This book broke my heart in the best possible way. Every person experiences heartbreak in some form of another growing up, but Julie experiences one of the worst kinds when her beloved boyfriend dies unexpectedly in a car crash on his way to pick her up.

She blames herself. She misses him. Other people blame her. She misses all memorial events because she’s heartbroken, but people interpret it as her not caring. And all she wants is another chance to talk to Sam.

What she doesn’t expect is to be given that very chance. But what will she do when it can’t last forever? When she can’t hold onto what she’s already lost, because it’s already gone?

A story about actually getting that second chance to say goodbye – about weighing what’s important for you versus what’s needed for others, and about coming to terms with loss, growth, and moving forward. This book has a bit of everything and if I wasn’t afraid to break my heart repeatedly, I’d reread this book regularly. I highly recommend it.

Let me just say this now: please read You've Reached Sam now! Like, now!

This book was amazingly heartwarming, heart wrenching, and emotionally draining in so many ways. I feel like everyone wants that second chance at a goodbye, and Julie and Sam had that chance. Even though that element isn't realistic, it's something we all wish we could have.

Throughout the entire book, we read as Julie and Sam talk to each other every night. Reminiscing and basically Sam wants to give Julie the closure/goodbye that she needs to move on. She holds on to a lot of guilt -- a plot point I won't get into -- when it comes to Sam, so there's a lot for her to unravel.

There's some back and forth with the past and them reminiscing over things, and it stays in the present when Julie and Sam aren't talking to each other. There's really nothing that makes it dramatic or anything, it's straightforward. I did wonder if maybe Julie was . . . not well, and was imagining these conversations. However, that's addressed.

Overall, this is a beautifully emotional story that I am going to recommend to everyone when I get the chance. For a debut by a new author, it was perfection. Don't sleep on this book . . . just be ready with some tissues.

While I enjoyed the depictions of grief and the unique plot of this book, I found it hard to connect to the characters. The main character was very prickly and dare I say unlikeable which I actually didn't mind. It was her boyfriend Sam who I found it very hard to understand as he was overly idealized. I wish we had more time to get to know him before he passed.

The characters act their age and the plot isn't contrived. I also thought the writing style was great; not overly lyrical but still impactful.

I was really looking forward to this one! Contemporary fiction with a touch of whimsy, to aid Julie in grieving Sam. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me as well as I'd hoped. Although I finished the novel, a couple key aspects just bothered me until the end.

First of all, the novel takes place entirely after Sam's death, so we only see his character from Julie's point of view. We didn’t have very many “before” scenes, and some of them were from a perspective where Sam was already gone. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about their relationship, beyond a basic sense of sadness. It was hard to imagine Julie and Sam moving out together, planning a future, when the timeline of their relationship was completely relegated to before the book even starts. I wasn't emotionally invested in Julie's grief for Sam, and even his phone calls didn't give me a real appreciation for his character.

The premise of being able to talk to your loved one after their passing is interesting, but the rules seemed quite arbitrary and changed to suit the story. I can kind of understand the reasoning behind the nebulous representation of grief, but I didn't like how that was set up for Julie to just use at her convenience, sometimes contradicting theories she had about the calls in the text directly. This relates to my dislike of the ending of the novel. No spoilers, but it involves a specific inconsistency that I felt was just thrown in to give the story a neat wrap-up, and lacks justification in line with previous plot points.

The thing is, Dustin Thao’s prose is so lovely. Even when I was skeptical of the premise, or I wasn’t quite sympathizing with Julie, I just couldn’t stop reading. Julie can be a grating character, to put it mildly, but Thao turned her storyline into a beautiful grief arc as she learns how to keep Sam's memory alive after he'd passed. The narration of a character some would call unlikeable does her justice in a way that feels so true to the core of the story. You've Reached Sam really knows what it's about in the best of ways. For this, I'm rating the novel 3/5 stars. I think this is a case of the novel reaching the wrong audience. I would recommend giving it a try if you're interested in the premise and ready to do a bit of soul-searching.

High school senior Julie has her future all mapped out with her boyfriend Sam - move to the city, attend college, and spend the summer in Japan. But then her future comes to a halt the night that Sam dies in a car crash and Julie believes it's all her fault. Unable to face reality, Julie pulls away from friends and family, but desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls Sam's cellphone and to her surprise, Sam picks up. With their nightly phone calls, Julie's given a second chance to say goodbye, but with a temporary connection, Julie must find a way to move on or stay stuck in the past.

You've Reached Sam was beautifully written and gives hope when it seems all is lost. As someone that is actively grieving right now, this book hit me in the feels. There isn't a day that I wish I could speak to my loved one just one more time. This book encapsulated all those emotions and gave Julie the closure, especially at such a young age, that she so desperately needed. I loved how the book went back and forth in between the past and the present, slowly developing not only Julie and Sam's relationship, but the background that helped the reader understand Julie's pain. This book is definitely a tearjerker and one that needs to be handled with care, especially if you have recently lost a loved one.

