Buy new:
Save with Used - Good

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
Follow the author
OK
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A novel Hardcover – July 5, 2022
Purchase options and add-ons
"Delightful and absorbing." —The New York Times • "Utterly brilliant." —John Green
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years • One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, GoodReads, Oprah Daily
From the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: 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 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.
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKnopf
- Publication dateJuly 5, 2022
- Dimensions6.43 x 1.4 x 9.53 inches
- ISBN-100593321200
- ISBN-13978-0593321201
![]() |
Frequently bought together

More items to explore
- 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.Highlighted by 24,330 Kindle readers
- 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.Highlighted by 16,529 Kindle readers
- “You’re incredibly gifted, Sam. But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”Highlighted by 11,636 Kindle readers
From the Publisher




Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, TIME, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Oprah Daily, Slate, Self.com, Bookpage, Kirkus, SheReads, GoodReads, Goop, and The What List
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Jimmy Fallon Book Club Pick • A Time Must-Read Book of the Year • A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction • BookPage Best Fiction of the Year
"Delightful and absorbing...Zevin burns precisely zero calories arguing that game designers are creative artists of the highest order. Instead, she accepts that as a given, and wisely so, for the best of them plainly are...Expansive and entertaining...Dozens of Literary Gamers will cherish the world she’s lovingly conjured. Meanwhile, everyone else will wonder what took them so long to recognize in video games the beauty and drama and pain of human creation."
—Tom Bissell, The New York Times
"A tour de force... A moving demonstration of the blended power of fiction and gaming....Zevin describes herself as 'a lifelong gamer.' That level of experience could very well have produced a story of hermetically sealed nostalgia impenetrable to anyone who doesn’t still own a copy of 'Space Invaders.' But instead, she’s written a novel that draws any curious reader into the pioneering days of a vast entertainment industry too often scorned by bookworms. And with the depth and sensitivity of a fine fiction writer, she argues for the abiding appeal of the flickering screen."
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Whatever its subject, when a novel is powerful enough, it transports us readers deep into worlds not our own. That's true of Moby Dick, and it's certainly true of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which renders the process of designing a great video game as enthralling as the pursuit of that great white whale….There are…smart ruminations here about cultural appropriation, given that the game, Ichigo, is inspired by Japanese artist Hokusai's famous painting The Great Wave at Kanagawa….It's a big, beautifully written novel about an underexplored topic, that succeeds in being both serious art and immersive entertainment.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
"Engrossing....Though it contains plenty of nostalgia for the pioneer age of 1990s game design, this isn’t primarily a novel of nerdy insider references....Videogames happen to be the medium by which [Zevin's characters] best express themselves and share in each other’s life."
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Woven throughout [Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow] are meditations on originality, appropriation, the similarities between video games and other forms of art, the liberating possibilities of inhabiting a virtual world, and the ways in which platonic love can be deeper and more rewarding—especially in the context of a creative partnership—than romance.”
—The New Yorker
"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a celebration of the narratives, in video games and in life, that reinforce just how important connection really is. In following Sam and Sadie’s journey from Massachusetts to California and into the imagined worlds of their games, Zevin writes the most precious kind of love story."
—Annabel Gutterman, Time
“The story of three brilliant kids who found a videogame company, this book is about so much more—friendship, love, loyalty, violence in America and the magic of invented worlds. Gorgeous.”
—Kim Hubbard, People
"Zevin is a great writer who makes you care deeply about her characters....Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow resonated with me for personal reasons, but I think Zevin’s exploration of partnership and collaboration is worth reading no matter who you are. Even if you’re skeptical about reading a book about video games, the subject is a terrific metaphor for human connection."
—Bill Gates
"You don’t have to be a gamer to appreciate the pulsing heart of this best-seller: In a story spanning three decades and references from Oregon Trail to Macbeth, Gabrielle Zevlin has written a modern, definitive story about work, love, and friends for whom you’d do and risk everything."
—Keely Weiss and Halie Lesavage, Harper’s Bazaar
“A remarkably absorbing portrait of friendship, identity, and the urge to create something beautiful, whether it be on the page or in pixels….Zevin…clearly knows her way around an RPG, but it's the analog intimacy of Tomorrow's wise, sensitive storytelling that stays.”
—Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
"I’ve never played a video game in my life, and I was sucked into this book like it was Halo and I was a socially awkward tween in 2001. Really, this isn’t just a book for people who understand life through the pixels, but for people who understand life through stories."
—Jenny Singer, Glamour
"One of the most special novels written in the past decade. This story follows two friends who form a thrilling creative partnership that drives them together and apart over the course of their young lives."
