Hard to really develop interests in the characters. The story is all over the place and sometimes hard to follow.

I absolutely adored this book. Gaming nostalgia and the characters are incredibly relatable.

All I can say is wow, these characters are beautifully depicted, the world seems vividly real, and my soul feels entrenched in the messy yet beautiful lives Sadie, Sam, and Marx live while making games. I want to know more of their lives (an expansion pack as you say) but the ending really ties together the theme of the book. Genius storytelling.

This was a fantastic book about friendship and the journey of life for Sam and Sadie. The book had my emotions going 15 minutes into he read and kept me interested through the end.

one of the most amazing books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.

I grew up playing video games in the 80’s as a kid and easily related to Sam and Sadie. I thought their stories were fascinating and I was awe struck with many twists and turns the author took me on discovering them. The other characters, Dov, their families, and Marx, were perfectly created to compliment them. I highly recommend this book. It is a page turner.

The only book I’ve ever read that uses gaming as an allegory for life. A bittersweet, heartbreaking, yet hopeful story. One of my favorite books of the year.

Best book I have read in a year!! Loved every page.

Everyone in book club has raved about this book. I was excited to crack it open and it reads okay but I’m not invested. I kinda like the characters but I just don’t care about them or this game they’re creating. For some reason the relationships between the characters are off putting, and I can’t figure out if that was a purposeful choice. I am extremely disturbed by Dov and Sadie’s relationship its evolution seems twisted and borderline gross. And I’m frustrated with our helpless protagonist, who seems put upon, life just happens to him and it’s like he doesn’t have the will or desire to make it better. And just when I start to feel compassion for him, he becomes the villain for another character. And as the book progresses I really don’t like Sadie! How can she be friends with Dov, a completely toxic character, and hate Sam? And then Sadie and Marx inevitably become a thing which forces Sam to reinvent himself as Mazur, all these characters are just weird, but are self aware of their issues and quirks, unfortunately that doesn’t redeem them for me. One positive thing I could say about the book is it has lots of great vocabulary, and I appreciate the features of the literary canon. There is also this existential conversation around life just being a game being played by greater maybe just larger being. That our world and lives are being manipulated by gamers. All in all, I was underwhelmed.

To start, this is by far one of the best books I have ever read. Being a gamer myself, I enjoyed how the author pulled many aspects of gaming to include great triumphs, loss, and even death but yet somehow was able to twist it into the lessons that intertwine the reality we live in today. 10/10