I was hoping to read about a time when things might have been less complicated than now, so I was drawn to this book originally published in 1948, taking place in the 1920’s in New York City. Stories taking place in New York City of the past always interest me. Having read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn many, many years ago with a memory of loving it, made it even harder to resist. While it was a time perhaps less complicated, it wasn’t really an easier time then in Brooklyn in a lot of ways. It’s a s...

Have you read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Sadly, I have not, though it’s waiting on my shelf, along with all of Betty Smith’s other books now. While reading Tomorrow Will Be Better, I picked up two newer editions of A Tree and bought the other two rediscovered classics, Maggie-Now and Joy in the Morning, released by Harper Perennial in November. I wish Betty Smith had written more novels, and I promise you, I would read them all.I’ve read that Betty Smith was a born storyteller, and I would agree....

It's hard to believe this book was written over 60 years ago. The subject matter of interpersonal relationships in our lives and everything that can be at work to affect them, for success or failure, is timeless. The setting is Brooklyn in the 1920's, as it was in Betty Smith's highly-acclaimed and well-loved first book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. If you loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, then i think you'd love Tomorrow Will Be Better too!

I liked the writing style, it's so colourful you can see perfectly what the author wants to portray! I also liked the main character Margy!Her story is so very familiar to young people but also to those that have passed this stage of their lives and look back at their hopes and dreams!Margy is young and with the optimism that her age gives her dreams about the future and all the things she is going to do differently so as not to follow the footsteps of her parents but can she though...? That's f...

It's hard to believe this book was written in 1948! I loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Tomorrow Will Be Better was also very good. I will be looking for Betty Smith's other books.

From the author of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", Betty Smith wrote another winner. I believe most of us have heard the words tomorrow will be better -knowing what they infer. They are, however, words of hope.This was required reading in high school. I still have the paperback, all marked up with doodling and smeared ink all over it.Remembering how sad a story, I took the chance in not becoming disturbed again. That didn't work out well, but the book is just so good it was worth it. It is reality

“Oh well, this is only temporary. Everything will be better someday. I'll make it better. After all, I'm young yet.”For anyone who has read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, this has a similar writing style. In Tomorrow Will Be Better, Margy Shannon is a young adult embarking on the beginning stages of an independent life. She makes some impetuous decisions while trying to escape from the poverty ridden flat she lives in with her overbearing mother and tuned-out father. Set during the 1920s, the book ha...

I liked this very much--actually, more than I liked Joy in the Morning. I liked the shifting narrators--it was mostly about Margy, but it was great to be able to see inside everybody's heads, to know WHY Margy's mother was the way she was, to know what Reenie's fiancé Sal was thinking, et cetera. This book was a little franker about sex than Joy in the Morning or even A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and I thought Frankie's character was so fascinating to read. And such a hopeful ending. I hope Margy g...

Betty Smith is the author of one of my favorite books, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. So when I saw this one available at my library, I had to snap it up. I love the genuine characters in that one, and that same touch was also given to the characters in this book too. She tackles real relationship trials...I especially could feel sympathy when it came to the in-laws. I also liked the way the author made the setting feel like its own character. That type of world building I love because I not only se...

Margy and Frankie. They both grew up in Brooklyn. They both have hopes and dreams for the future. Their parents also have plans for them. Betty Smith tells their coming of age story, then their courtship, and marriage. The American Dream is out there. After watching their parents fall short of their hopes, can Margy and Frankie continue a forward trajectory? Is there hope for them in the future? This intimate portrait of life in 1920's Brooklyn will evoke memories of our own upbringings while fi...

After rereading this book, I realized that I must have read it multiple times before, and am wondering what drew me to it when I was much younger. One of the reasons I like Smith is that she's not coy about sex, and in this book, her heroine has to come to terms with the fact that the man she marries is not attracted to her--or any woman. As an adult, I find Frankie so sad, and much more sympathetic than I remembered. In fact, I remembered the end as Margy telling him that some men weren't made

I first read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith when I was just a kid but it quickly became one of my favourite books so when I saw Tomorrow Will Be Better by Smith on Edelweiss+, I was thrilled. I will admit I was also worried how I would react - it is often hard, at least for me, to read other books by an author when the only one I have read is as beloved as A Tree. I worried needlessly. Long out of print, Tomorrow Will Be Better is finally being brought back and, like A Tree, it is beaut...

An intensely sad story told candidly and unflinchingly by an author whose personal experiences taught her to understand the motivations of her characters. The setting is a working class neighborhood in 1920's Brooklyn, New York. When the story opens Margy Shannon is seventeen, a girl "grateful for little concessions and [who] considered herself lucky when things went her way." Nevertheless, she has a heart full of hope and modest aspirations that center on having a home and family, raising child...

a sad, sad book - but still fascinating

Wowowow! I can’t remember who recommended this to me, so if you see this please let me know! It’s a touching story of working class struggle in the early 20th century that follows a girl as she grows up, gets married, and slowly faces the blows that life gives, slowly reconciling how what she expects of her life and what is possible in her life are forever at odds with one another. Perfectly captures the slow burn of poverty and the futility of the American dream. The first plot-driven novel I’v...

