Okay this book is just sad like emotionally sad if your going through a break up or a tough time I don’t recommend you reading this book. Julie had all these future plans about going away to college in the city with her boyfriend Sam and becoming a writer. Then Sam dies and Julies world is flipped upside down, until she calls Sam’s number just to hear his voice on the answer phone. But it isn’t an answer phone voice it’s actually Sam. This whole book you will go through all the emotions of heartbreak that the author captivates so well. Thankfully this book didn’t make me cry but I think it will definitely make a few of you cry.

You've Reached Sam is a powerful debut about love and loss. I've been more and more excited for this ever since it was announced, then the cover revealed, and now. Immediately You've Reached Sam comes for the feels. From its poignant title, we realize that we only hear the phrase, "you've reached" when we are speaking to an answering machine. Faced with a tone to pour our heart out in the hopes someone will listen, that they will rush to the phone, that they will return our call.

Julie's story phases from the pain and lashing out of grief to not being able to say goodbye. The ways grief and loss always seem to be mirrors to ourselves reflecting our own feelings of guilt and regret. How we think if we remove the mementos, the pain goes away, but it never does. Love and loss are stamped into our heart. And grief comes in waves. With this mysterious telephone connection, Julie is given a chance that anyone who has lost someone will attest is tantalizing - the chance to say goodbye. But for Julie, is this last lingering connection hurting more than helping?

Thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for providing me with an eARC for review.

Lila and Sam are high school students who have been dating for a few years. Lila's been out of town and Sam is supposed to pick her up from the bus station, but he forgot - they fight, she tells him she'll walk home, he races to go pick her up and is killed in a car accident on his way to her. People blame Lila for the accident and she's convinced the best way to get over Sam is to just forget him, so she gets rid of all of his stuff and doesn't go to the funeral, but then one day - about a week after his death, she calls his phone, and he picks up.

"We stayed up all night, talking about what we want to do ten years from now, waiting to see that burning red glow curve along a dark sky, oblivious to the significance of seeing another day. And oblivious to a future where one of us will be gone."

Thao's portrayal of grief was absolutely beautiful, and the connection Lila and Sam had was so sweet, so why didn't I like this book more!? I was so looking forward to it, thinking it would be the next If I Stay or The Fault in Our Stars, but it sort of fell flat. There were some very moving moments, but not a whole lot happened and it was a little repetitive. The good news is it's short, so if you're curious, you can read this in a day or two and decide for yourself. I think most people will enjoy You've Reached Sam, I just wasn't impressed.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

This book is beautiful from the cover to the last page. I really appreciate how the author discussed the topic of grief and how important it is to keep a relationship with family and friends. The writing style was beautiful and so easy to follow and get immersed into it, and even tho is a book about a sad and heavy topic, I felt happy reading it and seeing how much these characters grew. Is the perfect hard-hitting contemporary that could take you out of a reading slump. Can't wait to read another book by this author.

This was a compelling story, full of emotion and even a few tears for me. I was super intrigued by the concept and the first half of the story kept me really engaged. I absolutely love the way this story deals with grief and I think it will be important to a lot of people. The second half of the novel was less engaging, in part because of Julie. Her arc started to confuse me a bit by the end; her emotions started confusing me which made me less engaged in the climax. Still, overall it was a beautiful story that I'd highly recommend to teens dealing with loss.

3/5
Thank you so much to NetGalley & St. Martins Press for this e-arc.

I don't even quite know how to put how I feel into words. The first couple chapters in the book had me very emotional but then I very quickly found myself unable to connect to Julie and her grieving process. Grief is very selfish a lot of the time so I can understand why she was usually only looking out for her own pain but it didn't make it any easier to read through. I wanted to connect with her and grieve with her. It just didn't happen. I think the writing stylistically is very well done. I found myself liking the side characters like Mika more than our leading lady. The ending was so abrupt and I didn't feel the amount of closure that would make sense for it being the sole purpose of them reconnecting with each other. It was still a good read and I'm glad to have been able to read it.

