Predictably cheesy teen “romance” (?) of a girl and her boyfriend reconnecting after his death. There wasn’t much here but I didn’t really hate it so, 3/5.

Thanks #NetGalley for the ARC of #YouveReachedSam in exchange for an honest review,

Who doesn’t like closing out the year on a sad book? You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao is a debut young adult book about grief and letting go. So, naturally, this was the book I wanted to end my year with. I had also seen a TikTok about this book which convinced me that I needed to move it right up my TBR. Plus, I just find the cover stunning.

Julie is the main character of You’ve Reached Sam. She dated Sam for three years. When Sam dies as a result of a car accident, Julie is overcome with grief. However, her grief finds her making all kinds of mistakes – not checking in with certain people, getting rid of all traces of Sam. It is so hard for Julie to move on. Plus, some people are blaming Julie for Sam’s death. Overcome with everything that has happened, Julie decides to give Sam a call. She knows he won’t pick up as he is dead. Only, Sam actually does pick up. And so, Julie gets one more chance to say goodbye through her calls with Sam which eventually will come to an end.

Dustin Thao’s debut really spoke to me. I have not ever experienced the type of loss that Julie does, thankfully, yet I just felt so much empathy for her. She has all these grand plans and with Sam’s death they go up in smoke. Julie has to recalibrate and figure out her next moves. Then we have the complication of being able to speak to Sam on the phone but not tell anyone about it. You’ve Reached Sam is absolutely not plot driven – but very emotion based.

For me, I felt the grief and the quiet wafting right off the pages. I think that this book is for readers who enjoy quiet and thoughtful reads. This is not for people who need a high octane plot and action action action. The character study into Julie and her growth is what drives this book and for me personally made this book such a strong choice to end my reading year.

3/5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for providing this e-arc!

A bit frustrating but i empathize with the portagonist

Thank you Wednesday Books for a copy of You’ve Reached Sam. This book is good from Julie’s POV both past and present of her relationship with Sam. This book deals with grief and sets in a somber tone. I always struggle with YA when a teenager acts selfish which was the case with Julie. I didn’t understand why there is no counseling or her parents involved with helping her with the grief process.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The whole premise of this book is heartbreaking. If grief is a trigger warning for you, if you have recently lost a loved one, this may not be the book for you to read at this time. The entire book centers around losing someone and learning to cope with that death. That alone is enough to bring out an emotion in most people. I expected to cry and be heartbroken. I was somewhat disappointed.

We follow Sam and Julie, who meet in high school. They date but shortly before graduation Sam is killed in a car accident. The book has flashbacks from Julie's perspective that shows how they met and how their relationship grew up to this point. For me, I did not like or connect with Julie. Not just while she was grieving because grief can alter a person's behavior for sure, but the flashbacks that show Julie overall are not flattering to her. I am reminded that our characters are also in high school so some of this could be age related but even still.
I was hoping that I would be drawn into Sam and Julie's love story, that I would have really gotten a sense of how close they truly were so that the loss would have been felt that much more, sadly, that also did not happen. I did not see their relationship as being that deep.

I do think there was some character development seen during the grieving process. Julie eventually realizes that other people are also grieving and are effected by losing Sam. She learns that she can grieve and still show love and compassion to others. The magical realism aspect of this book made it seem like Julie couldn't relate to their loss because she "still had Sam". There were a lot of questions that were asked but never addressed in the book to help the reader better understand how this weird connection worked. It felt a little too convenient and the ultimate ending was going to happen, so what was the point? Did it really give them a second chance?

I had to give this book three stars because I think for the right person at the right time, this book could be very meaningful. I think I am just not that reader. I am glad that I got to read this book because I may not have picked it up otherwise. I love that we explore how death and grief can effect so many people in various ways. It is clear that there is no time frame on letting go or moving on.

This is a YA coming-of-age story about grief, love, and how we put ourselves back together after tragedy.

After Julie's boyfriend Sam dies, nothing feels like it matters to her anymore. Her plans for college suddenly seem insignificant in the face of overwhelming sadness. On a whim, she calls Sam's phone one day, wishing she could hear his voice one last time. And miraculously, he picks up.

