This wasn't quite what I expected. I fully expected the protagonist to make an effort to reverse what happened to Sam, that she would be communicating with him in the past. What we got instead is much more internal, a representation of the ways that all-encompassing grief cuts us off from others. It's a bit ham-fisted and the characters are largely lacking in depth.

You’ve Reached Sam is a novel that deals with something we all have dealt with: loss and grief. Whether the loss is a boyfriend such as this novel or a family member which includes pets, we have all experienced grief and Thao deals with this in a superb way. Julie has lost Sam due to a car accident and she feels partly responsible. Julie and Sam had planned their life together and now that is gone. Julie experiences grief in many ways, and while she is facing it she feels the needs to hear Sam’s voice so she calls him. And instead of it going to voicemail Sam himself answers.

Neither one really knowing how they in fact have this connection or how long they will have it, in some ways Julie has Sam again all to herself. But will this unknown connection keep her in the past and from moving on without Sam?

We do get the beginning of their relationship through flashbacks, so we see it evolve over time. There were some situations brought in dealing with Sam’s music that did not have a conclusion for me. I was wanting more from that side story to come into play, but it was left open.

The last chapter and Epilogue made this novel for me. I had some issues with Julie, and found closure with the ending Thao gave us along with Julie and Sam. Fair warning: If you have recently lost someone, I would stay clear of this novel until you have come to terms as best you can with your grief. Grief can be an overwhelming thing, and Thao shows us this with multiple characters and situations and how one person reacts with their grief affects others.

You’ve Reached Sam is recommended.

The disjointed narration style of this book both worked and didn’t work for me. I found myself compelled by the characters and invested in their journey but also sort of put off at times by the time shift. I could see students really liking this or really disliking it. For me it wasn’t a great read and wouldn’t read again or recommend to students.

You've Reached Sam absolutely wrecked me. This is the kind of soul-grabbing book I love. Highly recommended for fans of emotional YA.

You've Reached Sam is a modern day ghost story that cleverly explores the issues of grieving. Julie Clark's plans to move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam after graduation are derailed when he dies in a car accident. Planning to attend college together and go to Japan with him over the summer, Julie now finds herself mired in guilt and grief. After an angry phone call from Julie, (he had forgotten to pick her up at the airport), he jumps in his car and heads to his death. Devastated and finding herself blamed by his friends for his death, Julie skips his funeral and throws out memorabilia from their relationship, trying to move on. But when she calls his cell phone to hear his voicemail message one more time, he answers. The phone calls give them the opportunity to reconnect, making it harder to let him go. This supernatural premise allows for an interesting exploration of the grieving process for an untimely death.

From seeing the stunning cover for the first time to reading the description, I was hyped for this book and I knew it would make me sob, I wanted to fall in love with this book.

Dustin Thao's debut takes us through Julie grieving the loss of her boyfriend Sam. Everyone grieves differently, You've reached Sam is not the typical response you expect from a grieving teenager. Julie goes from throwing Sam's things out, deleting everyone and being distant from everyone, not attending the funeral/wakes to just wanting to hear his voice once more except she gets that second chance to say goodbye to him when he answers the phone and its not just once, its months of being able to talk to him.

This book is purely an emotional based story. There is no real plot to this book, while a few parts of the story fell flat for me or didn't seem to be in character and was off putting however "You've reached Sam" is an engaging book because you are reading through Julie character growth as she goes through this process, that is what makes this a strong book.


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The prologue had me in tears, the last 3 chapters had me so teary I had to go back and reread them. I have not experienced a loss like this but I can resonate Dustin Thao's writing and with Sam, the not wanting to be forgotten or leaving a mark on the world when you pass, I think this story does a great job of putting across (while making you very teary) that you do leave a mark on the ones you leave behind and they wont forget you.

Julie and Sam have been sweethearts almost since Julie first moved to Ellensburg. Now in the middle of their senior year, they are planning what comes next - a future in Portland, studying at Reed College, living that struggling artist lifestyle and trying to make it on their own. But one night everything changes when Sam gets his by a swerving truck and dies. Julie blames herself and a lot of Sam's friends blame her too. Just when Julie reaches her breaking point and calls Sam's phone out of sheer desperation and denial, something even more unbelievable happens - he actually answers.

Through some cosmic connection neither of them can explain, they have been given a chance to say goodbye. And not the brief kind of goodbye we usually get in this genre when someone summons a ghost for a quick haunting chat, but a Midwest goodbye, the kind that drags on for hours until the room is completely saturated with the awkwardness of a moment that should have ended long ago. Truly too much of a good thing. Day after day, Julie calls Sam, and every time he picks up right away, just as eager to talk to her. But he knows better than to ever initiate the call, because if he does call Julie and she doesn't pick up, their connection will be lost forever.

As Julie navigates this new life without Sam, her days are often spent in deep denial and daydreaming, trying to find some way to claw back what could have been. She distances herself from her friends and walls off every possibility to something new, determined to hold on to every last ounce of Sam that she can. With even Sam getting more and more stern that she has to move on, it finally starts to sink in for Julie that she has to find a way to carry on his memory even while letting him go.

I read a lot of YA books about grief. I think it's a super important topic and losing someone this important to you this young is additionally hard because many people in your friend group don't really get what you're going through and don't know how to talk to you about it or be supportive. And that really comes through here. I was mad from chapter one when Julie's mom just let her throw away a box of Sam's things. Like where is Julie's mom to help her cope with this tremendous loss in her life? But maybe Julie's mom has never lost anyone like that either. I know that was true for me when I lost my best friend in high school. But this book never talks about that. Julie may as well have no relationship with either of her parents -- her dad is only mentioned briefly.