—Kiki Koroshetz, Goop
"Utterly absorbing...Until I read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, I had never heard of anyone playing games the way my husband and I play games, the way that Sam and Sadie do—on campaign mode but passing the controller back and forth. It takes a shattering lack of ego to play this way, knowing that someone else has the power to make a decision that would change the storyline or garner the skills to play through certain sequences that you’ll never see again. All that matters when you play like this is that you’re moving forward, and you’re together."
—Adrienne So, Wired
“This is a boy meets girl story that is never a romance – though it is romantic… Zevin blurs the lines between reality and play... Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is an artfully balanced novel – charming but never saccharine. The world Zevin has created is textured, expansive and, just like those built by her characters, playful.”
—Pippa Bailey, The Guardian
"Two friends, who are often in love, but never lovers, must contend with the fame, joy and tragedy that comes with success after they enter the world of video game design. Spanning three decades and multiple locations, this love story by The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry author is anything but predictable."
—E! News, Tierney Bricker
"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a decade-spanning feat in storytelling, switching perspectives as the story winds through the years."
—Elena Nicolaou, TODAY Show
"Despite [her] fantastical virtual worlds woven in lush detail, Zevin wants us to take a hard look beyond the screen...At its heart, Tomorrow is a coming-of-age tale stretched, in so many ways, by grief and hurt. This is Zevin’s tough love: There is no shortage of misfortune in life. Take a deep breath. Click continue....Tomorrow is not the type of book to accept a game over. It clutches onto that innocent hope ingrained in all video games."
—The Washington Post
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow…is buoyant despite the illness and pain that speckles its characters’ lives because they hope to meet again, to play again, to build again like gods….This book, with its respect for craft—the craft of love and games, or loving games—will remind you of how abundant one life is, how lucky we are to keep each other in our memories forever.”
—Ashley Bardhan, Kotaku
"This is a great novel. Zevin has the ability to make you care about her creations within paragraphs of meeting them....The book is rich with characters whose intertwined fates power the narrative...We are glad of the privilege of accompanying Sam and Sadie on the adventure of growing up and discovering who they are, and wondering who they might have been."
—Erica Wagner, The Financial Times
"If your Insta and #BookTok feeds are filled with pics of this read...there's a reason why....Trust us when we say to give it a shot....You'll follow [Sam and Sadie] over the course of decades, from Massachusetts to California, as they deal with ambition, loss, success, and heartache. We're not crying, you are."
—The Skimm
"Gabrielle Zevin’s potent new novel feature[s] a memorable and oddly stirring meet-cute, with Sam getting the attention of his long-ago childhood friend Sadie by shouting across a crowded train platform that she 'has died of dysentery.' If you picked up on that Oregon Trail reference, you may appreciate this funny, unpredictable story of love and video games set in the late ‘90s, a time when a couple of indie programmers like Sam and Sadie could take the world by storm with nothing but a good idea and a stack of floppy disks."
—Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Utterly brilliant. In this sweeping, gorgeously written novel, Gabrielle Zevin charts the beauty, tenacity, and fragility of human love and creativity. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is one of the best books I've ever read."
—John Green, author of The Anthropocene Reviewed
“My #1 book to recommend…Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow… [is] incredible, like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon meets The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. It’s about love and friendship and video games.”
—Emma Straub, Cup of Jo
“Is there such a thing as the Great American Gamer Novel? Because if not, I believe Gabrielle Zevin just invented it. She has crafted a brilliant story about life’s most challenging puzzles: friendship, family, love, loss. By turns funny, poignant, wistful, and occasionally devastating, this book absolutely pwned me—in the very best way.”
—Nathan Hill, author of The Nix
"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a beautifully wrought saga of human connection and the creative process, of love and all of its complicated levels. A gem of a novel, intimate yet sweeping, modern yet timeless. Bits of this book lingered in my head the way ghosts of Tetris pieces continue to fall in your mind’s eye after playing."
—Erin Morgenstern, author of The Starless Sea
"Gabrielle Zevin has written an exquisite love letter to life with all its rose gardens and minefields. With wisdom and vulnerability, she explores the very nature of human connection. This novel, and its unforgettable characters, know no boundaries. To read this book is to laugh, to mourn, to learn, and to grow."
—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrowis the sort of book that comes around once in a decade—a magnificent feat of storytelling. It is a book about the intersection between love and friendship, work and vocation, and the impossible and relentless pull of our own west-bound destinies. Gabrielle Zevin is one of our greatest living novelists, and Tomorrow just may be her magnum opus. Remarkable."