The book was an easy read and kept me entertained. My biggest thrill was reading a book not set in the 40s, but written in the 40s. It was an inside look at a fictional story of growing, life, work, love, parenting, and marriage of life set in the 20s. Things the author included back then because it seemed unusual, or could confuse the reader (a mother not nursing) to become the norm today.I felt it lacked on the writing itself. Great detail was put into the small things and so much emphasis lea...

My edition large print, over 400 pp. Line drawing cover, making it look sort of literary. Anyway. I think I should've just reread ATGiB instead (after all, I've only read it once, and that was almost 2 decades ago). Smith certainly does know how to bring her characters alive. Or, half-alive, which is all the luckiest of them ever achieve. An easy, yet also wise read... but not an enjoyable one.

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn several years ago, and want to re-read it after this. I think it is superior to this one, but I did thoroughly enjoy this story of Margy's growing-up years into womanhood. The author was more frank than I expected about confronting personal issues, and seems rather ahead of her time in that way. Her writing is very smooth, making it an easy read, albeit an emotional one. She did a great job of letting us into the feelings of all the characters, making it seem true...

I enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn so much that I wanted more of Betty Smith. This book was long ago out of print, so I assumed it would be dated. I was wrong. It was, of course, a time piece. I truly understood what 1920’s Brooklyn must have been like. The struggling immigrant issues were no different than what is happening today (without Trump to make things worse) as well as women struggling in a man’s world. I think this book should be put back into print. So many of the chapters are thought...

I’ve been re-reading some favorite novels this year during the COVID-19 pandemic: “comfort reading”, and my love of the Betty Smith novels drew me to re-read “Tomorrow Will Be Better” (1948), which I first read as a teen. I’ve read it at least 4 times since then, and notably years ago when I first read it as a married adult I understood things I had totally missed as a teen! It’s kind of all about sex!It’s the story of Margy Shannon, a young woman in Brooklyn during the 1920s, and her search for...

I love Betty Smith. After discovering "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" about 10 years too late I had to get my hands on something, anything else she wrote. "Tomorrow Will Be Better" was a sad and truthful look at the optimistic idealism of young adults looking for a brighter future around the next corner.

Maybe I would have appreciated this had I been older. Read it as a teenager. It was the most difficult of Betty Smith's four books for me to find. I wish it hadn't been the last one I read- it was a disappointment. Very depressing- about three times as depressing as Maggie-Now, which was almost devoid of joy. In my opinion, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is Smith's best, then Maggie-Now, then Joy in the Morning, and then this book.

Betty Smith was *such* a good writer, but this was a tough read. Though the setting was the same as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I found the characters darker and much more bitter (especially Margy's mother). It really made me think about how tough life was, for so long, for most of the western world's working class, and appreciate that I live in relative ease.

Betty Smith was just a great storyteller. I imagine her to be the Irish version of my grandmother. I still have all my copies of her books from my teenage years because I can never let them go. (Yes, they're chiseled in stone tablets. Whatever.)

The thing I loved most about this book and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the depth of the characters and the deep sympathy she creates for them. This story is much sadder than ATGIB, but it is well told.

Well written but lacks the charm of Joy Comes in the Morning.

The first I loved about this book was the title of the book, I think that is what we are saying going through all that happened in 2020.The story is set in Brooklyn in the 1920s and is about Margy’s life who has lived in poverty all her life. Margy is eager, optimistic, young, and recently out of school, she believes she can have a better life. She dreams of a husband she loves and a beautiful home where her children are happy.When she meets Frankie, she thinks he is the one who can help her dre...

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is one of my all time favorite books & I have read it several times at various parts of my life, each time it would bring new love & meaning to me.I had never read any of Betty Smith's other books & when I saw this book released as a "rediscovered classic" I had to have it.Written in the 40's but the story takes place in Brooklyn in the 20's. Lower working class people, struggling day to day to pay the bills & put food on the table. Very depressing in many...

I have a new favorite book of all time. It’s up there with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for depicting life in 1920s Brooklyn lived by working class families struggling to make it even as they dream of something more. The title offers hope to people stuck in their working man grind, shoving each other as much as they feel shoved by their supervisors at the factory. Each generation imagines breaking out of the cycle to advance to the next class and the comforts they imagine upward mobility would bring...

Probably closer to 4.5A blast from the past. What was life like almost 75 years ago? Written in 1948, but set in 1920, you get a glimpse of like in Brooklyn, NY. Life was tough. As a woman, finding a good job, and a husband was a typical path to a decent life. Plus, you needed to do it when you were young. Life expectancy was less than 50.The story follows Margy Shannon as she seems to be on the path of the good life by finding a decent husband after a tough home life. But marriage and the optim...