Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

There’s something wrong with you if you don’t love this book! Joking 🙃 kind off.
I believe that if you’re in the characters’ age range it’s impossible not to at least like it.
I get we have very complex, sometimes hard to understand, main characters, and their decisions too are not easy to grasp, but i did fall in love with them and their lives.
My favourite was definitely Sam, he’s the clear underdog, the lost traumatised puppy, the half Korean and half Jew orphan, unable to be either, unable to accept himself.
His friendship with Sadie, the white Jewish girl, is one of the best/worst relationships ever, and it leads the whole plot, although I struggled with her because she had the most privileged life, and not many unfortunate things happen to her, still I did understand her, and I do respect her.
And, then, Marx, half Korean and half Japanese, the third and fourth wheel, many times the binder between Sam and Sadie, sometimes not, is super sweet, gorgeous lucky boy, rich and pampered, sometimes a bit bland, but a good character nonetheless.
A book about video games and gamers, written with knowledge and understanding of both the technical and poetic part of gaming and life.
Diverse in background and gender views, even in their sexuality or lack of, although none are focus of the book, just a great background to it.
I’m sure this will be one of 2023 faves, and forever.

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tessalessa11's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring sad medium-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

4.25

I think I went into this book expecting a love story and that’s not what I found. I think if I had picked this book up without any previous knowledge about it I would have liked it a lot more. My own expectations limited my enjoyment. That being said I liked the themes of creativity/collaboration as well as the plot points around disability. Honestly it made me take a hard look at the creative process in general (in a good way). The characters are well developed and not always loveable. That lack of constant loveable-ness makes them feel like real people with real conflict that can annoy you. I wish I had someone in my life who also reads this genre to share this book with.

Spoiler

I was genuinely upset when Marx died. It was a left field plot twist but I think it worked well with the conversations surrounding shooter games earlier in the story. Calling this a love story is rather bold. It is clear Sadie and Sam love eachother but I wanted some real closure. Maybe that was my fault for expecting a sappy romance oops!

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takarakei's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

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

4.75

This book will gobble you up, chew and then spit you back out. Some of the most breathtaking writing and one of the most heart wrenching stories I’ve ever read.

At it’s core this is a story about making art, and friendship - and how complicated friendship can be.

I don’t read a lot in literary genre, but I did feel like there was quite a lot of words used that I didn’t know the meaning of, but I didn’t want to interrupt my reading experience to look them up. Idk maybe that is typical. I do think this is a book I would reread and so maybe I’ll do that on kindle so it’s easier to look up words.

Spoiler

the ending was a bit underwhelming and I think that is because I didn’t feel like the conflict between Sam and Sadie is ever resolved. They have so much miscommunication throughout this book that is never resolved. By the end they I guess kinda get over it, and at least Sam finally tells Sadie he loves her, but I just wanted them to literally have a conversation and understand how dumb both of them were being sometimes! I've docked .25 only cause of how severe the miscommunication trope is in this which I cannot abide

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rachelparker's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring sad fast-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

5.0

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spec_tacles's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-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

I’m in awe of this book, envious of it, and grateful for it. This is now the new gold standard for me in the emerging New Adult genre, although it’s so much more than that. I understand the hype and am now very glad it won the GoodReads Choice Award. There’s so much to love here: smooth and evocative writing, interesting and complex characters, experimental (and successful) structure, thematic symmetry, wisdom regarding impermanence and loss, insight about creative work, the rare valuing of love without romance, humour, representation, and more. Not to mention, I’ve never read anything before that so highly respects video games as art. I didn’t realize how much we needed this until we had it, and now I can see that it fills a gap in that way.

It’s so beautiful that I was tempted to 5-star it, but there are two things that really bothered me, which is the reason for my .25 off. I’ll put them under spoiler tags.

Spoiler

One: Sadie’s continued refusal to talk to Sam was baffling to me and, the longer it went on, the more it became borderline painful to read. The same goes for Sam’s unwillingness to open up to Sadie. However, the conversation about generational differences at the end helped me understand this a tad more. But even so, I find it hard to understand this behaviour, and even if that’s just a personal disconnect, it affected my experience. Two: the way the chapter about the shooting started put me on edge in a way that wasn’t necessary. While the chapter is beautifully done, I wish I knew more going into it. I had no idea IF something had happened, let alone what, because the text from Marx at the end of the previous chapter honestly made everything sound fine. I’m not sure why he phrased his text that way, nor where it would have happened in the narrative. That text message could have set up the chapter with a better balance of anticipation and tension. As it was, I was irritated trying to flip ahead just for a quick spoiler on what I was dealing with. Is this meant to mirror the panic and uncertainty Sadie and Sam had? Maybe, but it could have done so without making me feel completely unmoored from the book and breaking the immersion.

Those are minor critiques of a book that has so much to offer. I will now be recommending this to every friend who plays games, and many who don’t. Thank you to Gabrielle Zevin for sharing this piece of art with us.

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samarakroeger's review against another edition

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challenging emotional 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

one of those books that I was wary about because of all the hype, but I'm extremely glad to say that this lived up to expectations. maybe I had lowered my expectations a bit due to the excessive hype.

this was way more trauma-filled than I was expecting, fyi.

the list of new releases with commercial appeal that have a lot of hype surrounding them that I think live up to their lofty expectations is pretty short: Tomorrow x3, Lessons in Chemistry, and I'm Glad My Mom Died. all are very solid 4.5/5s from me.

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