—Rebecca Serle, author of In Five Years
“A polished, thoughtful novel about loyalty and love that, like the best video games, grows more absorbing the further you venture into it."
—Connie Ogle, The Star Tribune
"Zevin has written a fascinating novel about two friends who collaborate on designing video games. These games are so imaginative and innovative that you will wish you could actually play them."
—Wisconsin Public Radio
“[A] brilliant tale of identity, human connection, and yes, love in all of its myriad of forms.”
—Sabienna Bowman, PopSugar
“If you’re into video games, this extraordinary coming-of-age/love story/social novel has your name on it. The story follows terrific characters from youth into their adult lives as founders of a successful gaming company. Even if you couldn’t care less about video games, Zevin’s signature narrative charms will still keep you riveted.”
—Marion Winik, Newsday
"The brilliance of Zevin’s tour de force is that you can come into this book with zero gaming knowledge and be blown away by her insights on the human condition, her prodigious capacity for storytelling, and how she weaves it all together — brilliant and brilliantly."
—The Bridge
"Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before. Taking place over 30 years, this dazzling and intricately imagined novel by Gabrielle Zevin examines the nature of identity, disability, failure, and above all, our need to connect. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is one of our most anticipated books of the summer and we can’t wait for you to read it."
—B&N Reads
“[This] novel explores themes of identity, disability, play and love in an unforgettable and richly imaginative way.”
—She Reads
"Zevin… returns with an exhilarating epic of friendship, grief, and computer game development…. Zevin layers the narrative with her characters’ wrenching emotional wounds as their relationships wax and wane... Even more impressive are the visionary and transgressive games… This is a one-of-a-kind achievement.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred
“Riveting… Zevin has written the book she was born to write, a love letter to every aspect of gaming…Zevin’s delight in her characters, their qualities, and their projects sprinkles a layer of fairy dust over the whole enterprise…Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.”
—Kirkus, starred
"Zevin creates beautifully flawed characters often caught between the real and gaming worlds, which are cleverly juxtaposed to highlight their similarities and differences. Both readers of love stories and gamers will enjoy. Highly recommended."
—Library Journal, starred
"It’s impossible to predict how, exactly, you’ll fall in love with Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but it’s an eventuality you can’t escape... Her artistic, inclusive world is filled with characters so genuine and endearing that you may start caring for them as if they were real. Above all, her development of Sam and Sadie’s relationship is pure wizardry; it’s deep and complex, transcending anything we might call a love story. Whether you care about video games or not is beside the point. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the novel you’ve been waiting to read."
—Chika Gujarathi, BookPage
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur—a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds—and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.
On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic adviser that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didn’t care for crowds—being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world.
Sam wore an elephantine navy wool peacoat that he had inherited from his roommate, Marx, who had bought it freshman year from the Army Navy Surplus Store in town. Marx had left it moldering in its plastic shopping bag just short of an entire semester before Sam asked if he might borrow it. That winter had been unrelenting, and it was an April nor’easter (April! What madness, these Massachusetts winters!) that finally wore Sam’s pride down enough to ask Marx for the forgotten coat. Sam pretended that he liked the style of it, and Marx said that Sam might as well take it, which is what Sam knew he would say. Like most things purchased from the Army Navy Surplus Store, the coat emanated mold, dust, and the perspiration of dead boys, and Sam tried not to speculate why the garment had been surplussed. But the coat was far warmer than the windbreaker he had brought from California his freshman year. He also believed that the large coat worked to conceal his size. The coat, its ridiculous scale, only made him look smaller and more childlike.
That is to say, Sam Masur at age twenty-one did not have a build for pushing and shoving and so, as much as possible, he weaved through the crowd, feeling somewhat like the doomed amphibian from the video game Frogger. He found himself uttering a series of “excuse mes” that he did not mean. A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say “Excuse me” while meaning “Screw you.” Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face value—the totality of what they did or what they said. But people—the ordinary, the decent and basically honest—couldn’t get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, even do, another.
“Can’t you go around?” a man in a black and green macramé hat yelled at Sam.
“Excuse me,” Sam said.
“Dammit, I almost had it,” a woman with a baby in a sling muttered as Sam passed in front of her.
“Excuse me,” Sam said.
Occasionally, someone would hastily leave, creating gaps in the crowd. The gaps should have been opportunities of escape for Sam, but somehow, they immediately filled with new humans, hungry for diversion.
