A review by hancaavdic
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
One thing I truly love about this book is that the author does an incredible job at crafting the characters and the dynamics of each relationship, without going into emotional detail (this may party be due to it being told in 3rd person POV?). And while I didn’t exactly *like/love* the characters themselves, nor did I fee any emotional attachment to them, I for some reason kept thinking about them when I wasn’t reading. I genuinely wanted to know what they were going to do next, what would happen next, etc..
that could be the only thing I actually really enjoyed about the story, apart from the writing.
This book is incredibly dense; definitely not as dense as A Little Life, if we’re comparing, but it’s nearly there. There are plenty of passages, paragraphs, phrases/sentences, dialogue, etc that I just did not care for. At all. In fact I think there’s a good chunk that could just be cut out from the book because it truly doesn’t do anything for the book, in the end, in my opinion. Like now that I think of it, I’m just asking myself what was the point? Why did I spend my time reading that? I don’t know. I felt like that a lot throughout the book. The structure and organization is weird because it constantly goes back and forth between the past and present and then at times—very quickly—it’ll jump to a time in the future, and then you’re pulled back in the present. The structure and organization are just weird; I hated the jumps in the past, and so much of it kept interrupting the flow of the story.
The execution of the story is poor. It feels incredibly pretentious and that it was trying to do too much.
Apart from that, one thing that really bothered me about the story is that with the characters, you wouldn’t know what they were exactly feeling or thinking about unless they actually said it themselves through dialogue. And because of that, when the reader reads through their dialogue, the characters seem to fall flat and almost monotonous. The tone of the language lacks emotion, there’s no spark. Nothing. Unless the character says so themselves, AND/OR when the writing in 3rd person POV is focused on their part of the story. And in other parts, it’ll change to 2nd person to put the reader as if they were the actual character. Again, trying to do too much, and in the end doesn’t add much depth to the story.
Also, final note: if you’re not interested in learning all about video games to the core, this book isn’t for you. I wasn’t prepared for that. I didn’t read the summary (I never do anymore with any book) but I don’t think not even that would’ve prepared me for the extensive talk and history about video games there is. Now I just genuinely don’t know what to do with all this information, and at the same time I don’t even know what I read.
that could be the only thing I actually really enjoyed about the story, apart from the writing.
This book is incredibly dense; definitely not as dense as A Little Life, if we’re comparing, but it’s nearly there. There are plenty of passages, paragraphs, phrases/sentences, dialogue, etc that I just did not care for. At all. In fact I think there’s a good chunk that could just be cut out from the book because it truly doesn’t do anything for the book, in the end, in my opinion. Like now that I think of it, I’m just asking myself what was the point? Why did I spend my time reading that? I don’t know. I felt like that a lot throughout the book. The structure and organization is weird because it constantly goes back and forth between the past and present and then at times—very quickly—it’ll jump to a time in the future, and then you’re pulled back in the present. The structure and organization are just weird; I hated the jumps in the past, and so much of it kept interrupting the flow of the story.
The execution of the story is poor. It feels incredibly pretentious and that it was trying to do too much.
Apart from that, one thing that really bothered me about the story is that with the characters, you wouldn’t know what they were exactly feeling or thinking about unless they actually said it themselves through dialogue. And because of that, when the reader reads through their dialogue, the characters seem to fall flat and almost monotonous. The tone of the language lacks emotion, there’s no spark. Nothing. Unless the character says so themselves, AND/OR when the writing in 3rd person POV is focused on their part of the story. And in other parts, it’ll change to 2nd person to put the reader as if they were the actual character. Again, trying to do too much, and in the end doesn’t add much depth to the story.
Also, final note: if you’re not interested in learning all about video games to the core, this book isn’t for you. I wasn’t prepared for that. I didn’t read the summary (I never do anymore with any book) but I don’t think not even that would’ve prepared me for the extensive talk and history about video games there is. Now I just genuinely don’t know what to do with all this information, and at the same time I don’t even know what I read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Gun violence, Hate crime, Injury/injury detail, Medical content, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Car accident, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Abortion, Addiction, Cancer, Gaslighting, Grief, Racism, Vomit, Pregnancy, and Drug use