I loved the premise for this book but, reading the first few chapters, I was concerned it was going to be clichéd and would recycle a lot of ideas I've read before. I'm not sure if this was down to the audio narration or just the writing style in the formative chapters, but I needn't have worried. After three or four chapters, this became a thoughtful, engaging, and intensely emotional read and I flew through it.

Julie's grief for Sam is all consuming at the beginning of the story and we find her struggling to do day-to-day tasks. She misses Sam's funeral because of how devastated she is and withdraws from her family and friends. When she discovers that Sam can answer her calls, she begins to feel less distraught because she realises she has more time with him.

But by speaking to Sam frequently, Julie keeps Sam alive in her head and has interrupted her own grieving process. Sam, too, can't move on while he's still tethered to Julie and she begins to understand that she needs to let him go.

We're never given a reason for why Sam can talk to Julie and he can't ever tell her where he is or what it's like (which is a either convenient or part of the cosmic rules of the afterlife, you decide), but if you can accept that, then this is becomes a really soulful read.

Julie grows a lot as a person throughout the novel as she realises that Sam would want her to look ahead to the future, not stay in the past with him. She rediscovers friendships that she'd grown apart from (which was one of my favourite parts of the story) and finds solace in remembering the happy times with Sam.

At it's heart, this book is about loss, second changes, and connection. Specifically, the connections we have with each other, and how they shape our lives and happiness. As the novel progresses, the story becomes more and more emotional and the writing more beautiful. Through Sam and Julie's story, Dustin Thao reminds us to appreciate the time we have with people while they're alive.

Content warnings for death of a loved one, grief, car accidents, missing children.

Disclaimer: I received this e-book from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: You’ve Reached Sam

Author: Dustin Thao

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 3.5/5

Diversity: Asian Characters, Queer Characters

Recommended For...: young adult readers, contemporary, paranormal, romance, grief processing

Publication Date: November 9, 2021

Genre: YA Contemporary Paranormal Romance

Recommended Age: 13+ (death, grief, underage consumption of alcohol, racism, language, bullying)

Explanation of CWs: Death and grief are the main focal point of the book. There are a couple of scenes of underage consumption of alcohol. There is some racism and bullying shown in the book. There is some cursing in the books.

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Pages: 304

Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Julie has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city, spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes.

Heartbroken, Julie skips his funeral, throws out his things, and tries everything to forget him and the tragic way he died. But a message Sam left behind in her yearbook forces back memories. Desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls Sam’s cellphone just to listen to his voicemail.

And Sam picks up the phone.

In a miraculous turn of events, Julie’s been given a second chance at goodbye. The connection is temporary. But hearing Sam’s voice makes her fall for him all over again, and with each call it becomes harder to let him go. However, keeping her otherworldly calls with Sam a secret isn’t easy, especially when Julie witnesses the suffering Sam’s family is going through. Unable to stand by the sidelines and watch their shared loved ones in pain, Julie is torn between spilling the truth about her calls with Sam and risking their connection and losing him forever.

Review: For the most part I liked this book. I loved the premise of it and it kind of reminded me of a Reddit post I saw one day. The book does great at showing the grieving process and how teens deal with death. However, the book is ultimately about how if you hold onto the past then you can’t live on in the present and into the future. The book had great character development and world building.

However, I felt like the book had some areas that needed some work. A lot of things that happen in the book are just about grieving and going over the same things the book went over previously. The book kept repeating a lot of things and it made it hard to keep reading and with the slow pacing it made it hard to keep going. The ending that exists in this book is very out of place. An event happens in the last 10% of the book and it’s rushed through. I wish that ending was pushed back some more so we got more out of it. The book also occasionally showed other characters interacting with Sam, but no one thought it was weird or that Julie was having a breakdown. Overall, the book had a great concept but weird execution.

Verdict: It was good, just a little weird.

