Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Sadie and Sam are old childhood friends who bump into each other while both are in college. As children they had spent a short but intense time together, sitting in a hospital room, playing video games. Just that little spark their random meeting reignites their turbulent friendship. And so there lifes end up entangled in a complicated relationship of platonic love, rivalry, support and fighting, long times of cool abscense and short intense periods of fruitful coworking. All of this is connected by the main character's love for computer games, as they try to establish a video game company.

This story was very well written and constructed, sucking you right in, although nothing much happens except for you know humans. It has a sharp humor to it, and I enjoyed every minute.

A short warning, though: The main characters Sam and Sadie are not likeable at all. They are complicated, ambitious and sometimes outright mean to each other. You'll end up asking the empty room in which you happen to be while reading: "Why are you like this?". But I still ended up rooting for those two weird people and most importandly their friendship, which is not cosy but stormy, to say the least. So, but maybe that is love? Learning to accept one another, weathering the storm?

A last note: This book deserves a content warning for abusive relationships and sexual abuse...

But I didn't enjoy it. Though I can understand why people might like it, I won't be recommending it to anyone.

Overall I think I just found Sam and Sadie unlikeable as characters. I feel like they were pretty jerky to everyone around them, and each other, and themselves, for pretty much of the time.

I also didn't like how some elements of the story were "ret-con'd" in several chapters later: "oh hey, I never mentioned he's had a dog this whole time, well he has, and now I'll detail those past events, even though we're five chapters beyond that point." And on a similar point, there are several plotlines and characters that get introduced that seemingly go nowhere, or just outright get left undeveloped after they serve their singular purpose of introducing "blank". Like, for example, the dog.

Finally, I found the ending completely unsatisfying. I know this is a subjective point, but the last page kind of just happened and then I realised that the next bit of text was acknowledgements and not another chapter.

No tenía ni idea de lo que iba a leer, solo sabía que era bueno y que iba de videojuegos, había referencias y eso. Así que imaginé que sería algo de ciencia ficción tipo "Ready player one", iba yo muy despistado 😅.

Pero lo he disfrutado mucho mucho, es una novela, que por supuesto va de la vida misma, y de sus personajes, y que gira en torno a los videojuegos, que disfrutarás más si has jugado y conoces las referencias, pero que tampoco son necesarias.

Me ha tenido muy enganchado, MUY bien escrita, de verdad. Se nota que hay un trabajazo detrás, de personajes que evolucionan y cambian y son verosímiles, y de hilar cosas, para soltar información en el momento adecuado, con desplazamientos en el tiempo que no se sienten como flashbacks/flashforwards típicos (de esos que interrumpen la narración para darte una pieza que justo es necesaria para avanzar la trama) sino muy bien integrados, además del trabajo de documentación sobre el tema.

También me ha gustado mucho que toma riesgos, intenta innovar en formatos, en los títulos de cada parte, en estilos... Y conseguir unir todo esto, consiguiendo que cada cosa aporte en lugar de restar...

En definitiva, me parece una novela muy bien atada, y lo he disfrutado muchísimo. Recomendada!

Ein sehr schönes, zart erzähltes, emotionales Buch. Ich wollte die Charaktere öfters mal schütteln damit sie nicht so viel aneinander vorbei reden und leben. Es beschreibt sehr gut, wie sehr wir manchmal in unserer Lebenswelt und Perspektive feststecken und nicht merken, wie wir damit andere Menschen verletzen können oder was diese gerade brauchen, oder auch was wir gerade brauchen. Und es geht um Videospiele, und es ist keine klassische romantische Liebesgeschichte, sondern es geht um tiefe Freundschaft 🥰

A very beautiful, delicate, emotional book. I wanted to shake the characters a few times so that they don't talk and live so much past each other. It describes very well how much we are sometimes stuck in our own world and perspective and do not realise how we hurt other people or what they need at the moment, or even what we ourselves need at the moment. And it's about video games, and it's not a classic romantic love story, it's about deep friendship 🥰

A wonderfully written story about the adult years of growing up, on a backdrop of the intense creative processes of video game design. I want these games to be real. I want to feel the characters expression through their art.

There are books where it’s a novel situation played out through understandable and straightforward characters. And then there are books where you have no idea how someone can keep so many deep actors in their head, you wonder if they were real people. Each character with their own motivations, and perspective. Sometimes I cheered for them. Sometimes I hated them. Always I loved them.

In any case, it’s a beautiful story. Heartbreaking and tragic.

This is the first book in a while that I've had trouble putting down, it kept me reading later than I intended more than once. It's a complex, touching story about friendship and the value of play, which spans several decades. During that time Sam and Sadie meet, have quarrels, make up again, quarrel again, fall in love with other people, and make video games both together and separately.

It's set in the world of video game development so knowing some of those terms probably helps a little but I don't think it's really necessary; it's more about creating art together than the games themselves. (The game making is a little simplified, and as someone who works in the game industry I found it a little unbelievable in places - making an MMO with the staff they appeared to have? No way.) But waving those beside in suspension of disbelief, I doubt they'd bother anyone who doesn't actually make games for a living.

Really the book is about friendship, and flawed, complex characters, and art, and loss, and being human. It's refreshing to read an entire book about a couple that is about friendship rather than romance. It was sweet, and touching, and thought-provoking, and also occasionally annoying when the characters are clearly being idiots, but they're so well written that at least you can understand why they're being idiots. I would highly recommend this book.

Trigger warnings: there are a couple of violent deaths mentioned, and there's non-graphic description of an inappropriate teacher-student relationship with non-consensual bondage elements. These are not dwelled on any more than needed for the story's purposes, but are unavoidable elements of the plot.