Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow isn’t a romance novel. The main characters never date, when they reference poetry it’s in the context of a single-player game, and the two leads spend large swaths of time separated by distance (or more often, opinions). And yet! The love that Sam and Sadie have for each other is the beating heart of this wonderfully refreshing book about passion, fame, grief, and gaming and made me fall head over heels.

Sam and Sadie have known each other since they were kids, separated by a misunderstanding in adolescence but brought back together in their college years thanks to a chance run-in on a subway platform. What starts off as a brief reunion turns into the most productive partnership of their lives: the creation of a smash-hit video game, the launch of a tech empire, and a financial and artistic freedom beyond their wildest dreams. Sam and Sadie are content with the knowledge that they understand each other better than anyone else ever will. There is intimacy to be found in creative collaboration, something more profound and perhaps even more risky than romance. But is it enough?

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a book that believes in destiny, but a destiny steeped in reality. These characters are complex, lovable, sometimes messy. They bicker and commiserate; they experience great success and devastating failure. But Sam and Sadie are so beautifully painted and deeply human that you can’t help but root for them to live their most abundant lives. I implore you to pick up this book about love in all its forms—I promise you will walk away from it changed.

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.