I am totally shocked that a book I expected to love, or at least like, barely rates the latter. Once again, the concept is better than the execution.

It's really hard to be invested in a tragedy, and in grief, when the main character is just.. unlikeable. Not because she's meant to be. But she just fails to be charming, sympathetic, consistent, or.. well.. likeable. I couldn't understand why this poor dead boy had loved her for so long or why people were so inclined to be so nice for her. I know, it sounds harsh, but I'm not being mean for fun. I'm truly baffled. I kid you not, there's a line in the book that says 'the empathy from being a writer' is what makes her connect to another person's pain. Pain she had been happy to ignore twice before; not to mention.. you don't need to be a writer to feel for other people? And she routinely would forget to do this all the time in light of her own feelings? So.. make it make sense?

Listen, everyone's grief journey is valid. I'm not saying she isn't allowed to throw away her boyfriend's things, delete any and all texts, voicemails, and photos, and literally purge his existence from her life.. all of which she does in the opening chapters. But she would also act surprised every time someone else was sad, or mentioned him, or was processing their own grief, and in between those bizarre realizations, she could be unfeeling, rude, oblivious, and just self-absorbed, all while being sadand processing her own grief. Eye twitch.

Despite this enduring connection to Sam after his death -- I mean this literally, he picks up the phone when she calls him, after he's died -- I never once understood the connection (I said it twice in one sentence on purpose because it was used someting like sixty times in this book and I swear I'll see the word "connection" on the back of my eyelids when I sleep tonight). We had numerous flashbacks to their early days, some bits in the middle, and honestly they were both pretty much bland potatoes. No character, really, had much of a personality which I mean sometimes does happen with the window dressing second characters but I didn't quite expect it from the romantic force driving the book, too.

Also, can we talk about the fact that this special connection.. wasn't so special after all? Like, I don't want to say more because spoilers but that.. I mean, why? How? Why? So many little things just don't line up or seem to make sense, really.

We'll just call this what it was : a flop. Between the uninspiring writing combined with the lack of emotional resonance, this is a story that has a mishmash of the most basic YA tropes, though not even done well, with the unique hook of having a magical phone that connects to a lost loved one, but fails to use said hook to do.. anything, really, except reel you in. Would not recommend.

1.5 stars

This book was interesting to me. I liked that I got to read about Julie's memories and how she was doing with the present day. The beginning grabbed my attention since I loved Sam. I thought he was the perfect guy. I wish the calls were explained more. The plot is slow and the MC is dealing with her grief which is accompanied with anger.

Thank you @wednesdaybooks and @netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review!

Full disclosure: I chose to put the book down at 80% and did not finish. These are my thoughts regarding the first 80%

When Julies boyfriend (Sam) dies all she wants is to hear him again so she calls his phone and to her shock, he picks up. The first 15-20% of You’ve Reached Sam were wrecking me. Between the book description and the prologue giving a quick snapshot of the origins of Sam and Julies relationship, I was prepared for this book to ruin my life. With the potential to explore the many ways we process grief, working through feelings of guilt, and moving past what if’s I thought it was going to rip my heart out of my chest and hand it to me. 
The components were there but It was hard to grasp what Julie was feeling.  There was so much happening with the potential to get deep and explore but as soon as something would build I felt like the story would pivot again. I was compelled to learn more about the other characters. Especially the introduction of Mika (Sam's cousin) and Oliver (Sam's best friend). This story is fully from Julie's perspective and we get to see a little of what other people are experiencing through her eyes. These moments are what drew me in but then I felt like they were left unexplored. A lot of little snapshots left me unfulfilled and I wonder what this story could have looked like through multiple POVs. 

Around 50% I was ready to throw in the towel. Although we are giving a montage of the start of Sam and Julies relationship their phone calls and additional flash backs didn’t draw me in, I felt like little happened besides laying out the rules of their call they really didn’t seem to discuss much, and felt then it began to feel repetitive. I was curious how the story would conclude but at 80% I felt I had read enough to form an informed and honest opinion and decided to DNF. 

Thank you @netgalley and @wednesdaybooks for an uncorrected digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. Dustin Thao did an amazing job with writing this book. You've reached Sam is a heart wrenching story that made you immediately connect with Julie. Everyone can relate to not being able to say goodbye to someone and the book really captured that.

You've Reached Sam is an ode to memories of a past love.

When Sam, Julie's boyfriend dies in a car accident, she throws out everything that reminds her of him; she misses his funeral and memorials because she can't deal with his death. All of this is thrown at the reader by the first chapter. It was something I liked about Thao's storytelling.

A problem I had with the writing, though, is that it cuts back and forth between Julie's memories and the present day, and in the beginning, it's very jarring. It takes a little time to really get into the story because of that. But what follows is Julie healing from his death, and Thao makes the piece memorable.

