Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Book Review: A Story About Creation, Friendship, and the Quiet Work of Beginning Again
About the Author
Gabrielle Zevin has always written stories that sit somewhere between warmth and introspection. They don’t rush to impress you. They stay with you instead.
Born in New York and raised in Florida, Zevin grew up between cultures—something that subtly finds its way into many of her works. She studied English and American Literature at Harvard and began her career in screenwriting before moving into fiction. Over the years, her name has steadily become associated with emotionally grounded, character-driven narratives, especially among readers exploring Gabrielle Zevin books beyond the mainstream.
With Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, she leans into something slightly unexpected—video games and gaming culture—but without losing the emotional core that defines her writing.
Where the Story Begins
Any Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow summary you read will tell you that this is a story about two game designers. That’s true. But it’s not where the story really begins.
It begins, instead, with two people who once knew each other in a very specific, very vulnerable moment.
Sam Masur is recovering from a life-changing accident. Sadie Green is volunteering at the hospital. They meet, they play games, and for a while, that shared space becomes a kind of refuge.
Then life happens—as it does—and they drift apart.
Years later, they run into each other again. A train station. Boston. The kind of meeting that could easily have meant nothing.
But it doesn’t.
What follows is a long, complicated partnership built around video game design and storytelling. Together, they create a game—Ichigo—that changes everything. It brings recognition, success, and a sense of purpose. It also brings tension.
Because creating something meaningful with someone else is never simple.
Marx Watanabe enters their lives as a third presence—steady where they are volatile, grounding where they are restless. And slowly, almost without you noticing, the story becomes less about games and more about people.
Themes in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
This is where the novel really opens up. Not through plot twists, but through what it chooses to sit with.
Creative Collaboration Is Not Always Beautiful
There’s a tendency to romanticize collaboration, especially in art. This book doesn’t do that.
Sam and Sadie work well together—until they don’t. They understand each other—until they misunderstand everything. Their partnership is built on shared vision, but also on ego, silence, and the occasional inability to say what actually matters.
That’s what makes the theme of creative collaboration feel real here. It isn’t just about making something together. It’s about what that process takes out of you.
Video Games, But Not in the Way You Expect
If you’re not particularly interested in gaming, this might sound like a barrier. It isn’t.
Zevin treats video games and gaming culture as a medium, not a niche. What matters is not the mechanics, but what they represent.
Through the lens of video game storytelling, the novel asks a simple question:
Can something digital carry emotional truth?
And surprisingly, the answer feels like yes.
Friendship, Love… or Something Else Entirely
One of the most quietly powerful threads in the book is the tension between friendship and love.
Sam and Sadie don’t fit neatly into either category. Their relationship shifts depending on time, distance, success, failure—sometimes even mood.
There are moments where it feels like love. Others where it feels like partnership. And then moments where it feels like neither, just something complicated and unfinished.
If you’ve ever tried to define a relationship and failed, this will feel familiar. These are complicated friendships, the kind that don’t resolve easily.
Art and Identity
For both characters, creating isn’t optional. It’s how they process things.
Their work becomes an extension of who they are, which is why disagreements about the work feel personal. Because they are.
The novel keeps returning to this idea—of art and identity being intertwined. You don’t just make something. You leave parts of yourself inside it.
Failure, Restart, Repeat
There’s a rhythm to the book that mirrors the rhythm of games.
You try something. It doesn’t work. You try again.
That loop—failure and growth—isn’t presented as dramatic or inspiring. It’s just… normal. Necessary, even.
And maybe that’s the point.
The Characters Feel Real (Because They’re Not Always Likeable)
Talking about Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow characters is interesting because none of them are written to be easily liked.
Sam can be distant, sometimes frustratingly so.
Sadie is brilliant, but not always easy to understand.
Marx, in many ways, is the most emotionally accessible—but even he isn’t simplified.
They make decisions that don’t always make sense. They hurt each other. They care, but not always in the right way.
And that’s exactly why they work.
What Stayed With Us
What works most in this novel is its restraint.
It doesn’t try too hard to be profound, even when it is. It lets ideas sit. It lets relationships remain unresolved.
The use of video game design as a storytelling tool is also surprisingly effective. Not because it’s innovative, but because it feels honest.
And then there’s the way it handles modern relationships—not as clear categories, but as shifting spaces between people.
What Didn’t Fully Land
That said, there are moments where the writing feels… a little too aware of itself.
The dialogue, especially between Sam and Sadie, can sometimes feel overly polished. As if every line has been carefully shaped to reflect a larger idea.
It’s not distracting, but you notice it.
And occasionally, that polish creates distance.
Lines That Stay With You
Some passages feel less like quotes and more like observations you might come back to later:
There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.
“And what is love, in the end?” Alabaster said. “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”
This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.
But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.
This life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.
Is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Worth Reading?
If you’re asking is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow worth reading, the answer depends on what you’re expecting.
If you want something fast-paced, probably not.
If you’re open to something quieter—something about creative collaboration, friendship vs. love, and the slow evolution of relationships—then yes.
It’s the kind of book that doesn’t demand attention. It earns it.
Conclusion
This Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book review isn’t really about whether the book is good or not.
It is.
But more than that, it’s about how it feels to read it.
There’s something understated about it. It doesn’t try to overwhelm you. It just stays—through its ideas, its characters, its silences.
It isn’t perfect. Some moments feel too carefully constructed. Some conversations feel slightly artificial.
But even then, it never feels empty.
And in the end, that’s what matters.
If You Liked This Review…
If this Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book review resonated with you—especially its quiet reflections on friendship, identity, and the meaning we create through art—you might also enjoy our take on Poonachi. While the worlds could not be more different, both stories share a similar emotional undercurrent: they explore what it means to exist, to endure, and to find meaning in unexpected places. You can read it here.
