This was my favourite book of 2022 and I loved it just as much this time around listening to the audio version. I could have stayed in Sam and Sadie's world(s) for 416 pages more. The characters and relationships in this book will stay with me for a long time, and this has a firm place on my forever favourites shelf. Ultimately this is a book about love between creators, the necessity of play, and the passing of time.

There are many striking things about this book, but perhaps most is the nature of the main relationship throughout, that of Sam and Sadie. How many other novels centre around the platonic relationship of two collaborators? I'd love to read more novels like this, but I suspect they wouldn't be nearly as good.

Another striking thing about this book is the depth of the characters. It's almost hard to believe they're constructed and not real, that well do you empathise with their traumas and despise them for how they sometimes treat each other. Yet the standout factor between the three main characters - Sam, Sadie and Marx - is how much they love and need one another, how often they are extensions of one another. The characters are SO well fleshed out, even the minor ones. One of those books where you finish it in utter awe of the author's imagination; the brilliance of a mind that can create and describe a world that feels so real. Sam, Sadie, and Marx, the three main characters, are as equally flawed as they are loveable (and aren't we all?).

I've seen some describe this book as dense, which I didn't find myself (and I really struggle with dense books). My attention tends to waver with longer books, finding the pace too slow and that too much time is spent describing and not enough spent happening, but I actually found Tomorrow x3 rushed at the end and overall too short! While I wouldn't personally say the first half is slow-paced, I can understand why people say it is comparison with the second. The first half centres around the first game they make together, whereas the second half/final third is about the 20+ years that follows.
This to me is a near perfect book, but if I had to suggest two flaws it would be that those 20+ years are told in too few pages, and without giving anything away, i'd liked to have seen more pages given to the main romantic pairing of the second half of the book as I didn't always believe it (particularly as they were initially getting together).

I could easily have spent another two hundred pages with these characters and i'll be forever sad I won't be able to.

You may have noticed i've gone the whole review without mentioning video games. This book heavily features video games, but they are only the vehicle for the creative collaboration and connection of the characters - I know sod all about video games beyond enjoying Crash Bandicoot in the 90s and, as you may have been able to tell, that was not a hindrance to my enjoyment of the book in any wagly. The games these characters make together are almost irrelevant compared to the relationships of their creators.

Tomorrow x3 won't be for everyone, but bloody hell was it for me.