A Sally Rooney-style story about video game developers.

It's difficult to rate a book that elicits a lot of emotion and keeps me up late finishing it but that didn't hit a unanimous "heck yeah".

So here's what I didn't like: Sadie, while a major characters, felt fundamentally unfinished and I can't quite get a grasp of who she was as a character. This was highly contrasted with the depiction of Sam or even Marks, who had more detailed personal histories, pain points, insecurities, and relationships outside of the video game making trio. Sadie's main traits were being female, an excellent albeit often overlooked game designer, and making frankly terrible dating choices. Don't even get me started on Dov and all the other character's responses to Dov throughout the years. Sadie's inner world felt like it occured largely off screen (or, conversely, on only a series of literal screens). That said, none of this reads as unrealistic or incorrect for the time period...but it is frustrating.

I did really like the structure of the novel and the narration itself. The style and structure change over time to reflect different character's experiences through a lense of videogames, which I think was done amazingly in the Both Sides, the NPC, and Pioneers sections. I'm a casual gamer and found myself very drawn to the game designs and ideas, sometimes sad that I couldn't actually play some of the games described in the book.

While it succeeded for me as a book about games, it missed the mark as a book about friendship. The highs and lows were dizzying and left me rooting for the characters to find peace, ideally far from one another. A very clear pattern of a "big fight, silence, reconciliation by sweeping things under the rug" type cycle emerges and ultimately left me exhausted. And this is why I don't know how to rate the book - is this a realistic dynamic? It unfortunately can be. Is it one to aspire to? Ehhhhhhhhhhh