In this beautiful YA novel, Julie is grieving the death of her boyfriend, Sam, after a tragic accident. She decides to call him just to hear his voicemail again, but when Sam actually picks up the phone, Julie is stunned. They begin having conversations over the phone, and Julie feels that she has a piece of herself back. But when holding onto Sam so tightly keeps her from continuing to live her life, they must come to terms with what has happened and let go.

I cried five or six times during this story, and I couldn't help but give it five stars for that reason alone. When a book stirs those types of emotions in me, I know it's a powerful one. I was honestly terrified to pick up this book because I knew it was going to be a heavy read, but I'm so glad I did. You've Reached Sam addresses grief and loss in ways that hit hard. I loved the characters and the flashback memories with Sam in them, and it made me so happy to see Julie and Sam together in even the smallest of moments. Basically, everything about this book was amazing, and I will be recommending it to everyone. I cannot wait to see what Dustin Thao writes next!

Content warning for loss of loved one, grief, bullying.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao.

The concept of this book was moving and interesting, and I was drawn to the comparisons to Your Name. However, the characters felt slightly underdeveloped, so I wasn't as invested in the romance as I would have liked to be. Still, a satisfying read about grief and healing.

A supernatural, from beyond the grave YA romance featuring Japanese American Julie, who is grieving the loss of her boyfriend Sam and struggling with how to move on in the depths of her grief. A 'Frequency'-esque twist of fate allows Julie to talk to Sam on the phone and she starts to process her feelings and accept Sam's death. Recommended for fans of Amelia unabridged, I love you so mochi or Tokyo ever after. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advance review copy.

Wow. I am in complete awe after finishing this book. The way this story explores grief and moving on from that grief is nothing less than stunning. I was so enthralled and invested in this that the outside world didn’t exist for me during the time I spent listening to this audiobook.

You’d think that this book would make me want to be able to talk on the phone with one of my loved ones who’s passed away, but somehow the opposite is true. This story doesn’t shy away from the possible negative consequences of that situation, and at the same time I was left feeling so comforted and content about my own past grief and Julie’s that I’m totally okay with how the world really works (hope that makes sense lol).

Ugh I looooooooved not only Julie and Sam’s characters, but the various side characters and the role they all played in this book. I could go on and on about how beautifully written this was, but just know that I HIGHLY recommend it if you can handle the subject matter and want to have a good cry while reading an amazing book.

**Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-arc in exchange for an honest review**

CW: death of a loved one, fatal car accident, grief

The concept of this book--along with the gorgeous cover--is what initially drew me in. It's a story about mourning, grief, and how life must continue even after we lose those we love. Everyone wishes they could have one final conversation with someone they've lost. Well, the MC of this book gets multiple conversations with her dead boyfriend. I didn't end up connecting with the book or the MC as much as I wanted to. It especially bothered me how she avoided Sam's family and was so wrapped up in her own grief that she didn't want anything to do with them. She came across as very selfish.. I understand grief does strange things to people, but if you're trying to get your readers to connect with your protagonist, you have to make them likable. (The whole Save the Cat idea). This is an issue I have with a lot of books today--totally unlikeable main characters. That wasn't the case in this book--the MC was overall likable--but there were things she did that really turned me off as a reader. Thank you to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read the book. Again, the cover was excellent!

I enjoyed this story.

I think part of the point was that the main character became very disconnected from reality, and it really bugged me how the other characters treated her because of it.

Grief is so hard and everyone deals with it differently. Everyone treated her like she wasn't doing enough or wasn't grieving right really pissed me off.

I wasn't expecting the supernatural bit, I thought it was going to be a mystery and he wasn't really dead or something.

*Thank you to the publisher for this eARC.

I'm struggling with rating this one. On one hand, it speaks to me on a different level because of what I've gone through in my own life. But on the other hand, I did just think it was a mediocre story.

Ok let me tell you a little story just so that you understand how I connect with this book: A few months after my dad passed, my phone's alarm started randomly going off in the morning on my drive. Not the ringer, the alarm. And the alarm would go off at crazy times like 7:36, 7:38, 7:42 - times that no sane person is setting on their phone. Also, the alarms weren't saved in my phone. You know how when you set an alarm, it still saves it for the next time you might want to use it unless you delete it? There was no saved alarm. Nada. It was always on my drive to my CF placement at a time that wasn't the same as the previous day. It got to the point that I just started laughing each time it went off and I'd say "Hey dad!" There was one time that I was like "Dad, STOP. People are going to think I'm crazy!" On that day, another alarm went off 2 minutes later. It was nuts. But it was him. I know it was.