You’ve reached Sam made was an emotional rollercoaster for me 😭 it made me feel all the feels and I would definitely recommend it for anyone who wants a heartfelt touching story about grief and learning acceptance after the passing of someone you care about this author depicted amazingly how too often we try to hold on and how deep the denial can go after a loss ! Overall amazing read 😭

I so totally wanted to love this book!!! But... I didn’t love it. I didn’t sob through the whole thing and I wasn’t in love with the main characters... I Hate That I Didn’t!!!! I was very prepared to be crying through this book and I even had a box of tissues at the ready. That may have been my downfall. I heard that it was a wonderfully emotional read and I wanted to feel it all. So that obviously didn’t happen.

Here’s what actually happened. It started off strong, I was beside our main character, ready to be upset with the world and then given this amazing second chance... but then the terrible things started to happen... I started to dislike our heroine. Then I started to be really pissed off at her. Then I downright shut down because she was being a selfish twit (I could have used a much stronger word there) over and over. One time, I forgive; but my lord, so many times was she selfish that I had to stop counting!! Rarely have I seen such selfish behavior in a main character that we’re all supposed to feel for.

And yes, I realize her boyfriend died and she deserves some slack, but holy hell, she’s not the only one who lost someone. Anyway, I could really rant on and on about every single time I was let down or I had to put the book aside because of frustration, but I don't need to. I think I’ve made my point.

I still gave three stars because of the ending. I didn’t outright cry, but I got a little misty eyed. So there was a strong beginning and a decent ending, I just couldn’t get over most of the middle. I’m sorry if that’s too harsh, but I can’t help it. All this means, I can’t really recommend this one. And I was soooo prepared too!!!! I mean, that cover!!!!! Smh.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for letting me read this for my honest and unbiased opinion.

Going into this I knew it was going to be an emotional ride... and it did not disappoint. I felt like I was going through the grieving process with Julie, and by the end of the book, I teared up. This is a story that will sit with me for a long time. The way the author showed Julie's journey via her phone calls with Sam hit home for me, and I appreciated how the author chose to show how everyone was affected not only by Sam's death but also by Julie's choices and reactions.

If you're looking for a well-written story that is full of feels, this is for you.

I was beyond excited to be given an arc of You've Reached Sam from Netgalley! I heard about this book a couple months ago and the synopsis instantly hooked me--a girl who loses her boyfriend, calls his phone to listen to his voicemail one more time, and he picks up? I'm so sold. I was dying for November to come around, and when Netgalley gave me access to the arc, I was thrilled!

This book both did and didn't live up to my expectations. It won't be released until November, so I don't think this was the final draft of the book, and I took that into consideration when I was reading it. For the most part, the writing was incredibly immersive and beautiful, but there were a few moments of cringey dialogue and awkward writing, and compared against those more beautiful moments, those not-as-strong scenes did stand out.

I will say, I fully expected to cry when reading this book, and I didn't. I think there are a few reasons for that: most of the story was pretty predictable, and in some of the potentially more heartbreaking scenes, that was when the writing would verge on telling more than showing what Julie was feeling and experiencing, which caused me to disconnect from her slightly, when all I wanted to do was connect with her and feel that grief.

But putting that aside, this truly was a beautiful story and grief and forgiveness and moving on after losing someone you love. I definitely related to Julie and loved watching her development throughout the story as she put herself back together and reconnected with her friends in the wake of Sam's death. I do wish the ending hadn't been quite so abrupt because I would've loved to see a little more of what happens with her and her friends next, but it didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the story.

I could definitely see myself rereading this in the future. I'm definitely interested in picking up a finished copy when it comes out and seeing what kind of changes are made between then and now--if some of that awkward writing is ironed out, or if the epilogue is expanded on at all since it was so short, etc.

Regardless, I'd still recommend picking up a copy when it's released! I definitely think this is a story that a lot of people could connect with.

When I hear a book pitched as similar to If I Stay, I have high hopes for it - I want it to tear at my soul and make tears pour out of me, you know? And I have to say...I don't think You've Reached Sam hit me the same, but it definitely delivered in it's own way.