I was given a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I know so many people loved this book but I found it repetitive and boring about half way through. Julie and Sam were high school sweethearts and had plans to leave their small town, go to college, and not come back. When Sam dies tragically, Julie can't deal with it. One day she picks up the phone and calls him (just wanting to hear his voicemail), but Sam picks up. While her a Sam can only talk this way, it seems to stall the progress Julie makes i letting go of Sam. #Netgalley #YouveReachedSam

I don’t know if I can even write a review through my tears. This book had me crying basically from the opening chapter and didn’t have me stop crying until a good half hour after. Such a beautiful heartbreaking book

DNF @ 25%

I was very excited to read this book, and was quiet surprised when I ended up not liking it. It took me weeks to get 1/4 through, at which point I decided to DNF.

I understand that everyone processes grief differently, but the way that Julie acted felt very unrealistic and cold to me. I didn't like her character, which is one of the main reasons why I decided to not finish this book. I also found the background and relationship building between the characters to be lacking, and just wasn't invested in their story.

While this book wasn't for me, I do know a few readers who really enjoyed it, and will be recommending it to others who I think will enjoy the overall themes in this book.

Readers know from the start that this book is one about coping with loss and grief. How it unfolds is what makes the story.

Dustin Thao's You've Reached Sam is a solid debut in the YA contemporary space that takes readers on an emotional ride .

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

YA contemporary is always a hit or miss for me. I liked the exploration of grief and how it manifests differently for each person. But, I feel like I never really connected to any of the characters or the actual story. The main characters, Sam and Julie, felt a little flat, and Julie, the grieving girlfriend, seemed selfish. I understood she was going through a loss, but it was almost as if she would run into other people that were missing their friend/brother/cousin/etc. and was like “OMG! Other people are sad too?” Also the book kept trying to sell me on this epic love story that Julie and Sam had, but it didn’t necessarily feel epic to me so I wasn’t very moved by it.

(Thank you to netgalley for an ecopy)

Heartbreaking and emotional, You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. Reading the synopsis, I had very high hopes of this bringing me to tears. Unfortunately, while this did make me very sad and want to put my head in my hands, no tears were present.

Julie’s boyfriend, Sam, dies in a car accident leaving Julie unable to move on. She skips his funeral, throws out everything that belongs to him and even anything that even remotely reminds her of him, in her attempt to forget him. After a message in her yearbook brings back memories, she calls his phone to hear his voice. Only, instead of his voicemail, Sam answers the phone.

This entire book is focused on grief. There’s no right way to grieve the loss of a loved one and I liked how the book depicted that. The book for me, personally, was let down by Julie herself. I just wasn’t a huge fan of her personality and I didn’t like a lot of things she did in the book. She was a pretty big damper on a book that probably would’ve had me sobbing on the floor at 3 am.

thank you to netgalley & wednesday books for the arc !!

This was a really tough book to review because I completely understood the premise and what the author was trying to achieve, and I really thought that the author did a nice job with both elements, but I also couldn't shake the feeling that this book was just not written for me.

This is a book about grief and how to cope, and it feels genuine and raw at every moment. However, as with One Last Stop and the Two Lives of Lydia Bird, I think I have discovered that I just do not handle these "light" magical elements well in contemporary fiction. I guess that I just really never know what to make of them. The other element is that of course this is YA, and while some YA books don't necessarily read as differently to adults, I think this one does. I don't want to do it a disservice by critiquing the book for *being what it should be*

All in all, lovely writing, and I'd be happy to read more from this author.

Let’s face it, I’m a sucker for a good crying book. In fact, I requested an ARC immediately after seeing someone’s IG story, showing they had cried so much from reading You’ve Reached Sam that she messed up her waterproof mascara from rubbing at her eyes so much. You’ve Reached Sam follows Julie, whose boyfriend Sam has just died. Desperate to hear his voice once more time and get to say goodbye, she calls to get his voicemail. Instead, Sam picks up and actually speaks to her. What follows is a difficult journey as Julie grapples with her grief and if—and how—she can let go of Sam.