I can't tell you how heartbroken I was when my phone died and I had to get another one. The alarms stopped. It never happened again. We lost our connection.

Do you see how this book might resonate with me? I pretty much *was* Julie in this scenario.

That being said, the story itself left something to be desired. As much as I wanted to connect with these characters, I just didn't. Julie was very whiney, Sam was painted as this magnetic guy that everyone loved but his dialogue just made him seem aloof, and the extended friends really irritated me. I found myself getting angry several times because they kept getting angry at Julie for not grieving the way they expected her to.

Dude. Everyone grieves in different ways. There's no rule book. If someone doesn't show up to a vigil, it's really none of your damn business why and Julie shouldn't have been made to feel guilty for trying to process things on her own. I felt like this book was preaching that you need to show up for each other in times of grief and I just can't get behind that because grief is complex and some people rightfully want to be left alone.

Wow this is a long review. And this is why it's hard for me to rate. I have so many feelings that maybe it should get 4 stars for making me feel. But the feelings aren't necessarily good. I'm going with 3 stars and reserving the right to change my mind.

Thoughts

When the best I can say is that this book had a great concept, you know there's a big problem. And unfortunately, that's about the best I can say.

Pros
Hard Grief: This is certainly a trend that I've noticed in contemporary YA, but it is a good one. A lot of contemporary books from this past year really dove into the nuances of grief--especially grief revolving around the loss of someone close an unexpected, like a parent or a friend. This book, too, dives into those difficult and unexplored dark depths.

Accessible Writing: This book certainly reads like a fanfiction--and I don't really mean that in a bad way. Often, books that deal with hard and difficult topics are also hard and difficult themselves, and not for the content. The writing itself can be a barrier to reaching the audience. Here, there is no such problem. All kinds of readers will be able to pick up this book with ease. The prose aren't deep. They don't need to be dissected, and that makes this a good read for just about anybody.

Great Concept: You certainly can't make a good book from a bad concept. Not even the best writer can fully polish an idea that's bad. And this book has that good concept. Finding some supernatural sort of way to connect with the dead in the midst of grieving? Last-ditch phone calls to keep him on the line longer, to get a second chance? Yes, it's a great concept. The idea itself is solid, though unfortunately the execution here didn't quite work.


Cons
Abundant Italics: Now, this may be a problem with the uncorrected proof I was sent to review, so hopefully this isn't an issue with the print publication. I hope. The italics did, however, feel quite purposeful, so it is quite likely they are in the final draft... And I say they felt purposeful, because they didn't seem random. But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why they were being used. They were used for flashbacks, for entire lines of dialogue, for seemingly random other bits of text throughout the book. It was overkill--seemingly intentional overkill--and I just couldn't figure out what was going on. The italics here was so abundant it lost all meaning entirely.

Repetitive Conversations: This, honestly, is the biggest problem with the book. This book relies very heavily on dialogue, as one could expect. It's primarily about phone calls, after all. So the fact that the conversations are incredibly repetitive is a major problem. The conversations go around and around, and not in a good way that shows tension or struggle. There are no new character insights, no new interpersonal problems highlighted. No new information gleaned. The dialogue here is poorly crafted. It doesn't read like good dialogue produce for a book that relies on dialogue. It doesn't even read like you're overhearing a badly edited conversation in real life. It just isn't good.

Telling: Don't get me wrong. This isn't the general complaint you hear--the complaint rooted in the supposed writing "rule" that is "Show, Don't Tell." There is a clear purpose for "telling" in any story, something strict followers of that rule don't recognize. But there is a reason such a rule exists, and it is exactly for this type of writing. So, so much of this book is just told to me as a reader--so many details that weren't relevant to the plot, the character development, the story as a whole. These details could have been relevant in they had come up naturally, but they didn't. This book is full of random dumps of information, and there are long (very long) passages dedicated to random facets that just don't build the characters, world, setting, plot... anything. And that is a major problem with telling. Things need to come up organically or not at all. As a writer, you can definitely tells us things that happen, but first one must ask, "What does this add to the story itself?" If it doesn't do more than hit the bullet points on a character-building worksheet, it shouldn't really make the page.

Rating
⭐⭐
2/10

Fans of Ashley Schumacher's Amelia Unabridged will appreciate the close examination of unexpected grief. Those who loved the journey of healing in Joan F. Smith's The Half Orphan's Handbook will enjoy the character arc that happens here.

Thank you so much @NetGalley and @wednesdaybooks for gifting me a copy of You’ve Reached Sam in exchange for an honest review.

