wow, wow, and wow

This is a 5-star read for me with hardly any notes! I hardly read contemporary fiction when there's just so much fantasy fiction out there, so this was a real treat!
Every time I recommended this book to someone while I was still in the midst of reading it (which happened more than once), I'd really minimally describe the premise and feel like I was falling so short of what the novel is really about. But books that encompass the wholeness of human friendship, miscommunication, and creativity should be difficult to describe! Even now as I write, I think my comparisons of this piece of art to others I love and descriptions of how the plot and characters made me feel are the avenues by which I want to format this review.
I got about halfway through this (I listened to the audiobook version and loved the readers) and felt like I'd been slowly inching my way through the plot for forever. I felt similarly when I watched Scott Pilgrim v. the World and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. I think this may be due to the fact that this book holds so much in the backstories and desires of its characters. Well-rounded, developed, heartbreakingly real characters are what I search for in every story and remember long after reaching 'the end.' I'm so glad to say this is true of Sadie, Sam, and Marx for me. I didn't expect to become so attached to them as a trio and individual people (especially Marx). This review will not indulge in any spoilers... so I'll end this discussion here.
This book made me feel like I'd lived the entire span of a human life in the few weeks it took me to entirely finish this book. That's no small feat for a writer, or really any sort of creative, to invoke in a reader with their art. The timeline does plenty of jumping around from present times to childhood, even into an alternate video game world (jarring, yes, but oh so satisfying a payoff). I adored how this stylistic choice contributed to making the conclusion more gratifying and full-bodied. I really didn't know how this was going to end---perhaps on some sort of video game metaphor?---but ended up loving the author's choice.
Really, I have nothing negative to say about this book or my reading experience. *mic drop*



Some of my favorite quotes from Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow:

"Sam's doctor said to him, 'The good news is that the pain is in your head.'
But I am in my head, Sam thought."

"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."

"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 is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time."

"It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives."

---