NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the brilliant and richly imagined world of video game design, two college friends named Sam and Sadie—who are frequently in love but never lovers—become creative partners. Success offers them recognition, joy, tragedy, deceit, and, in the end, a sort of immortality. It’s a love story, but it’s unlike any you’ve ever read.

“Delightful and absorbing.” —The Times of New York “Utterly brilliant.” —John Green

A Kirkus Review’s Best Fiction Book of the Century • One of the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the Twenty-First Century The Best Fiction Book of the Past 30 Years by the Los Angeles Times The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, GoodReads, and Oprah Daily are among the best books of the year.

From The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry’s best-selling author: In December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur emerges from a subway vehicle on a chilly day and spots Sadie Green amidst the crowds of people awaiting him on the platform. He yells her name. She acts as though she hasn’t heard him for a little moment, but then she turns and the game starts: a legendary partnership that will make them famous.

Before even graduating from college, these friends—who have been intimates since childhood—created their first blockbuster, Ichigo, and borrow money and ask for favors. The world is theirs overnight. Sam and Sadie, who are not yet 25 years old, are wealthy, successful, and intelligent, but these attributes won’t shield them from their own creative aspirations.