Reviews with content warning for Antisemitism - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

I have to say that I did really enjoy this book! I think my biggest frustration was the miscommunication the two MCs had throughout lol but I really liked the concept and the themes that were explored. The pace picked up so fast in the last 100 or so pages which idk how I feel about that and I felt kinda weird about that because idk what it was driving towards? But I thought the characters were really interesting, especially how they developed together and separately throughout their lives. Oh and the student/professor relationship that like never really went away? Weird. Super weird. But yeah I had a good time reading it overall and there were some really great quotes.

I think my favorite aspect that I don't think I've seen anyone talk about is how Sam is absolutely aro/ace and how much other characters struggle with understanding that. Like Sadie just could not get why Sam never made a move and why he couldn't say I love you. But the friendship love once he did say it to her was really sweet. Honestly Marx was probably my favorite character, he was just such a gem and a sweetie 🥹

I also love a book that ties everything together from the beginning into the end, I really do appreciate that. It makes the story feel complete even if these characters' lives aren't complete.

Quotes:

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, or even do, another. (4)
Sam could be ignored, but the childish shared reference could not be. It was an invitation to play. (34)
What, after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality? (65)
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. (68)
"It isn't a sadness, but a joy, that we don't do the same things for the lengths of our lives." (227)
It occurred to Sadie: she had thought after Ichigo that she would never fail again. She had thought she arrived. But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (228)
Anyone who truly looked at Tuesday could not have possibly seen a coyote. But the woman had not truly looked, and the injustice of this hit him. Why was it acceptable for apparently well-meaning people to see the world in such a general way? (245)
"The actual world is the random garbage fire it always is. There's not a goddamn thing I can do about the actual world's code." (331)
"And what is love, in the end? Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?" (355)
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 loved 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. (384)

Content Warnings

andrearutz98's review against another edition

Go to review page

Its a soft dnf for now. This book is just so heavy and slow that i have to break it up with another book. Maybe I'll come back and finish after reading something lighter.

Content Warnings

gvstyris's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

Man. Such an engaging read, and Zevin plays with literary techniques quite creatively, particularly in the novel's last few sections. Marx's character was truly such a highlight (although his name choice is...questionable?), especially as Sadie/Sam grew increasingly unlikeable and cold.

Zevin's consideration of platonic and romantic love here is also so, so validating.

It soon becomes refreshingly irrelevant whether Sadie and Sam's relationship is romantic, because of how it is underpinned regardless by their mutual love and fascination with one-another.

I appreciated that decision a lot, particularly as someone pretty jaded with our wider culture's obsession with romance.

I do have a lot of research to do about this novel's various plagiarism & Zionism controversies, however...

Content Warnings