He was nearly to the subway’s escalator when he turned back to see what the crowd had been looking at. Sam could imagine reporting the congestion in the train station, and Marx saying, “Weren’t you even curious what it was? There’s a world of people and things, if you can manage to stop being a misanthrope for a second.” Sam didn’t like Marx thinking of him as a misanthrope, even if he was one, and so, he turned. That was when he espied his old comrade, Sadie Green.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her at all in the intervening years. They had been habitués of science fairs, academic games, college recruitment events, competitions (oratory, robotics, creative writing, programming), banquets for top students. Because whether you went to a mediocre public high school in the east (Sam), or a fancy private school in the west (Sadie), the Los Angeles smart-kid circuit was the same. They would exchange glances across a room of nerds—sometimes, she’d even smile at him, as if to corroborate their détente—and then she would be swept up in the vulturine circle of attractive, smart kids that always surrounded her. Boys and girls like himself, but wealthier, whiter, and with better glasses and teeth. And he did not want to be one more ugly, nerdy person hovering around Sadie Green. Sometimes, he would make a villain of her and imagine ways that she had slighted him: that time she had turned away from him; that time she had avoided his eyes. But she hadn’t done those things—it would have been almost better if she had.
He had known that she had gone to MIT and had wondered if he might run into her when he got into Harvard. For two and half years, he had done nothing to force such an occasion. Neither had she.
But there she was: Sadie Green, in the flesh. And to see her almost made him want to cry. It was as if she were a mathematical proof that had eluded him for many years, but all at once, with fresh, well-rested eyes, the proof had a completely obvious solution. There’s Sadie, he thought. Yes.
He was about to call her name, but then he didn’t. He felt overwhelmed by how much time had passed since he and Sadie had last been alone together. How could a person still be as young as he objectively knew himself to be and have had so much time pass? And why was it suddenly so easy to forget that he despised her? Time, Sam thought, was a mystery. But with a second’s reflection, he thought better of such sentiment. Time was mathematically explicable; it was the heart—the part of the brain represented by the heart—that was the mystery.
Sadie finished staring at whatever the crowd was staring at, and now she was walking toward the inbound Red Line train.
Sam called her name, “SADIE!” In addition to the rumble of the incoming train, the station was roaring with the usual humanity. A teenage girl played Penguin Cafe Orchestra on a cello for tips. A man with a clipboard asked passersby if they could spare a moment for Muslim refugees in Srebrenica. Adjacent to Sadie was a stand selling six-dollar fruit shakes. The blender had begun to whir, diffusing the scent of citrus and strawberries through the musty, subterranean air, just as Sam had first called her name. “Sadie Green!” he called out again. Still she didn’t hear him. He quickened his pace, as much as he could. When he walked quickly, he counterintuitively felt like a person in a three-legged race.
“Sadie! SADIE!” He felt foolish. “SADIE MIRANDA GREEN! YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY!”
Finally, she turned. She scanned the crowd slowly and when she spotted Sam, the smile spread over her face like a time-lapse video he had once seen in a high school physics class of a rose in bloom. It was beautiful, Sam thought, and perhaps, he worried, a tad ersatz. She walked over to him, still smiling—one dimple on her right cheek, an almost imperceptibly wider gap between the two middle teeth on the top—and he thought that the crowd seemed to part for her, in a way that the world never moved for him.
“It’s my sister who died of dysentery, Sam Masur,” Sadie said. “I died of exhaustion, following a snakebite.”
“And of not wanting to shoot the bison,” Sam said.
“It’s wasteful. All that meat just rots.”
Sadie threw her arms around him. “Sam Masur! I kept hoping I’d run into you.”
“I’m in the directory,” Sam said.
“Well, maybe I hoped it would be organic,” Sadie said. “And now it is.”
“What brings you to Harvard Square?” Sam asked.
“Why, the Magic Eye, of course,” she said playfully. She gestured in front of her, toward the advertisement. For the first time, Sam registered the 60-by-40-inch poster that had transformed commuters into a zombie horde.
SEE THE WORLD IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.
THIS CHRISTMAS, THE GIFT EVERYONE WANTS IS THE MAGIC EYE.
The imagery on the poster was a psychedelic pattern in Christmas tones of emerald, ruby, and gold. If you stared at the pattern long enough, your brain would trick itself into seeing a hidden 3D image. It was called an autostereogram, and it was easy to make one if you were a modestly skilled programmer. This? Sam thought. The things people find amusing. He groaned.
“You disapprove?” Sadie said.
“This can be found in any dorm common room on campus.”
“Not this particular one, Sam. This one’s unique to—”
“Every train station in Boston.”
“Maybe the U.S.?” Sadie laughed. “So, Sam, don’t you want to see the world with magic eyes?”
“I’m always seeing the world with magic eyes,” he said. “I’m exploding with childish wonder.”
Sadie pointed toward a boy of about six: “Look how happy he is! He’s got it now! Well done!”
