Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Let's move along to a book I've been seeing everywhere! Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I'm sure you've seen this cover all over the internet as well.

Goodreads Stats

Why I Read This Book/How I Heard About It

This is one of the books that I put on hold in the Libby app many months ago when I saw a TikTok video, which led me to create a list of "Want to Reads" that I have dubbed Unofficial John Green Recommendations.

Goodreads Summary

In this exhilarating novel, 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.

First Impressions

I didn't read the summary before I started this book, so I went in blind, as I usually do. I can tell within the first 20 minutes or so of an audiobook if I'm going to be interested enough to stick with it. Once again, I have tried to start a few recently and abandoned them.

The first was a Tom Hanks book, The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece. This one was extremely well written and narrated by Tom himself, but the subject matter was Tom Hanks's standard WWII old timey fare that he loves to write about and, even though it was technically flawless writing, I just couldn't imagine listening to the story for 8+ more hours. It's not my favorite genre.

And the other was, sadly, a popular chick lit novel that's making the rounds, Happy Place by Emily Henry. I just can't with that book. I guess I'm too old to enjoy it. It felt...immature? I don't know. Everyone seems to love Emily Henry, but she's not my cup of tea.

So, I was wary going into this one. I am pleased to say I was pulled in immediately and the narrator on the audiobook was excellent.

Final Thoughts

The best part of this book is the authenticity of the characters. I wouldn't call myself a gamer and that's not really my world at all, but I do have some sort of partiality to game design, as my daughter is an artist and I absolutely believe she might end up in the field of game art someday. It's a huge industry and it isn't going away anytime soon. It was fascinating to me to read this story and see how a game is created.

There was a beautiful quote near the end of the book that stopped me in my tracks and it really sums up the overall moral of the story, in my opinion.

"For most of his life, Sam had found it difficult to say 'I love you'. It was superior, he believed. to show love to those one loved. But now, it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world Sam could do. Why wouldn't you tell someone you love them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course you goddamn did."

I'm also a huge fan of the show Mythic Quest on Apple TV+ with Rob McElhenney, Danny Pudi, and F. Murray Abraham and this story felt very much like an episode of Mythic Quest.

Another plus for me is that one of the main characters is Korean-American and he lives in KTown in Los Angeles, which my daughter and I recently visited to tour art schools. There is some mention of Cal Arts in this book and it's just fun to have insider knowledge and memories from specific places that you read about. We've both been missing LA a lot because we had such an amazing trip and we were so impressed by the art schools out there.

All of this combined makes for a perfect story for me to dive into. It took me about a day to zoom through this book and I just loved it. Highly recommend this one!

Rating on Goodreads

I rated this book 4 out of 5 stars.

My rating method:

• I rarely rate books 5 stars. I save this for the absolute best books I've read. You know the ones...the ones that you can't get out of your head, even after you've finished them. The ones you think about for weeks afterwards.

• If a book is really, really good, I'll give it 4 stars. If you see a 4-star rating from me, I'd definitely recommend it to you to read.

• If it's just OK, it gets 3 stars. Basically, it means I could take it or leave it. I'd probably read it again because it wasn't terrible. But not like a favorite or anything.

• If I rate it 1 or 2 stars, I would not recommend anyone read it. It either didn't hold my interest or I couldn't relate to the characters/plot.