The most interesting aspect of the story, Sam and Julie being able to communicate via phone, was also the least developed and most frustrating as a result. For the most part, even Sam doesn't fully know why or how he is able to talk ot Julia. I was never able to fully suspend my disbelief, which kept me from getting completely sucked in. The ending and Julie's realization that Sam's family is also suffering a lot, seemed rushed, and I would have loved to see more of it and her interactions with the family. That being said, it was still a compelling read. In fact, I read it during breakfast one Saturday morning so I could get some personal/relaxing time in before doing school things---and I spent most of the day reading! There was also a lot of friendship moments I loved, too. @ladies.getting.lit recebtly compared the book to The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver, and we both agreed that YRS is definitely geared more towards young adult readers in how it approached the subject and characters. Not a bag thing at all, but you might like Lydia Bird more if you aren’t a teen or college-aged. Overall, I do recommend YRS and will be hopefully adding it to my classroom library (although I am searching for more contemporary books with male MCs—-most of my male students refuse to touch any book with a hint of pink on the cover🙄)

You have to be in the mood for a sad book. to read this one. I read this when I had a lot going on in my life so i kept putting it off because I didnt need something to bring my spirits down. It also lacked a plot. Very dialogue driven.

Heartbreaking! Crushing! Tear-Inducing!
Get your Kleenex ready, theydies and gentlethems, You’ve Reached Sam is a tearjerker!

Summary:
What would you do if you had a second chance at goodbye?

Julie’s boyfriend is dead. He’s never coming back. She needs to forget him. How? Well, by getting rid of every single thing that reminds her of him.

Instantly regretting her rash decision, she tried to go to Sam’s grave. For the first time. Unable to complete her mission, she collapses and dials Sam’s number just to hear his voicemail. Except this time, he picks up. He talks to Julie.

Review:
What a beautiful, crushing, heartfelt debut! Dustin Thao is an auto-buy author for me and I’ll follow them anywhere. While I knew this novel would be sad, I wasn’t expecting the crushing weight of guilt and grief that wasn’t my own to transfer so heavily. I adored this book and felt every inch of Julie’s grief and determination and finally peace alongside her.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
You’ve Reached Sam follows Julie during her senior year of high school. There’s only a few months before graduation and she and her boyfriend, Sam, have made so many exciting plans for their future together. But then Sam dies suddenly in a car accident and Julie’s future has changed forever. But then things get a little weird and Julie calls Sam’s phone one day and he answers. So, instead of trying to move on and figure out what she’s going to do now, she spends all of her time on the phone talking to Sam.
I’ve seen basically nothing but rave reviews for this book, so I was pretty excited to read it and be emotionally destroyed by it. But that did happen for me and it’s absolutely because I think Julie was pretty terrible. The story opens with her getting rid of all of Sam’s things less than a week after he’s died. I just couldn’t reason that away in my mind. I wear a ring that belonged to my grandfather every single day and he died ten years ago. I totally understand that everyone grieves differently but that was just the first of many things that Julie did that just made me feel really disconnected from her. I couldn’t reason away her behavior or feel attached to her as a character. I will say that Julie really does the work to make up for her incredibly crappy behavior. She’s hurt most of her friends and it was really good to see her do the work to make it up to them. But my initial reaction to her just stuck with me.
I loved the concept of the story. I loved the idea that Julie was talking to Sam on the phone even though he was gone. I liked the cast of characters (except Julie). I think they absolutely made the story better and more enjoyable.
Overall, I liked this book but I didn’t love it. It’s entirely Julie’s fault that I didn’t love this book. She was kind of terrible for the beginning of this book and even though she really grew and had some great character development, I just never felt like I could really get invested in her. I can absolutely see why so many people love this book and I will definitely be recommending it in the future.

This book hurt. This book hurt so badly. This book hurt so badly in the best way possible.

From the first chapter, I knew I was about to have my butt handed to me with this book. I was sobbing before the page numbers got into the hundreds. The writing of this novel is so profoundly beautiful and engaging, What the book lacks in heavy plot, it makes up with fully realized and detailed characters and relationships.

I will warn, this is a tough read. With the state of our world right now, this novel might not be the one you want to pick up right away. Check trigger warnings before heading into this one, for sure.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow just Wow! Honestly it has taken me a while to compose this review as I was at a loss for words (in a good way). Thao's writing is beautiful and gripping. As a reader,you are invested from the start. The characterization in this book is amazing, you hear everyone as the events unfold. You feel their grief and pain so naturally, taking readers on an incredible emotional journey. I hope you will all give it a read.