“Have you seen it?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t see it yet,” Sadie admitted. “And now, I really do have to catch this next train, or I’ll be late for class.”
“Surely, you have another five minutes so that you can see the world with magic eyes,” Sam said.
“Maybe next time.”
“Come on, Sadie. There’ll always be another class. How many times can you look at something and know that everyone around you is seeing the same thing or at the very least that their brains and eyes are responding to the same phenomenon? How much proof do you ever have that we’re all in the same world?”
Sadie smiled ruefully and punched Sam lightly on the shoulder. “That was about the most Sam thing you could have said.”
“Sam I am.”
She sighed as she heard the rumble of her train leaving the station. “If I fail Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics, it’s your fault. She repositioned herself so that she was looking at the poster again. “You do it with me, Sam.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sam squared his shoulders, and he stared straight ahead. He had not stood this near to Sadie in years.
Directions on the poster said to relax one’s eyes and to concentrate on a single point until a secret image emerged. If that didn’t work, they suggested coming closer to the poster and then slowly backing up, but there wasn’t room for that in the train station. In any case, Sam didn’t care what the secret image was. He could guess that it was a Christmas tree, an angel, a star, though probably not a Star of David, something seasonal, trite, and broadly appealing, something meant to sell more Magic Eye products. Autostereograms had never worked for Sam. He theorized it was something to do with his glasses. The glasses, which corrected a significant myopia, wouldn’t let his eyes relax enough for his brain to perceive the illusion. And so, after a respectable amount of time (fifteen seconds), Sam stopped trying to see the secret image and studied Sadie instead.
Her hair was shorter and more fashionable, he guessed, but it was the same mahogany waves that she’d always had. The light freckling on her nose was the same, and her skin was still olive, though she was much paler than when they were kids in California, and her lips were chapped. Her eyes were the same brown, with golden flecks. Anna, his mother, had had similar eyes, and she’d told Sam that coloration like this was called heterochromia. At the time, he had thought it sounded like a disease, something for his mother to potentially die from. Beneath Sadie’s eyes were barely perceptible crescents, but then, she’d had these as a kid too. Still, he felt she seemed tired. Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, 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.
“I saw it!” she said. Her eyes were bright, and she wore an expression he remembered from when she was eleven.
Sam quickly turned his gaze back to the poster.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I saw it.”
Sadie looked at him. “What did you see?”
“It,” Sam said. “It was amazingly great. Terribly festive.”
“Did you actually see it?” Sadie’s lips were twitching upward. Those heterochromic eyes looked at him with mirth.
“Yes, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else who hasn’t.” He gestured toward the horde.
“Okay, Sam,” Sadie said. “That’s thoughtful of you.”
He knew she knew that he hadn’t seen it. He smiled at her, and she smiled at him.
“Isn’t it strange?” Sadie said. “I feel like I never stopped seeing you. I feel like we come down to this T station to stare at this poster every day.”
“We grok,” Sam said.
“We do grok. And I take back what I said before. That is the Sammest thing you could have said.”
“Sammest I Ammest. You’re—” As he was speaking, the blender began to whir again.
“What?” she said.
“You’re in the wrong square,” he repeated.
“What’s the ‘wrong square’?”
“You’re in Harvard Square, when you should be in Central Square or Kendall Square. I think I heard you’d gone to MIT.”
“My boyfriend lives around here,” Sadie said, in a way that indicated she had no more she wished to say on that subject. “I wonder why they’re called squares. They’re not really squares, are they?” Another inbound train was approaching. “That’s my train. Again.”
“That’s how trains work,” Sam said.
“It’s true. There’s a train, and a train, and a train.”
“In which case, the only proper thing for us to do right now is have coffee,” Sam said. “Or whatever you drink, if coffee’s too much of a cliché for you. Chai tea. Matcha. Snapple. Champagne. There’s a world with infinite beverage possibilities, right over our heads, you know? All we have to do is ride that escalator and it’s ours for the partaking.”
“I wish I could, but I have to get to class. I’ve done maybe half the reading. The only thing I have going for me is my punctuality and attendance.”
“I doubt that,” Sam said. Sadie was one of the most brilliant people he knew.
She gave Sam another quick hug. “Good running into you.”
