Genre: Realistic Fiction

---

Rasting: 5.5.

---

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow embodies what every love most succumb to eventually: the passing of time, vast and infinite and relentless. 

“And what is love, in the end?” Alabaster said. “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”

This book has been in my TBR pile for a long, long time. Although I had no idea on the specifics, the rave reviews I had come across from time to time made me so excited to pick up the book. The title, inspired by the famous Macbeth quote, intrigued me to how the story will mirror the themes of the Shakespearean novel. The vibrant and electrifying cover, of course, didn’t hurt my interest at all. 

Diving into this book during the winter, snows piling up outside, was something I didn’t think I needed. However, the warmth that radiates from this story is not from it being a love story, like I had expected. Yes, there is love in the story, but if you described this book as a love story, you couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s about the interwoven, devastating connections we build throughout our lives, and that sometimes, nothing we do is enough to stitch our wounds together. Everything is so bittersweet, nothing ever guaranteed or perfect. It captures life’s edges, in all its glory. 

“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.”

I was fascinated by the integration of game design in the narrative; as someone who rarely plays video games, or any games for that matter, getting to know the thought process that goes on behind a great game hooked me to the point where I eagerly researched how to start gaming the moment I finished the book. The coding, the design, the business aspects – the sheer creativity of it all required to succeed in the industry was an eye-opening experience. And of course, when the cover finally clicked, I felt this sense of satisfaction that was probably my highlight of the entire book. When the characters collaborated to finish each game, I understood its gravitas as similar to when any story is brought to life: as if the world becomes more right and just and true, 

I also appreciated how the story was unafraid to explore the positive impact these fictional games can have on grounded realities. Seeing Sam allowing his virtual game space to be used for gay marriages even in the face of tradegy and political turmoil, I couldn’t help but feel the resonce of what these creations could do for the world. I was heartened by Sam’s relentless belief in games’ power. 

“We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life 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.”

There is one moment in the narrative, though, that is simply unforgettable. I had actually anticipated such a scene to exist from a review by Jack Edwards on Youtube, who had claimed that there was a moment in which everything stops and you just have to appreciate it. Despite the warning, I simply wasn’t emotionally ready for Marx’s death, and such an incredible montage of prose that followed after. This idea of gun violence, not even by an evil mafia but simply an afraid man, broke my heart in that the world is always pushing us to things we don’t want to feel or do. Marx deserved to live a life so full and bursting with memories, but circumstances took that all from him. 

Overall, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about creation, of love, of time, of life itself, and destruction. Of everything. 5/5.

“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.”