Once I got really into it, the book felt too short. It doesn't really give us a view into a "before" (even in the "before" chapters) which held me back from connecting with Julie and Sam's relationship. The memories we see are all a montage of an idealistic relationship, and because it was only these memories, it didn't make much of an impact.

I very much enjoyed the ending (though I'm annoyed that the calls weren't explained very well, but I digress!). I was surprised that this wasn't so much about the calls with Sam but the little moments in between them that were meant to guide Julie through it all.

This book plays out the ultimate fantasy of everyone who's lost someone: What if you could pick up the phone, and they could take your call? Julie's lost her boyfriend, Sam, and all their shared plans of getting an apartment together after their high school graduation. Now Julie's alone, drowning in an ocean of grief, until she calls Sam's phone.

Their relationship is shared through flashbacks, Julie's memories and her conversations with others about him. Sam seems pretty much perfect in Julie's mind, which is probably how anyone would feel about someone they're grieving.

Julie blames herself for the accident, and she's falling apart. Seriously, this girl does not know how to grieve in a healthy way! From skipping his funeral to shutting out all of her friends, she's a total wreck until her phone calls with Sam helps her find the strength to begin to move forward. It's a slow-burn storyline, but heartfelt and emotional.

This is a heavy book, but ends on a hopeful note. It has a lot of valuable insight into living your life when you're the one left behind.

Thank you to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the advance review copy of this book.

I found this a tough book to get through. The pace was quite slow and I struggled to stay engaged in the story. The idea that Julie and Sam could connect via a phone after Sam's death was actually very disturbing to me. I realize as an adult with possibly more life experience with death, could be the reason I felt this way, but I cringed every time they connected. Or maybe because I know that the ability to speak if only one more time to a loved one, is the biggest wish that can never come true. Or that every time you wake up and realize that the dream that death never came, was simply that, just a dream. I just found this whole element painful and uncomfortable.

For the right reader this may be engaging, there are elements that readers may find interesting such as how to deal with loss, young love and loss, supporting others through loss, wrestling with change, living in the moment, and finding the things that bring you joy. I am sure there are good conversations to be had with the ideas in this book, but it isn't one I will be recommending.

The cover of this book is stunning, but the concept is really what drew me to this book. What would you say to a loved one if you could speak to them after they've passed away? Would it help or hurt the grieving process? I knew when I picked this book up that I was probably going to shed a few tears, and I was right. I cried a lot when reading this and I'm pretty sure it helped me process a lot of emotions I never dealt with surrounding the death of a loved one. While the story isn't perfect, I still enjoyed it in the end. Julie's character really bugged me and I thought she was being selfish throughout most of the book. I understand her wanting to keep Sam to herself, but I can't help but think about everyone else who would have benefitted from talking with Sam too. I was happy to see her moving on in the end doing the things she loved again once Sam confessed his reason behind their conversations. I know he was being selfish as well by disguising their conversations as a way to help her move on. This will be a book I pick up whenever I need a good, emotional cry.

First I want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an arc.

I had such, such high hopes for this book. I thought (and hoped) it would be absolutely devastating, and that cover? Stunning. Unfortunately, the cover and the summary are the best part of the book. Literally nothing happens through the whole book, until the last few pages, which ended up feeling rushed, because none of the emotional conclusion felt earned or cathartic. The characters have the same conversations, over and over, with nothing changing. You can skip (and I did) several pages at a time without missing anything. I had such high hopes, but this just disappointed.

A sad, magical story about first love, second chances and learning to let go. A quieter read with the story focuses more on emotional growth from the phone calls between Julie and Sam rather than action/things happening to move the story forward.

High school senior, Julie has many post graduation plans—leaving her small town for the city, living with her boyfriend, going to her dream college and becoming a writer. But one night all those plans crumble when her boyfriend, Sam, dies. In the weeks following she distances herself from everyone consumed by grief and guilt. Then the unbelievable happens when she calls Sam’s phone number. He picks up.

The premise of this book drew me in immediately. The idea of getting a second chance to talk to someone you have lost is a bittersweet concept. The potential for tears comes pretty high for a story like that. However, this book fell a bit short for me. At best I thought it was okay. Its high points come from the message of learning to grieve and still be able to move forward in your life. There definitely is something here that people will be able to take away from! Just perhaps not me.

Knowing the plot line, one can expect that many of this book’s characters would be grieving. Julie especially considering Sam is her first love. But as I read it just felt more like everyone was straight up miserable. Not just over Sam’s sudden passing, but just in general.

