Book Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the Book That Would Not End
I'm so disappointed. This book seems to be much beloved on Booktok, but it left much to be desired for me. Even though there was some absolutely beautiful writing (I'll share some favorite quotes below) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin had several major things that bothered me about this story. There will be spoilers in this review.
Things to Know:
- Many POVs
- Spans over many years
- Triggers for Unaliving, SA, Stalking
"We are all living at most, half of a life. There was a life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen, and sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living..."
The writing style at first reminded me so much of Hank Green's, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, with the interviews and flashbacks, and the first quarter or half of the story, I did enjoy. Plus, any book gets points for mentioning LOTR. The LOTR constellation conversation was amazing. Gandalfus? Genius.
However, there were quite a few triggering and horrific things in this novel that I couldn't get past. Additionally, it also reminded me at times, of Normal People, which I really didn't like.
Dov literally gave me Sunni Balwani vibes. He's extremely abusive (both verbally and physically) and SAs Sadie multiple times and it's NEVER actually addressed. She stays friends with him over 20 years. WHAT?! Insane to me. I was flabbergasted he faced zero repercussions, and then it sounded like he did it to another of his students later in the novel, and again...just glossed over.
But equally egregious, is Sam's behavior throughout. In the beginning you actually feel a lot of empathy for his character. But when you find out he knew about the abuse, but let it happen because he wanted Dov's game engine. And then he becomes a full on stalker of Sadie, both in the real world and in this weird futuristic game that he manipulates her into playing. So sinister. It gave me major ICKS. And again, it was NEVER addressed, nor did he face any consequences for these actions.
Then there were new POVs that sprouted seemingly out of nowhere and characters I really didn't care about or struggled to connect with. The latter half of the story felt like it was all over the place, with nothing fleshed out. The disagreements and conversations felt super stilted.
“To be good at something is not the same as loving it.”
Additionally, if you're not a gamer (ME), you might find a lot of the video game process and development really boring. I just didn't care. And they kept trying to make new games, but never went into deep detail, so everything felt really surface level. I wish we could have seen more of that first game being developed.
From a personal standpoint, I also found the section with the woman who unalived herself in front of Sam and his Mom by jumping off a building to be super triggering, as I went through a very similar experience, and it kept being brought up in detail. I realize this is a personal issue, but needless to say, I won't be rereading this or adding it to any favorites list.
“It isn’t a sadness, but a joy that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”
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