The premise is enough to catch your breathe about. I mean, how would you feel if you were to call someone you've loved and lost--and they pick up? After going through the psychological self-evaluation that I'm losing it, I would feel a million different things and NEVER want to hang up the phone. I would be desperate to stay connected, no matter the costs and no matter who I have to ignore or what I have to do.

Which is pretty much the mindset of Julie, once she reaches Sam again. I think she's brave to hang up after the first call -- though I guess it's a testament to their relationship that when Sam tells her to trust him, that he'll always pick up, she actually does. It's exemplary of their entire relationship - sweet, and reassuring, and trustworthy. There's an immediate chemistry between the two characters almost as soon as you read the first page, and it was really lovely to read about and learn how it began and how it was going. I won't go too far into the details of Sam's death, since it's a major plot point, but trust me that it's definitely enough to keep this storyline going and hook a reader.

I went into this book looking for a story about love and loss and how it melds together and if they can coexist. And it's there, but honestly - it's also a story about how to say good-bye. And all the messy, emotional, gut-wrenching processing to get to a place where you can do it. Not even if you want to, or are okay to do, or ready to...but if you simply can.

I have to say, I enjoyed all the secondary relationships as well, and that they were able to show different processing of grief and loss. They were also interesting, and great developments to friendship in general, but also as multiple ways to identify in mourning. (Also, I want a spin off about Oliver!)

You've Reached Sam deserves the comparison to If I Stay, but it stands alone in it's exploration of good-bye, and how you can get there. If nothing else, read it to know a love like Julie's and Sam's.

The book takes you on Julie’s journey in grieving the death of her boyfriend Sam, a Japanese-American teen. He died in an unexpected car crash. The book starts a week after his death and Julie makes the decision to call him one last time to hear his voice. What happens next is something that changes Julies perspective on everything: Sam picks up the phone. She wasn’t dealing with his death in a “good” way (everybody deals with death differently). Now they get a new chance to say goodbye and say what they didn’t get to say before he died because of their strange and new connection. It scares Julie a lot because she is so afraid of losing him for a second time.

It really gets into the grieving process Julie goes through. It confronts all the aspects of it, the good and the bad, which I found really eye-opening through the book as it isn’t always the good and healthy side of healing and grieving as Julie really struggles with accepting the fact that Sam is really gone. And with their phone calls it makes Julie go into a cocoon as she doesn’t want people around her finding out about the phone calls out of fear she will lose Sam again. You also see friends and family of Sam grieving though the eyes of Julie which is an interesting perspective as all people deal with the death of a loved one very differently.

I knew even before I started this book it would break me and I predicted it as I cried a couple of times during the book. Throughout the book there are so many happy moments and also many sad ones. It’s a heartbreaking story. It got me thinking about what I would do if I had the chance to talk to someone I lost for the last time. I would definitely take the chance. This book stayed with me even long after I read it and I’ll definitely remember it for some time. I’ll also reread it at some point. I even explained the whole novel to my mom as I finished it. She normally isn’t really interested in the books I read but this one she listened to.

It’s a YA contemporary fiction book that deals with dead and grieving. I would recommend this book if you don’t mind some heartbreaking moments. It’s a book you have to be in the right mindset to read. TRIGGER WARNINGS: death, grieving and discussions around that, car crash.

you know when you're reading a really angsty book (or fic) and you get that stabbing sort of pain in your chest that spreads through your entire body, down to the tips of your fingers? yeah, i love that feeling. that's the kind of thing i was hoping i'd get from this book.

the concept sounds promising enough, right? after Sam's tragic death, somehow, he and Julie are still able to talk on the phone, though their calls are limited. they get another chance to say goodbye, but the more they talk, the harder Julie finds it to let go.

sounds SUPER angsty, right?
well.
i expected this to be a real tear-jerker, i was looking forward to getting my heart broken, but honestly... the book was pretty underwhelming to me. it saddens me to admit this because it was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. the beginning and the very end were strong, but the rest? not so much.

