Moving fluidly between childhood and adulthood, this tale of bittersweet friendship, love and loss across time between indie computer game designers Sam and Sadie buzzes with breath-taking creativity and emotion. Don't feel deterred if you're not a gamer: the book is thrillingly accessible and has a huge, generous - and sometimes devastating - heart. Slot another coin in the arcade: you'll never want to leave the worlds this read creates.
Sadie came up with the idea for Both Sides on the night Sam went missing, and she'd been turning it over in her head ever since. It wasn't much then. A glimmer of a notion of a nothing of a whisper of a figment of an idea. When she's been retracing the walk she'd taken with him on that promise-filled dawn, she had been struck by how the exact same route could look and feel so different. One minute, Sam is there, the game was completed, and the world was filled with potential. Twelve hours later, Sam was gone, the game was far from her thoughts, and the world was grim and murderous. It is the same world, she thought, but I am different. Or is it a different world, but I am the same?
