5 stars

I FREAKING CRIED SO MUCH FOR THIS BOOK! I NEED THE FINISHED COPY ASAP ONCE IT IS OUT!!!
THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL STORY ABOUT GRIEF , SADNESS AND PAIN...

i was just emotional broken into pieces when this book ended and i did not know what to do next honestly.
i was under a book coma for a week! i dont know about the rest of the peeps who have read this but i highly recommend this as i dont really cry that much for books


Thank you for the arc @netgallery for an exchange of a honest review.

Absolutely beautiful novel, I was rendered speechless, often trying to suppress my tears at the raw emotion the characters displayed. Each one had their unique way to live through their loos, Julie, Oliver, Mika, they all had a connection to Sam they wanted to preserve and hold on to as much as possible. Though at first I did not understand Julie at all, I did learn to accept that grief is survived differently by everyone and this novel taught me that. Having experienced loss recently, this book hit differently, it was a small ray of hope, that life does go on.

i was so fascinated by the premise and expected for this book to blow me away and make me ugly sob but in the end it did none of those things to me. still a pretty okay read and i appreciated its attempt to portray the character’s grief but ultimately it was much too underwhelming for me.

This was absolutely amazing. I cried so much that I truly had to take a break and breathe. So beautifully written and although I was unfamiliar with the author beforehand, I will be recommending them from here on out

Woooooowwww. Wow wow wow. This book. After reading some reviews and seeing what a few friends had to say about this book, I knew it would be an emotional roller coaster for me going into it. I am so so easily emotionally manipulated by authors, and this was no exception to that general fact about me. I felt so much hope while reading this, experienced the grief of loss right along with Julie. One of the things I loved most about this was the flashbacks. Seeing Julie and Sam fall in love both broke and mended my heart. I need everyone to read this and come talk to me.

3.5 stars but I rounded up to 4 because I did cry! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I recommend this one for anyone looking for a slightly melancholic, but also romantic, YA. I appreciate the nuanced look at grief, but was admittedly frustrated by the main character a few times.

This book started weak for me. I loved loved the premise, expected an emotional read, and while it delivered on that sense, the beginning was so boring. It took me a while to really get into the story and continue reading. But I pushed through and once I got deeper into the story, I realized the characters were getting to me and I was curious to know what happens next with them.

I had a small issue with the structure of the story, the chapters starting and ending too many times with Julie waking up and falling asleep, and sooo many flashbacks that would be a big flashback with few different scenes tied up together. But I understand it's necessary for the story and for us to understand Julie's relationship with Sam.

The emotional scenes almost made me weep, ohgod, they were really heartbreaking and I felt all the feels, so kudos to the author for that!
The arc for Julie while not a very drastic change was well done. And I really liked all her friends!

While the pacing felt a bit slow, mainly at the beginning, the story was emotional and interesting and I enjoyed it. I had bigger expectations of it, but after reaching the end, I don't think I'm too disappointed. I think the book does exactly what you expect it to. It makes you feel.

such a great book that i will be recommending to others all the time. the writing is unlike any i’ve seen before, it’s beautiful. the cover is unbelievably gorgeous as well. i highly recommend reading this novel, put it on your tbr right away!

2.75 stars

First of all, thank you Netgalley for providing me with this book. Second, the fact that the rating for this book is a bit low it's because I feel like I don't enjoy this kind of books, contemporary YA, so it's a me problem not the books fault.

So the main premise relies quite a bit in magical realism which I now know that I don't enjoy that much.

Overall the book was ok, grief is not easy to write about but I think that the author grasped the topic quite well.

I originally picked up this book because of its gorgeous cover and dreamlike, heartbreaking description. I think this did a great job of grappling with the experience of heartbreak and loss; for me personally, I'd hoped for a little more depth to Julie's emotions and a clearer explanation of how Julie and Sam were able to communicate. However, I have no doubt that this book will mean a lot to many people and I think it's a lovely idea!