first of all, i couldn't really connect with Julie. she just wasn't very interesting to me as a character and i didn't care about her very much. i understand that she was heartbroken and grieving, and i felt bad for her, but i just feel like there wasn't much to her outside the grief? i wish we'd gotten to know her more as a person. that's why i found the side characters much more compelling — Tristan, Oliver, Mika, Yuki, Sam, of course... i cared about all of them more than i cared about Julie.

second of all, the pacing felt kind of weird and awkward at times... it left me feeling confused on more than one occasion, and it definitely affected my overall enjoyment of the book. maybe it was the writing style? i don't know, but something just felt off at times.

furthermore, i feel like we didn't really get to see enough of Julie and Sam's relationship before the accident. we saw glimpses of it, sure, through flashbacks and Julie's daydreams, but not nearly enough to convince me they were truly so in love that they somehow managed to stay connected even after Sam's death. i feel that, if we'd gotten to experience their love on a deeper, more personal level, if we'd witnessed more moments of them together before, all of this would've been more impactful, more painful.

all in all, i just expected more from this book. i expected heart-shattering angst, i expected to cry—MULTIPLE TIMES—because that's what the reviews and the author's tweets prepared me for. buuut that's not what i got.
maybe i'm just a stone-cold b*tch? who knows. i just know that, if it hadn't been for that ending, i probably would've given this 2 stars.

I was floored by the concept of this book as well as the cover. It's one of those arc approvals that makes your day. But, as many other reviewers have noted, this book did not live up to my expectations. Some reviewers noted that the first chapter made them cry, so I expected my heart to be shattered early and often. However, I found it very hard to feel compelled by these characters and this story, no matter how exciting the premise. I had to read the first chapter several times before I could a feel for the story. Once I was in it, I found myself rushing through chapters in the hopes that the pacing would pick up.

I will not be adding this book to my curriculum. That being said, I think this writer has huge potential and will be on the look out for future contributions.

Also, I would still encourage students to read this book because of the many positive reviews. Just because it isn't for me doesn't mean it won't be for them!

I was ready for this book to shatter my heart into a hundred pieces, but it didn’t so much as crack it.
The general idea of the plot was genius, and it had the potential to be phenomenal. I couldn’t have possibly been more excited to receive an ARC of this book. It had a promising opening, but it only went downhill from there. The characters fell flat, the storytelling was all over the place, and I was left with a plethora of unanswered questions. As a whole, this book lacked emotion and depth, resulting in a very mediocre story.

I felt like I didn’t get to know Sam enough to be mourning his death along with Julie, and that was necessary to create an emotional, dynamic story. He was a likeable character, but I didn’t feel any connection to him. I also struggled to find the chemistry in his relationship with Julie. It got better toward the end of the book when we were getting increasingly more flashback scenes with the two of them, but for myself personally, they came too late in the narrative to build a true emotional tie. It was difficult to fully grasp Julie’s feelings when she was missing Sam when I knew so little about her relationship with him in the first place. I so dearly wanted to feel invested in their relationship, but it just wasn’t working for me.
Actually, I think that the best way to describe it is that I felt sympathy for her, meaning that I understood her grief, but I struggled to empathize with her, which is to say that I did not personally feel emotional or share any of her feelings. I believe that empathy between the reader and the characters is what it takes to build a powerful and moving story.
There were some scenes, such as when they honoured Sam in the field, that I liked, but I needed more of that emotional connection there to really love them.

Julie was not an unlikeable character per say, but she certainly is not my favourite protagonist. I understand and sympathize with the fact that she was grieving Sam’s death, but she was self-centered and mean to her friends at times. I don’t think that there was any ill intent behind her actions, but they could still be hurtful, and that is not an excuse.
The cast of side characters fell flat to me, unfortunately. I was interested in learning more about them, but I felt that we weren't given enough opportunity.

