Okay, so I totally get the hype surrounding Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, although I would not go as far as John Green and call it the best book I have ever read it. It is a fantastic novel, though. It is a compelling and epic story about friendship that will suck you in and shatter your heart before putting the pieces back together so you feel content with the end. The characters are so well developed and complicated and mostly likeable, that you cannot help but become invested in their fictional lives. Not many books can make me cry, but this one certainly did.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about the friendship between Sam Masur and Sadie Green, childhood friends who bond over playing video games at a hospital. A betrayal leads to a temporary hiatus in their friendship, and they reconnect when they are both at college (Sam at Harvard, and Sadie at MIT). Sam decides he wants to make a video game with Sadie, so he convinces her team up with him.

Sadie, already at a disadvantage as a woman in a male dominated industry, tends to do whatever Sam wants, even if it is to her own detriment. But she also gets into depressive states where she refuses to listen to reason or accept help from her friend. Sam, as the result of growing up poor, wants their game to make them rich and famous, and he does not think too much about what other people want. He turns out to be a showman, soaking up the attention that comes with the success of their first game and becoming the face of his and Sadie’s gaming company.

It would be easy to dismiss Sam as the worst friend, if Zevin had not made him such an empathetic character who matures and becomes a better person throughout the course of the novel. Sam and Sadie’s friendship changes as the result of their successes and their failures, but Sam is the one that tries to hold their friendship together as they grow apart.

Gaming is an important feature of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but you do not have to be a gamer to appreciate the gaming aspect of the novel. The video games that Sam and Sadie both play and design are described in such fantastic detail that you can visualize playing them, and you learn much about Sam and Sadie’s characters through their games. I am not a gamer myself, but I can appreciate the creative storytelling found in some video games.

So, believe the hype surrounding Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and do not allow yourself to be put off by a novel about a couple of gaming geeks. I admire this novel and highly recommend that you read it.