shoutaboutbooks's reviews
802 reviews

‘If this were a game, he could hit pause. He could restart, say different things, the right ones this time.’

Yes, yes, I know. I am very late to the party on this one. I had actually started reading Tomorrow x3 back in August 2023, but I immediately fled from its palpable nostalgia and sentimentalism. At the time, I was simply too emotionally preoccupied to be swept up by what I felt would be an advocation of love and forgiveness (which, my lived experience was teaching me, should not be considered synonyms). So I turned away and placed it aside. But now it’s literally 2025 and I needed to know what all the fuss was about. 

I’m sure you’ve all read it by now, so I won’t preach to the choir but the fuss was valid. It’s beautiful, immersive storytelling and I loved its invokation of literature, art, music and, of course, games. It manages to balance the specific and technical with the relatable and accessible. We are all welcomed into this world, and have understandably been captivated by it. 

I loved the first half of this BUT, I’m not sure it managed to deliver the conflict/emotional revelations it took so much care to foreshadow. Everything after the climax was sort of underwhelming. Did I enjoy this? 100%, platinum trophy. Did it make me cry? Yes, several times. Do I feel changed or enriched? No, not especially. Do I feel a bit deflated, actually? Yes, and I think it's because this book made me wish so fiercely that I could be a child again, watching my brother play Banjo Kazooie in a moment where everything is still possible. Instead, my decisions have got me stuck playing the same level every day and now I'm too tired of todays to want to progress to tomorrows. I don't think this is the feeling I was supposed to end up with 🙂

I’m certain nostalgia will eventually call me to read this again and, potentially, I might enjoy it more for not having to contend with my own apprehensions/expectations. 

'Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.'

Altha. Violet. Kate. Three women connected by an ancestral line and the (magical) realism of five centuries of patriarchal violence, five centuries of female rage. Altha, 1619, is standing trial for murder by means of alleged witchcraft. Violet, 1942, is reckoning with a trauma she can't name but that pulls her closer to solving the mystery of her mother. Kate, 2019, is pregnant and, in fleeing her abusive partner, finds her way to her great-aunt Violet's rural cottage. The legacy of the Weyward women is hidden, but it screams to be found.

As distinct and distant as they are from each other, I loved all three of these narrators. All three overcome isolation, oppression and ostracisation to find comfort in nature and harness the power within. I'm not sure the ends entirely justify the means, because moments with each of them are near emotionally unbearable lol but I also admire Hart's boldness in rendering female suffering so vividly. Violet's narrative was particularly challenging for me, like uncontrollable sobbing on the train challenging, but I also couldn't bear to stop reading (CWs for abuse, r*pe and induced miscarriage). Go with more caution than I did.

Increasingly, I've been yearning to disappear into the woods to commune only with the pigeons so, if I could call in a Weyward-esque property inheritance from a long-lost relative that'd be great. No worries if not, I'll just live in the vicarious poetic justice instead 🪶