📱 Mini Review 🎸
When I first saw the synopsis for You’ve Reached Sam, I knew I wanted to read it, so I was quick to request it from NetGalley. I was approved soon after but, I still had a lot of time until the release date. Then in May, I saw @lifeinfiction post about loving this book, and I knew I was going to love it! I finished it a few days ago, and I was not disappointed. 🥰

Julie is dealing with all the grief, shame, hurt, and love of losing her best friend and boyfriend, Sam. She doesn’t know how to deal with it and essentially just wants to forget about the whole thing. This does not work out well for her but seems to make things worse. On one of these hard days, she decides to call Sam to maybe hear his voice on his voicemail, but surprisingly, Sam answers. This may be the best thing that had ever happened to her or the hardest thing she would ever have to go through.

I loved how this book was written. We go back and forth from present to past, seeing how Sam and Julie’s relationship blooms. We get to fall in love with Sam as Julie does. But we also are heartbroken right along with her as she deals with his death. I literally felt all of Julie’s emotions and went through them all, right along with her.

The characters really made this book for me. Sam and Julie were great, but I also really enjoyed all the side characters and getting to know some of them.

If you love books about love and loss, then I definitely recommend You’ve Reached Sam. The heartache you get while reading it is totally worth it. I gave this book ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I'm sure you've all grown tired of hearing/reading people's rave reviews about this book, so I'll keep mine short.
This was such a beautiful and heartbreaking exploration of grief. Everything every character did was so realistic, I felt like I'd seen people around me doing the exact same things.
Julie isn't the most likable main character, but I think that's because she's grieving. She's not at her best because she's going through something that very few young people go through. She doesn't always make the right decisions or treat her friends the best because grief fucks people up. It's hard and it changes people. Julie is a good character because she's flawed and she's real. That's what's so good about this book. Every character, regardless of how likable or rational they are, feels so real. They are people you've seen before in your life, and they're people you'll continue to see where ever you go.
This isn't a perfect book by any means, and it definitely was a little slow in places, but it's a book that I think will prove to be cathartic for so many people dealing with the loss of a loved one.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free eARC copy of this book, in exchange for my honest review.

1.5*

I wanted to like this-- the premise of it is so intriguing. Magical realism goes one of two ways for me; I'm never in the middle on that genre.

In all honesty, the MC (Julie) was just... too abrasive for me.

For the right person, this book would be wonderful. It just wasn't for me.

When high school senior Julie's boyfriend, Sam, dies in an accident, it feels like her world is shattered apart. To deal with the grief, she throws everything that reminds her of Sam and tries to forget everything. But everywhere she goes, a constant reminder of Sam remains.

In an attempt to reach Sam one last time, Julie calls his phone. To her surprise, he picks up. She now gets a second chance to say goodbye but their connection starts to diminish. How will Julie deal with her special connection with him?

I thought that it was creative to switch between the past and present. This helped show the reader a deeper connection between Julie and Sam.

One takeaway I have was that the characters fell a little flat to me. However, the emotion was very real, and it touched me.

Overall, You've Reached Sam was an emotional debut novel that I would recommend reading. It broke my heart but at the same time, I wished Julie to find happiness. Looking forward to other books by the author!

You've Reached Sam will rip your heart out in the most amazing way. I cried throughout this whole book, to the point my husband was urging me to put it down multiple times. But I couldn't, because it was so emotional and captivating. I don't know what I did to be so thoroughly destroyed by Dustin Thao, but I'm ready to do it again with whatever else he writes.

Told in present day, with some flashbacks, this story follows Julie as she tries to recover from losing her boyfriend in a car crash after having their whole life planned. And, she thinks it was her fault - along with a lot of her school. But when Julie tries to call Sam's phone just to hear his voicemail, something amazing happens. Sam picks up. And Julie can talk to him whenever she wants - but there will be an end date. Together they work on putting Julie's life back together and working through her grief.

Like I said, you will find this book to be extremely sad. That's the point, it starts from the very first page. It's a fantastic conversation around grief, especially as a teenager and trying to find your place in the world. The epilogue is beautifully written and brings closure for the book. I wish there was some closure with Sam's friend group and some other small pieces that could have been wrapped up tighter, but overall it was fantastic. A full 5 stars from me.

**Thank you to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review**

I didn’t really care too much for this book sadly. The pacing was slow and I couldn’t connect to any of the characters. It didn’t hit me in the feels at all. I was just hoping it would end the longer it went on. The writing was just a little bit confusing. It kept going back and forth from Sam being gone such a long time but then it only being a week. I’m sure others will enjoy it more, it just wasn’t for me. All views and opinions stated in this review are my own! Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for a copy of the arc in return for an honest review!

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read the ARC of You've Reached Sam.

I think you need to be in a very specific mood and headspace to enjoy You've Reached Sam and I may need to re-read this once I'm in the right mood to read the book.

You can watch my full review on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/DlSrHk8Jcc4