If that wasn't bad enough, some of Julie's friends are just as terrible to her as she is to them. And while with Mika I think it may well have been the grief that caused her to have selfish and unrealistic expectations, the rest of them just kind of...ignored the impact this would have on her?

I also didn't love the writing style. The flashbacks were hard and heavy at the beginning (which makes sense in those initial days and weeks after a loss), but then they just stop altogether until one comes in out of nowhere toward the end. There's also one random daydream/speculative alternate future scene that was confusing because it felt so inconsistent with the trajectory. Julie's conversations with Sam were repetitive, often awkward and unnecessarily angry, and didn't seem to be supporting her character's trajectory at all. But her character did have a strong trajectory, and even though I found her absolutely insufferable, that's one of the key aspects that revitalized this book for me.

Very grateful to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the review copy. Even though I was disappointed by it, I can see how it would appeal to a wide range of readers. I just wish the characters showed each other more compassion in their time of shared loss.

This book simultaneously broke my heart and patched it back together again. It's been a while seen I'd read such a thought-provoking, heart-wrenching YA novel. YOU'VE MET SAM is a new instant favorite of mine -- I'll be reading anything and everything Dustin Thao writes in the future!

It was a sweet story about grief and recovering from loss. I think I'm just too old for YA at this point. It felt like it didn't go in depth enough for me. I think this would be great for younger readers, maybe 13 to 17. I'm rating it 4 stars because the writing was beautiful and I think that it would mean the world to the right reader.

This book was absolutely heart wrenching. It had me crying for days after finishing the book I absolutely adored it and would highly recommend it (I literally gifted it for three different birthdays).

DNF @ 20%. This book was just not for me. I found Julie very unlikable and found all her emotions and reactions super exaggerated even for a teen going through such a tremendous loss.

Julie's plan is to move out of their small town together with her boyfriend Sam. They will live in an apartment they both love, atteng college and visit Japan in summer. But everything changes when Sam dies.

There's so much hype going on around this book even before it was published. I did like the writing. It gave me a Japanese animation kind of vibe especially with the transitions between the flashbacks and the present time. I wished the characters were more fleshed out especially Sam. I know everyone reacts to loss in different ways and I was really trying to understand Julie's situation but sometimes she's just aggravating. I cried in the beginning but the ending didn't move me as much as I wanted to. I thought the author did an incredible job with the portrayal of grief. Overall, this is a beautiful, raw, and a promising debut.

I put off reading this book for months. Probably even close to half a year, if I'm being honest. I saw all the reviews and the synopsis, and I knew it was going to be really sad. And to be honest, I don't really do well with incredibly sad books. This whole book was packed full of tear-jerking chapters, so needless to say, I was crying from the beginning to the end.
The scenes were beautifully written, and the plot of the story very well done. Each chapter and scene was exactly what Sam and Julie's story needed. The most powerful thing, I think, is the fact that tears naturally slipped out, page after page. And some chapters definitely had me full out sobbing.
I finished this book at like, 3am in the morning. This book is like watching a drama - after it ends, it ruminates in your mind for a while. And considering this was a really sad book, I wasn't particularly happy with the fact that I was going to have a sad morning when I woke up.
But that aside - do I regret reading this book? No. It was truly beautiful. And there's no doubt Dustin Thao is an incredibly talented writer. But please - don't make your next book so sad. I want to be able to enjoy your writing without crying so much ahhh.

This lived up to the “Your Name” comp because I SOBBED. A beautifully emotional debut; I can’t wait to read more from Dustin Thao.

There are a lot of things to love about this book, the greatest being the in depth exploration of grief. The book starts a week after Julie's boyfriend Sam dies in an accident and throughout the book we get to see how Sam's loved ones are dealing with the aftermath of his death. The commentary on grief is realistic and heartbreaking and I loved following Julie as she learns to accept and move on from Sam's death. I think where this book struggled was in starting after Sam's funeral because I feel like I was never able to invest in their relationship enough to have the emotional punch I was expecting.

Overall, I think this was a really strong debut and would be interested to see what Dustin Thao writes next.

Not many books bring tears to my eyes but this one did. I knew from the moment I heard the plot of this months before it was released that I would adore it and I wasn’t wrong. This a new favourite for sure.

I really wanted to like this book, and I did, but in the end I feel it fell a little short of my expectations.

The things I did like were the writing and the characters.

The thing I didn’t like was the ending. I felt like it was missing something and I just needed more answers. My rating would have been better if the ending would have been a little more fulfills for me.

Needless to say this book was not awful and I’m sure there are many readers who will enjoy and love it. I will try this author again in the future.

I’m conflicted. This was sad but not tear inducing sad and I was ready TO CRY. Grief hits everyone in different ways but our main character Julie came off as super selfish and she got on my nerves to a certain point. She isn’t the only know going through grief and she was constantly thinking mostly about herself.

The writing isn’t bad but the characters seemed like cardboard cutouts except maybe Oliver. The chapters alternate from the past to now and I like that we got to see Sam and Julie’s relationship before he died. Not to be a hater I don’t see what there is to like about Julie either, she seems to lack personality. I don’t dislike her but there’s just something about her characterization that seemed missing for me.

The other thing I didn’t like was that the chapters were SOOO long but I understand why the author did it that way but I can’t say that I enjoy long chapters.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book. ALSO forgot to mention, the cover is gorgeous.

I loved this idea for a book - from the moment I first heard about it, I couldn't wait to read it. Unfortunately, it just didn't live up to my sky-high expectations, and I was left underwhelmed by the execution of the story. I'm glad I read it, but I'm not planning to shout about it from the rooftops.

usually i love these kind of shapeless grief-driven books but this was just okay. i was expecting more based on the synopsis and the characters felt kinda one-dimensional which is why this didn't work.