Julie Y. (naboo) reviewed on 5/16/2025 + 35 more book reviews

This is the fourth book I have read by this author, and unfortunately, I was quite disappointed in the story. 

Sam Masur is a biracial son of a Jewish father and Korean mother living in Los Angeles and being raised by his Korean grandparents, Dong Hyun and Bong Cha Lee. While recovering from surgery due to a terrible car accident, he meets Sadie Green, who happens to be visiting her older sister Alice, recovering from Leukemia. Both Sadie and Sam bond over Super Mario Brothers in the game room at the hospital. She lives in Beverly Hills while he lives in Koreatown. Sadie's visits help Sam out of his depression thus, she continues to visit and use the time towards her community service for her Bat Mitzvah. Regrettably, Sam finds out, and as a result, the two of them have a falling-out. 

Six years later, both of them reunite by chance at a train station in New England. Sam is studying math at Harvard and Sadie is studying engineering at MIT. After ignoring Sam's emails, Sam drops by Sadie's apartment and discovers she is suffering from depression. So he begins to come over every day to help cheer her up. Later on, we discover that the reason for her depression is she had just had an abortion. She had gotten pregnant with her ex-boyfriend (who happened to be married at the time), Dov Mizrah, her gaming instructor at MIT. Dov is famous for designing Dead Sea, a game with much-admired graphics and a unique engine. 

Both Sadie and Sam decide to create Ichigo, an adventure game about a child lost at sea trying to find his way back home. Regrettably, they struggle to develop a graphics engine thus, Sam encourages Sadie to ask Dov for the use of his own, and consequently, the two resume their affair. Marx Watanabe, Sam's roommate, acts as the producer of Ichigo. 

Unfair Games is the video game studio owned and managed by Marx, Sadie, and Sam. After Ichigo is complete, Opus Interactive produces the game, and Sam helps promote Ichigo by going on tour thus, the game becomes a huge success. Alas, the undo stress on his left foot from the endless game tour, the numerous surgeries, and the postsurgical complications leads Sam to eventually have his foot amputated. At this point, all three decide to move to LA to establish a corporate office for Unfair Games and gives Sadie the opportunity to break up with Dov especially since he was becoming more and more physically and verbally abusive towards her

Sadie goes to Japan with Marx, and both end up having sex for the first time. Sadly, Sam finds out about their relationship and is depressed about the news because he loves Sadie and secretly wished the two of them would eventually become a couple.

Sam decides to allow same sex marriages in the game Mapleworld, which results in 50,000 people canceling their accounts and 200,000 people joining. Immediately after, the hate mail and death threats by email and snail mail arrive earmarked for Sam. Regrettably, Sam decides to continue to push political statements in his game, which leads to one of the members of an extreme right wing shooting and killing Marx. 

I really wanted to love this book but I found the pace to be quite slow and the author put in too many social and political topics such as abortion, disability, mass shooting, same sex marriages,....

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