In Julie’s case, she is grappling with a level of grief that seems unbearable so I can give her a pass of being very prickly towards others. But to be quite honest, in the flashback portions of the book she seems like she was that way even at the best of times. Teen angst years? Maybe, but it rubbed me very much the wrong way because it bled into how I viewed her chemistry with Sam.

The relationship chemistry was almost lacking. It read almost as if Sam was always much more active in their relationship than Julie ever was. Always reaching his hands out to her and her rarely taking the initiative to do the same back. I had a difficult time feeling sympathetic sometimes for Julie because of this.

Just one final note I had taken—the writing quality felt a bit like a pendulum. Sometimes quite great; enough to make my heartstrings twinge a bit. Other times I had to pause, reread a portion and still had to squint at the page for a few extra moments afterwards. Really wanted to enjoy this one more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

(I will be posting this review to my blog and Goodreads closer to publication month.)

**Disclaimer: I received a free early access copy of You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thau through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this opportunity.

You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thau is a YA magical realism novel.  It's about a girl named Julie who recently lost her boyfriend Sam in an accident.  One day in a need to hear his voice, she calls his phone hoping for the answering machine.  However, instead, Sam answers the phone.  It is set to be published on November 2nd, 2021.  I rated it 5 stars on Goodreads.


Here's the summary from GoodReads:

If I Stay meets Your Name in this heartfelt novel about love, loss, and what it means to say goodbye.
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.

I first heard about this book on Twitter and was mesmerized by the cover.  I was very excited when I heard it was being put up on NetGalley.  It sounded like a great tearjerker of a book, and it's been awhile since I read one of those.  I was very right.

You've Reached Sam is a brilliant story about grief and how different people experience it.  Not everyone is going to react to the same way to a monumental loss and I really felt that this story exemplified that.  At first Julie wanted nothing to do with any of the things Sam left behind, but when she got rid of them she realized she had been too hasty and had regret.  We don't always think straight when we're dealing with something like that and it was really well illustrated.


I read this story over a couple of days and nearly every time I picked the novel up, I would start crying pretty quickly.  I can be an easy crier but it's been a while since a book got me this regularly.  The characters felt real and relatable, and I felt for them as they tried to cope with what no one should have to cope with.  I appreciated the way that it was handled.

The overall plot of the story was well done too.  The calls between Julie and Sam felt interesting and it was nice to see her have something to hold on to when she didn't feel like she had anything else.  

I also really appreciated the way that it depicted high school relationships.  It felt very realistic to what I see in my students as a teacher.  They often thing they're meant to last but they don't always.  Who knows where things would have gone with Julie and Sam if he had lived?  They'll never know now.

Overall, it was beautifully written and developed.  I really appreciated how the story came together, and how it ended.  I cannot recommend this book enough and you should check it out when it publishes in November.

The premise of this book immediately drew me in even before I had seen the stunning cover. Death and grief have always been topics that I loved seeing explored in stories because they are so central to the human experience. You’ve Reached Sam explores how a sudden death impacts people, and what someone might do if they were given a final chance to say goodbye.

I really enjoyed Julie, and I think Thao really captured a powerful sort of grief. Thao wrote such sharp and poignant emotion into his work that I often had to set the book down and sit with it. I could feel how Julie clung to the memory of Sam. How she grieved not just the loss of him but the loss of his objects. For has deep as the grief hit me, the highs answered them. I loved the vignettes that explored the times before the accident. I loved seeing Sam and Julie’s fluffy relationship and love as it grew over the years. It really helped me to feel what it was exactly that Julie was losing.

The plot is, predictably, slow. This is a very character driven book so people looking for a story that goes somewhere will be disappointed. Not much actually happens in You’ve Reached Sam outside of Julie’s character development and the relationships she builds with others through her grief. I think too much focus on any sort of forward moving plot would have taken about from the beautiful study of grief and learning to move on.

Ultimately that’s what Thao has written about: moving on without entirely letting go. Letting go enough to be able to live your own life but not forgetting how important someone was to you. Letting them leave a mark on you and be a piece of you without letting them consume you. This book actually made me lean back and think about my life and the people I love. About how I need to treasure the moments I have and not let them pass by while I wait to get to some point in the future.

Thao has created an absolutely brilliant debut that is full of raw emotion. A stunning exploration of grief that doesn’t pull punches. Julie’s grief often makes her cruel to her friends and family. She’s not attentive and she often lets people down in her desperation to hold onto Sam. Some people will find that this makes Julie irritating but I thought it was very real. Grief can bring out the worse in a person.

My only gripe is the ending. There was a specific event where I thought we were going to get a shocking ending. An ending that would look at the truth of death, and how we cannot plan for tragedy. How we don’t get a chance to tie things up in a neat bow, but then the story did an absolute backflip into a puddle of cheesiness. I really didn’t vibe with the last little bit of this book but I did think all the build up was beautiful…and the epilogue is still a little tear jerking.

