A review by woolgatherer
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

emotional sad tense medium-paced

3.5

I‘m definitely in the minority here when I say that the book was okay, at best. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did, especially because it was about video games. Honestly, it was probably because it was about video games that I was driven to finish this book. Besides this, though, I felt that the book really started to fall apart at the seams around the halfway mark, and barely held together by the end of the book.

While there is a plot of sorts, it read to me as though Zevin wanted her book to be character-driven. I think she was fairly successful on this front, but it was not without fault. I was really looking forward to her dive into a very complicated friendship mired with platonic love and frustration. I thought the first portion of the book did an excellent job with this, so, it was a bit of a disappointment that what could have been a rich exploration of such friendships ended up being an unrequited love kind of situation. It felt like a lazy choice to me. I was also frustrated with how Sam and Sadie’s relationships with other characters played out, which, frankly, felt very much so like how one would interact with NPCs. It was especially the case with Marx (who was too perfect for comfort), whose role in the book later on came off as an insensitive (and, frankly, manipulative) plot device to push Sadie’s story further.

I also think another thing working against Zevin was that she was too ambitious with the second half of the novel. There was too much she wanted to explore beyond characters and their relationships with one another that she kept introducing. Notably (to me), she wanted to tackle various sociopolitical issues as well. I would have rather she tackled one or two issues rather than several surface-level discussions that left a lot to be desired.

I think it’s still worth checking out this book, especially if you love video games. Also, while I had my issues with the content, I think Zevin is a rather good writer, and I thought the way she experimented with the structure of the book was quite fascinating.
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