I was perusing a bookstore one day, when a novel in the corner caught my eye. While I know not to judge a book by its cover, I couldn’t help myself. The striking cover with the famous painting “The Great Wave” by Katsushika Hokusai splashed across, with rainbow letters reading, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” stopped me in my tracks. The title was mysterious, yet familiar, and I felt that I had no choice but to bring the book home. 

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin is a novel from 2022 that follows two childhood best friends Sadie Green and Sam Masur over the course of decades, in their exploits as video game designers and later business partners in their business called “Unfair Games” that they founded with their friend, Marx.  

I immediately began reading when I got home. While I am not a fan of video games myself and I know close to nothing about how they’re made, I found myself deeply compelled by Sadie and Sam’s tumultuous friendship that is interwoven with their desire to create video games with captivating stories. 

While this book is a love story, I found it to be refreshing because instead of the focus being on romantic love between Sadie and Sam, their love is more accurately on the long-time friendship level. Sadie and Sam have their ups and downs with each other and in their personal lives. Both of them deal with immense loss, have their own challenges with romantic relationships, and grapple with how career successes and failures can impact their egos. 

Not only is this book nuanced in how relationships are depicted, but it also balances wit, with humor, and heart-wrenching lines. I have felt every emotion while reading this book, at times being overjoyed, while at others totally shocked and immensely saddened. The plot was refreshingly unpredictable, and I found myself surprised by plot twists on multiple occasions.

This book managed to avoid cliches while still being very moving, making for a unique reading experience.  

This book also contained lovely Jewish representation, which I really appreciated as a Jewish reader. The Jewish experiences depicted were wide ranging, from Sadie preparing for her Bat Mitzvah as a young girl, to Sam being half-Jewish and not really knowing his Jewish father very well, but still feeling connected to that aspect of his identity. This allows for Jewish readers to see themselves in the pages in some way, and also for non-Jewish readers to gain a better understanding of what it means to be Jewish.   

Furthermore, I loved the appreciation for Shakespeare and theatre, which I loved reading as a theatre kid. Sadie and Sam’s business partner, Marx, is an actor who loves Shakespeare, so references to Shakespeare are woven throughout the book. 

The title even comes from a famous line in “Macbeth” (that is also quoted in “Take a Break” from “Hamilton”).  “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day…” This quote hits at an interesting perspective with video games: although our own lives have an end date, video games act as a space where people can respawn no matter how many times they “die.” There will always be, “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.” 

So, if you’re looking for a book to satisfy all of your emotional needs that also contains a refreshing plot, I would highly recommend that you read “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin… today!