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf
- Publication date : July 5, 2022
- Edition : First Edition
- Language : English
- Print length : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0593321200
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593321201
- Item Weight : 1.45 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.43 x 1.4 x 9.53 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Friendship Fiction (Books)
- #36 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #1,470 in Contemporary Romance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

GABRIELLE ZEVIN is the New York Times and internationally best-selling author of several critically acclaimed novels, including The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Young Jane Young. Her most recent novel is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a selection of the Tonight Show’s Fallon Book Club, the winner of the Goodreads Choice Award, a finalist for the Wingate Prize, and one of the best books of the year, according to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Entertainment Weekly, the Atlantic, Amazon.com, Oprah Daily, Slate, NPR, and many others. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is now a feature film with a screenplay by Zevin. Her novels have been translated into forty languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find this novel to be an engaging story of long-term friendship with wonderfully developed characters and beautiful language. The book is praised for its gaming insights and thought-provoking content, with one customer noting how the game ideas serve as a metaphor for life. While customers appreciate the emotional depth of the narrative, some express disappointment with certain storylines.
AI Generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as an excellent novel that was amazing to read.
"I loved this book completely...." Read more
"...The story itself feels like something that could make an excellent Netflix short series...." Read more
"I just loved it. Not a gamer myself but I connected so much to the characters and life and love and just how fleeting life can be...." Read more
"...The author's gift for imagery and her willingness to let (most) of her characters wear their warts on their sleeves makes them not only relatable,..." Read more
Customers appreciate the character development in the book, noting that the characters are wonderfully developed and their relationships are well portrayed.
"...The character development is nicely done, and I think the book captures the industry well...." Read more
"...Or to craft those horizons. Her characters are unforgettable...." Read more
"Enjoyed every bit of this. Read in just two days. Thoughtful characters with right balance of humor and somber tones. Highly recommend." Read more
"...What stood out most for me was the character development. I found myself completely invested in their journeys...." Read more
Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, describing it as beautiful and highly readable, with one customer noting its lyrical quality.
"For a novel of this depth, it read surprisingly quickly...." Read more
"...In the 400 beautifully written pages of Zevin’s latest novel , These characters come together to form one of the strangest and most beautiful love..." Read more
"Enjoyed every bit of this. Read in just two days. Thoughtful characters with right balance of humor and somber tones. Highly recommend." Read more
"...But overall, the work is brilliant and wonderful and highly readable. Go for it." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's portrayal of long-term friendships, with one customer noting how the relationships were reflected in the characters' games.
"...much more to it but at Tim’s heart, it was about how the love of friends changes us forever." Read more
"...Gabrielle wrote and depicted friendships so beautifully . True friendships are not perfect, they are not a straight line...." Read more
"...video game references, both real and fictional, that are woven together seamlessly...." Read more
"...So beautiful, so immaculately constructed—this is a book I’ll be feeling for a very long time." Read more
Customers praise the book's pacing, finding it incredibly moving and poignant, with one customer noting how it made them feel deeply and another describing it as a deep journey into the hearts of the characters.
"...The relationship between Sadie and Sam and Marx was joyous and heartbreaking, Each section of the book had a slightly different style and tone which..." Read more
"...Otherwise, this is a moving, authentic novel about the experience of playing games with another special person and the conversations and connections..." Read more
"...interest me (i.e. gaming) but still manages to make it such an interesting and incredible read...." Read more
"...novel with nods to the literary world throughout that warmed my book is heart. Highly recommend." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's insights about gaming, finding the story educational and fascinating, with one customer noting how the game concepts serve as a metaphor for life.
"...It romanticizes the idea of video game development, ignoring things like “crunch time“, running a business, office politics, and other meta elements..." Read more
"...love so much about video games; they are not just silly fun, but worlds to explore." Read more
"...the life I wish was mine, at least the happy parts about successful and respected games...." Read more
"...The story is loaded with video game references, both real and fictional, that are woven together seamlessly...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's creativity, finding it thought-provoking and insightful about life, with one customer noting how it draws readers into a richly detailed world.
"...the synopsis, this is not about video games - its about people finding their way in life...." Read more
"...A book about friendship, ambition, disability, and triumph and all the different kinds of love you will inevitability experience along the way...." Read more
"...The story goes far beyond video games—it’s about friendship, creativity, ambition, grief, and complicated human connections...." Read more
"...But overall, the work is brilliant and wonderful and highly readable. Go for it." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the story quality of the book, with some finding it interesting from beginning to end, while others express disappointment with certain storylines and mention being distracted from the overall narrative.