This was such a tearjerker! The book did start off slow before the story really unfolded. It is definitely an emotional story.

This book is achingly beautiful and you will absolutely need tissues to get through this one--I'm an easy crier, but this book made me weep. In the best way, though. The way this lovely book handles grief and loss is so poignant and heartbreaking, but this book also has a spirit of hope and triumph that is so very powerful.

*minor spoilers ahead-read carefully*
In terms of plot, I really loved the premise of this book. Having Julie and Sam able to speak after his death is a really interesting concept, and while it is implied that the calls were, in fact, "real." I still think there's a lot that's been left open to interpretation and I love that. While some may want answers as to the logistics of things, I found myself not all concerned with that. Instead, the focus of the book is exactly where it needs to be: on Julie's journey towards healing. I personally found the plot and the execution of the plot to be wonderful. I think the author did an incredible job with this book and with such a tough topic, and I for one, am grateful to have read such a beautiful book.

An absolutely heart-wrenching debut, but one that leaves you feeling like you've experienced something incredibly real--and what more could a reader ask for than that?

Thank you so much to the Dustin Thao for the memorable reading experience--it will stick with me for a long time!--and to Wednesday Books for the ARC. Well done!

Heartbreaking. I had to take my time with this one even though it was a very short book because of the sad tone that permeates through the entire book.

If you need a good cry this would be the book to pick up. That being said I liked this one okay but it definitely didn't become my new favorite sad story. This tackles young love/first love and grief for someone so young in a way that makes it easy for the targeted audience to connect with. I really liked how we saw grief from the family, from Julie, and from the friends at school. When someone dies so young the impact it can have on everyone involved. I liked to that we saw the grief from the deceased on how they may have a hard time moving on also.

Thank you to @Netgalley and Wednesday Books for the eARC access.

unfortunately this book was not my cup of tea - I didn't really connect with the characters or the plot, and it overall felt unfinished to me.

3.5/5

A beautiful second chance. I’m grateful I was able to experience this book. Losing a loved one unexpectedly is never easy and I’m sure many wish they had a chance to get by. But what if we did get that second chance? When Julie loses Sam she is plagued with regret and guilt. She wants to forget Sam and move on, hoping these feeling of shame will follow, but things take an unexpected turn when she calls Sam’s phone and he actually answers. Julie is given a second chance and we get to see the how she makes the best of an unexpected situation.

Throughout this book, we get to relive the soft and tender moments experienced through young love. I wish this book was written in a different way. Not necessarily better, just in a way that I personally prefer. A lot of Julie’s flashbacks are almost written for film, as though there is this fog and she is switching between events. Instead I would have preferred just a simple past to present flashback scenario that had dates and timelines to follow. For me personally, it would have made the writing more mature.

**stop reading here as there are minor spoilers beyond this point**

This being said, I still enjoyed the book. I was a bit surprised that the narrative continued until the end. I’m not sure what I expected exactly, but I was expecting the calls to Sam to be fictional versus having Sam talk to James (his brother) and Mika (his cousin), solidifying that they were real.

Overall, it’s a sweet contemporary with moments of warmth, full of hope. Yes, there were tears shed on the process.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books for the e-ARC version of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley, St Martins Press, and Dustin Thao for a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, what a story. I think this story is such a beautiful tribute to grieving and the process people go through (and how it’s different for everyone.) I am always here for a dream-cut-short type story and this one delivered. Julie’s grief is full of those steps you hear people talk about when they grieve themselves, but unlike the rest of us, she gets another chance to say goodbye. I have mixed feelings about the conversations with Sam. I understand what it represents and why it is there, I also kind of wish that aspect had been a little bit shorter. As someone who does not typically shed tears when reading a book, this one certainly brought them out of me. The emotion is very real at times, and not just the grief. There are some really great moments with new friendships forming, discoveries, and fun banter.

If you enjoy a story about grief, learning to process and let go, and finding yourself give this one a try!

I really wanted to like this one, and the cover is gorgeous. Thao's prose paints a tender, slightly dream-like atmosphere that feels alternately like hope and hurt. But while the novel does a good job at portraying Julie’s grief, it does so a little too well–the middle was slow and repetitive, filled with endless conversations between the two at the expense of her relationships with everyone else. Her tunnel vision for Sam was understandable but made an unlikeable character, the same way I found the plot device that Julie can’t share the secret with anyone understandable but incredibly irritating, especially since I couldn’t help but feel for the grief of everyone else who hadn’t gotten a second chance at connection. There are some beautiful scenes with gorgeous imagery and a better last third, but too little too late, unfortunately.