A review by logsbooklog
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

challenging dark emotional hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

usually, once a book fumbles hard enough, it loses me entirely and i’m taken out of it for the remainder. and this book DID lose me; an entire section of the book made me feel like i had been duped by the author into reading a much worse book than what the book had been up to that point (more on this in spoilers). but it brought me back from the brink in a way few books can by just being masterful at catharsis. even when the setup was rocky and even when the book is a bit in over its head, the pay offs hit like gut punch after gut punch of emotional release. despite its stumbles, i’m very glad i saw this through.

as for where the book lost me, there were 2 key moments that took me out entirely. one, sam being in love with sadie. i don’t think this is unrealistic, but it felt handled with the weight of a teen drama, not an adult literary novel. what had been a delicate balance of a friendship ends up heavily tilted in sadie’s favor for a while and it took over a hundred pages for that scale to even back out. secondly, of course, is the handling of the office shooting and marx’s death. now, this is a book filled with coincidence and happenstance, but this death felt so unbelievably staged as a third act conflict that i audibly yelled “oh COME ON” when marx’s mom was ALSO named anna lee. this entire section of the book has the suspension of disbelief shatter from showing way too much of what’s behind the curtain and i was extremely worried the book wouldn’t recover. it did manage to survive both of these missteps, but i can’t help but wonder what could have been
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