I can’t get past the fact that neither Julie nor we, as the readers, got any sort of explanation about anything. Where was Sam? How was he calling Julie? How did he know or have any idea of when or why their connection would break? Why were they running out of time for their connection? I was left with a multitude of unanswered questions, which was incredibly frustrating. And honestly, I don’t understand why the characters in the book were not frustrated by it.
On top of that, I was concerned by how calm everybody involved in the phone calls with Sam were. Maybe I could initially excuse Julie because she was deeply grieving and perhaps in shock, but she was totally chill about it for the entire book. And to make matters worse, the other people who she got involved in the situation seemed to hardly think twice about it. I mean, you are literally talking to a dead person on the phone… WHY AREN’T YOU FREAKING OUT?

Something I did like about the story was learning about Sam's Japanese culture. I love learning about different cultures, and it was really well incorporated into the story.

The cover of this book is gorgeous. The illustrations of the characters are breath-taking, the colour combination is beautiful, and the cherry blossoms are a lovely touch. If only the story was as beautiful inside as it is on the outside.

This book was a dreamy experience that may leave you devastated. I even shed a tear or two. I loved the concept of a phone to the afterlife, especially with the terms and conditions that came with it. Julie and Sam were such vibrant characters and I loved watching their relationship grow and change in the aftermath of Sam’s death. Wonderful job, Dustin Thao.

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

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I wanted to like this more than I did. I was intrigued by the concept of what would it be like to be able to stay in touch with someone you loved after they die. From this story, it didn't seem to make the grieving process any easier. I just didn't relate well to Julie, who is devastated by the sudden death of Sam, her boyfriend of several years. Through an inexplicable cell phone connection with Sam, she clings to their "relationship" even though he died. Her growth felt a little bit stilted to me, and I was unable to suspend my disbelief regarding some plot points.

You’ve Reached Sam started out so strong. I felt every emotion and cried a few times. The writing was beautiful and explored Julie’s relationship with Sam and the aftermath of his death very well. I think this book is important in the way it shows that grief is messy and you cannot expect someone to grieve in a specific way or cope with death in a specific way. It set up the conflicts and the main plot line very well.

I do think, however, that by the 50% mark, things lost their charm. I was hoping that these mysterious phone calls between Sam and Julie would lead to character growth, closure and an exploration of losing someone you love at such a pivotal time in your life. But Julie stays in denial about Sam’s death for so long that I started to get really frustrated with the repetitive conflicts between Julie and her friends. I felt like the book offered no room for Julie to really develop as a character and it made the end so jarring.

Suddenly at the 90% mark, everything is resolved so quickly. She makes up with her friends, she has dinner with Sam’s parents and she can let go of him. I felt like most of the book was used to show her inability to move on and then shoehorned the resolution into the last 2 chapters. The writing also lost its emotional appeal by the halfway mark and I found Julie to be a very uncaring and unlikeable character by the end.

I do think that the side characters shine in this book. I loved Julie’s friends and Mr Lee. They were easily recognisable and it was great to see them support each other through this difficult time.

Overall, I think this story has a lot of potential but the pacing of the character development is very jarring and I liked the beginning more than the end. A full, spoiler free review will be posted to mousethatreads.com closer to the release date.

This book broke me. It's a beautiful novel that centres around grief, and how people deal with that grief. Dustin is a wonderful writer, bring all of his characters to life in an endearing and realistic manner. You're truly rooting for them, and wanting them to heal and get better. We go on such an emotional journey with these characters you forget they aren't real - you forget that they are fictional.

Honestly, I think this book is perfect. I haven't cried that much since watching Pixar's Coco for the first time. I highly, highly recommend this book.

That you Netgalley and the publisher's for the advance digital copy to read and review.

This is an emotional story about a girl named Julie who loses her boyfriend Sam her senior year in high school. She skips almost everything related to his death. The funeral, the wake, all the candlelight services. She just doesn't want to believe he is gone. Then one day she calls his phone just to listen to his voice on his voice mail, but he picks up. Could this be a joke? No, the universe has given her a chance to say goodbye. He tells her they can talk as long as she needs until she is ready to say goodbye. But will she ever be ready to say goodbye?