"...probably be tempted to throw it away because of how unrealistically it portrays the industry. Myself, I’m halfway on it...." Read more
"...book is the way Gabrielle Zevin illustrates that even the best of humans are flawed. We all have moments where we shine...." Read more
"...There was a completely shocking event and that really threw me for a loop because I wasn’t expecting that type of situation based on what had..." Read more
"...storyline moved along from person to person and kept your attention with a few twists and turns so that you didn’t want to put it down...." Read more
Reviews with images

Became an instant favorite upon completion
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseI loved this book completely. I think we don’t have nearly enough love stories about love between friends and that was what this book boiled down to for me. There was so much more to it but at Tim’s heart, it was about how the love of friends changes us forever.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2023Format: KindleVerified PurchaseThis book seems to be sweeping the nation as the new “The Fault in Our Stars“. It’s got higher than 4 and a quarter stars for having 300,000 reviews, which means it’s a box office smash (at least as far as books ago). So what is it about? Is it a romance? An adventure? A family saga?
Kind of all three, but also not all three. It’s the story of two people who create a video game company. These two, a girl and a guy, used to be friends as pre-teenagers, but had a falling out. In college, they both fall into programming which leads to video game making, which leads to the story at hand as they become friends and business partners. Also, it’s about the other people that come into their life as a result of that, such as the best friend/roommate who goes from theater major to video game producer and the girl’s college professor. The story takes place from 1995 up to present day.
Let’s talk about the two main characters. One is Sam. His trauma is that he has a foot that was broken in a million places, a handicap which has made him taciturn and stoic, though he reads like autistic–overanalytical, judgemental, aloof.
The second is Sadie who also found solace in video games, as her sister had childhood cancer and became the focus of the family’s attention. She bonded with Sam since they both were often in the children’s ward of the hospital. Sadie has bouts of depression and insecurity, even though she’s a game-making genius. This leads to an affair with her foreign-born video game professor who’s one of “those” types (egotistical, pompous, always thinks he’s right and everyone else’s opinion is wrong) and much unhealthy relationshippage occurs.
From the first chapter, I wasn’t sure how this would go down. Since the first main character is Sam, it sounded “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time“. The writing sounded like writing. The dialogue did not sound like how people talk. But I gave it the benefit of the doubt and continued. It starts out almost being a sick kids romance (The Fault in Our Stars, Everything, Everything, Five Feet Apart) But I was able to get past that and into the core of the book, which is about the creation of video games–what ludonarration means, video games as art, as ways to make the audience feel something.
It romanticizes the idea of video game development, ignoring things like “crunch time“, running a business, office politics, and other meta elements that come with complex media production. Instead, the author focuses on the relationship between the people working on the project (e.g. game producers as public figures such as Will Wright or Richard Garriott).
The author is writing video games not as they were but how she wishes they could be. Which would be fine… if the majority of this book didn’t take place in the past. See, the big video game they make is called “Ichigo” and the way they talk about it, it seems to be along the lines of “Limbo” or “Undertale”. It sounds artsy and avant-garde, which would be fine if this took place today. But in 1995, there were no such things. Video games didn’t make people cry in 1995. And they certainly weren’t used as pack-in games for new consoles, which is what this game becomes (as part of a plot point). The top games in 1995 were Quake, Duke Nukem 3-D, Command and Conquer, Super Mario 64, etc. War games. Shooters. Well-established franchises.
You couldn’t be successful unless you were at least a little bit commercial. There is no freakin’ way someone would have made an artsy game as the pack-in. (They weren’t even using pack-ins anymore by this time.) And certainly not a game from a new unproven studio with just two people. There were no Bastions or Insides or Journeys or even Bioshocks that you could point to and say “here’s a successful example of the video game we’re making and that’s why this is going to work.”
So that’s what bothers me the most–the backdrop is not plausible, and I pointed out a hundred times where “this wouldn’t have happened”, “no way should this have happened”, “the industry would have reamed them out if this happened”. The only game during this era I could even try to point to that succeeded was “Myst”. And that game succeeded because it had a big new gimmick–the CD-ROM which allowed complex graphics and FMVs. No such innovations in this book. It wasn’t until 2003 that companies started taking chances with non-traditional games (e.g. “Katamari Damacy” and “Shadow of the Colossus“).
On the other hand, maybe this is the author writing about video games and how they evolved as she wishes they had been. Instead of it all being guns and gore and misogynistic heroes like Duke Nukem and Solid Snake, she wrote a universe where video games catered toward all genders instead of just guys. There’s no reason video games had to be marketed toward boys. It was just what they did in the eighties because executives believed in “there are toys for boys and toys for girls and there is no crossover.”
There is good writing here. I particularly fell for the beautiful chapter in the third act break (no spoilers!). If you don’t know anything about video games as an industry, you will enjoy this book. If you do, you will probably be tempted to throw it away because of how unrealistically it portrays the industry. Myself, I’m halfway on it. The story itself feels like something that could make an excellent Netflix short series. The video game backdrop drove me nuts, but I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t the kind of book I wish I could write.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseAs somebody who grew up with Pong and Tetris, I was well past the video gaming sensation that was Donkey Kong and Frogger and the games of the 1981 era. But I loved everything about this novel that begins with 2 innocent kids in a hospital unit in the 80’s.
