that could be triggering to a lot of readership, and I think it's important to note that so that you know what you're getting. This is not a trauma novel. It does not follow the trauma plot. It does not revel in its characters' pain, and I love it for that. It is also a novel filled with a lot of pain because the characters, especially Sam, are filled with so much pain of so many kinds.

Also, definitely the queerest book I've read this year that was not explicitly marketed as queer. Everyone is very bi, and the relationship between the three main characters certainly does not resemble any cishet friend group I've ever known. And the most central couple that is actually a couple for the entire time we know them is two men.

Anyway, I loved it.

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