“You try again. You fail better.”
Lauded as the Best Fiction book of 2022 in the Goodreads Choice Awards, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is an exhilarating exploration of creativity, expression and identity. Readers follow Sam and Sadie, two young video game designers who achieve fame and fortune. Two friends often in love but never lovers, the book spans over thirty years and follows the pair from Cambridge to Venice Beach, and countless other pieces of land in between and far beyond. A spellbindingly-told commentary on our collective need to be loved and to love, join us at What We Reading for the best books like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Who Wrote Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow?
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a 2022 novel by Gabrielle Zevin. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is her tenth published work and was an instant New York Times Best Seller, a Sunday Times Best Seller, a USA Today Best Seller, and a #1 National Indie Best Seller. Following a twenty-five-bidder auction, the film rights to the novel were acquired by Temple Hill and Paramount Studios. Zevin is currently writing the screenplay.
This Time Tomorrow – Emma Straub
Kicking off our list of the best books like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow. On the eve of her fortieth birthday, Alice is contemplating her life. She is content enough but feels like there is still something missing. She then wakes up the next morning trapped in her sixteen-year-old body with the clock having been wound to 1996. This Time Tomorrow poses the question: ‘What would you do differently if you could live your life again?’ and is presented with a scope and scale that any fan of Gabrielle Zevin will enjoy.
Normal People – Sally Rooney
Tomorrow x3 may be a love story, but it certainly isn’t a conventional romance story. Dealing with our wants and needs to communicate love but also the difficulties in doing so, one of the best books that tap into this is Normal People by Sally Rooney. Bringing her psychological acuity to proceedings, Normal People follows Marianne and Connell, two students who are continually drawn together by a deep and mutual connection.
Normal People is a profound romance tale exploring the subtleties of class, culture and complex relationships that can ensnare a first love.
Sea Of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel
From the bestselling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility is a dazzling tale of time travel, space, love and plague. Another one of the best books from 2022, it takes readers on a sweeping ride from Vancouver in 1912 to a dark lunar colony five hundred years into the future.
This Goodreads Choice Award winner is told through different perspectives across shifting timelines and is as much an intimate musing on identity and legacy as it is a time-travel-based adventure.
How To Stop Time – Matt Haig
In How to Stop Time, readers are introduced to Tom, a forty-one-year-old man preparing for a new job as a high school history teacher, but who has lived for centuries. The Albatross Society are a secretive group dedicated to protecting people like Tom, however, they have one rule: do not fall in love.
Unfortunately for Tom, a fellow teacher at his school has captured his heart. With the society threatening to derail his new life and romance, Tom is forced to choose between continuing to live in the past, or finally begin living in the present. From the author of The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time is a bighearted novel about a man stuck in time, the woman who could save him, and how entire lifetimes can be poured into learning how to live.
The Future Is Yours – Dan Frey
Another book with similar themes as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is Dan Frey’s The Future Is Yours. A timely novel with the rise of AI around us, Frey introduces Ben and Adhi, two best friends who create The Future: a supercomputer with the power to present the internet one year from now.
Innovatively told through blog posts, emails and messages, the ability to see into the future is a tantalizing prospect, and one that naturally brings about a bleak future. Frey asks some hard-hitting questions about the implications of innovation, all while presenting two best friends who are pushed to the absolute limit.
How High We Go In The Dark – Sequoia Nagamatsu
Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel How High We Go in the Dark is set shortly and follows a group of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of an epic plague. Whilst it is much darker tonally, there are many shared themes like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Following these desperate survivors, Nagamatsu explores our dependence on one another, with their struggles and fears resonating powerfully with readers across the book. Delicate and sweeping in its scale, it is an accomplished read that will leave an imprint on any reader.
Remarkably Bright Creatures – Shelby Van Pelt
Like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures offers a poignant exploration of friendship and connection. Following the death of her husband, Tova Sullivan begins working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Keeping busy is something she has been doing ever since the disappearance of her son at sea over thirty years ago.
Through her nights mopping floors and tidying up, Tova begins to strike up a connection with Marcellus, the aquarium’s giant Pacific octopus. Ever the detective, Marcellus can work out what happened to Tova’s son, but communicating it with his invertebrate body through the glass is easier said than done. In her debut novel, Van Pelt intimately reminds readers how looking back at the past can sometimes offer hope for the future.
Check Out The Best Books Like Remarkably Bright Creatures
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