I love the way the author unfolds what it is like to be a multi cultural human, an Asian human, a Jewish human, a genius, in a society that rarely celebrates others. Although I am not a big gamer, I enjoyed almost every moment of this book.
The relationship between Sadie and Sam and Marx was joyous and heartbreaking, Each section of the book had a slightly different style and tone which I railed against and simultaneously embraced. Although I will always root for best friends to end up together as life partners - I can understand the tension that builds when two strong creative forces butt heads whether it be over video games, over hospital stays, over love,or over a company.
Thank you to Gabrielle Zevin who continues to remind us that love is love is love and marriage equality is an important right, and that our world is made up of beautifully culturally unique people who brilliantly unfold during a novel.
SPOILERS
I wept at NPC - and Marx telling the story of the shooting.
I got so frustrated at PIONEERS until I understood why the book took a tonal shift.
Thank you for this gift that made me reconnect with what I love so much about video games; they are not just silly fun, but worlds to explore.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseI just loved it. Not a gamer myself but I connected so much to the characters and life and love and just how fleeting life can be. Gabrielle wrote and depicted friendships so beautifully . True friendships are not perfect, they are not a straight line. Sometimes we have to start from the beginning again… more than once .
Top reviews from other countries
- JRReviewed in India on March 26, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read!
This book had me enthralled from the first page till the last. Cannot recommend this enough! I am not a gamer and yet found myself lost in the world of gaming and in the complicated yet beautiful relationships in the book.
-
Amazon CustomerReviewed in Japan on May 25, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars 日本のゲーム文化とアメリカのイノベーションの完璧な融合
Format: KindleVerified Purchase1980年代生まれの日本人読者として、この本は心の奥深くに響きました。ゼヴィンは日本のゲーム文化とアメリカの起業家精神を見事に織り合わせています。
基盤は純粋な日本のゲームDNA - マリオ、ドンキーコング、クロノ・トリガーは単なる名前の羅列ではなく、物語の骨格として機能。幼少期に父親のPCを通じてゲームの喜びを発見した私は、登場人物たちの原体験に深い共感を覚えました。
この作品を特別にしているのは、ゼヴィンがこれをUSカルチャーの重要点である、起業家精神。ハーバード/MITスタートアップのエネルギーとバランスよく描いている点です
「レベルアップ」の構造が素晴らしい - 仕事、友情、愛が競い合うのではなく、共に進化していきます。この並行した発展は、個人的成長と職業的達成が絡み合うゲーム世代の体験を完璧に捉えています。
最も重要なのは、この本が私たちの文化的輸出品を終着点ではなく、新しい創造性の出発点として描いていることです - そしてそれは日本人としての私自身の創造活動にも影響を与えています。真のイノベーションは情熱からくる融合から生まれるのだと。
異文化間を行き来する人、ゲームで育った人には必読。
As a Japanese reader born in the 1980s, this book hit me right in the heart. Zevin masterfully weaves together Japanese gaming culture with American entrepreneurial spirit in a way that feels both authentic and inspiring.
The foundation is pure Japanese gaming DNA - Mario, Donkey Kong, Chrono Trigger aren't just name-dropped but serve as the story's backbone. As someone who discovered gaming joy through my father's PC in childhood, I felt deep empathy with the characters' formative experiences.
What makes this special is how Zevin balances this with real Harvard/MIT startup energy - the urgency and ambition feels authentic, not romanticized.
The "leveling up" structure is brilliant - work, friendship, and love evolve together rather than competing. This parallel development perfectly captures the gaming generation's experience where personal growth and professional achievement intertwine.
Most importantly, this book shows our cultural exports not as endpoints but as launching points for new creativity - and it influences my own creation as a Japanese. True innovation comes from thoughtful synthesis, not dominance.
A must-read for anyone navigating between cultures or anyone who grew up gaming. Zevin has created something genuinely transformative here.
- Rafaela NunesReviewed in France on February 9, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars marvelous
Marvelous, a must read
- G.Reviewed in the Netherlands on June 3, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Great novel
Loved this story, it was gripping and emotional. Definitely a must read and I would read it again
- Eylül ÖzbekReviewed in Turkey on August 25, 2024
1.0 out of 5 stars It was boring‼️‼️‼️‼️
I really tried to finish it but I couldn’t. I only could have read 100 pages. I hate this book…