Julie is ready for her life to change. She's about to graduate and hopefully go to her dream college with her longtime boyfriend. But then Sam dies and her life really does change. Julie can't stand the thought of his death and wants to move on from the pain she feels daily. She skips his funeral, throws away his things, but she decides to call Sam just one more time to hear his voicemail. But then Sam picks up the phone. Sam and Julie are able to talk through her phone only as they're given a second chance at goodbye. But Julie has to keep this a secret from her world, which is tough as she watches her community mourn his death. She wants to tell the people who love him most about this connection, but if she does she could risk losing their own connection forever.

This one was so sweet and tender. I could really feel Julie's agony through the page. I loved the way the story was told, with sparks of flashbacks and memories. All of it made Sam's death all the more painful and real. This was such a unique idea for a novel and I felt like it was so well executed. I genuinely felt a sadness in my own heart and chest at every phone call, knowing how much it meant to be able to speak to Sam once more. There were so many great conversations about grief throughout the whole book and it was a genuinely heartwrenching book. My only reason for giving it four stars is that I wanted some answers on how Sam was able to pick up the phone and how he could keep their connection. Other than that, this was a great story!
If you like romantic, heartbreaking books with a fantastical element, this one is for you!
Thank you to Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I'm sad to say that I didn't particularly enjoy this. You've Reached Sam was, without a doubt, a very emotional and thought evoking book. Even though I didn't love it, I can't argue with that. That said, I didn't care much for the characters. I do, admittedly, often struggle with books about grief. If I Stay was not the one for me. I thought this one sounded a bit more like something I would enjoy, though. I was wrong.

This is very much an "it's not you, it's me" reaction to this book. It was well written, and certainly enjoyable for the right audience. I just couldn't get connected to the characters or care about their relationship, and therefore I didn't care about the grief.

One of my greatest and most intense fears is losing someone that I love. And then you have You’ve Reached Sam, which is that fear in book form. For this reason, You’ve Reached Sam reads very personally to me; I felt, through the storytelling and the emotions conveyed by Julie, that this book genuinely understood that fear and confronts it unflinchingly, unafraid to show the unfiltered grief and devastation that follows. The story also depicts the moments of happiness and joy that Sam and Julie shared, making the story all the more painful and heart-aching. (Thanks, Dustin.) It portrays the insurmountable task of moving on from a love so great and so pure that you know, deep in your bones, that you will never find something close to it ever again. If given the chance to speak to someone you love and who you could, in reality, never speak to again, would you take that chance? (Personally, I would, without hesitation.)

Unsurprisingly, You’ve Reached Sam is a poignant and heartbreaking portrayal and exploration of the throes of grief. It isnot a how-to or a rulebook of how to overcome grief.

Grief in this book isn’t like the arbitrary and flawed five-stages of grief model that follows a methodological lock-step way. Grief in You’ve Reached Sam is messy; it is cruel and unforgiving and painful. Julie, the protagonist of this story, is not a protagonist that people who enjoy neat and ‘logical’ characters will like. I enjoyed You’ve Reached Sam because Julie was the opposite of that; she was a character whose grieving I related to – pain upon pain upon pain, in constant flux, a refusal to let go or to face grief. Because the truth is, grieving is confusing and painful and desperate and non-linear.

I liked that it depicts this fraught process, even if it is uncomfortable and frustrating. I think a beautiful part of this book is that there really isn’t an explanation as to how Julie and Sam are connected; it’s not about the how, but about the why. The impossible connection blurs fantasy and real, underpinning their close and intense bond and therefore offers a great device that explores the complexities of grief and letting go.


So in a nutshell, If you’re looking for a book to cry and feel emotions and majorly pain; the readers who love emotional stories about love; readers looking for a story that depicts grief; then this is a prefect book for you.

I still don’t know what to rate this book to be quite honest, but for now I’ll go with a 3.

I went into this book expecting this to be a tearjerker that will leave me ugly sobbing at 2 AM. What it did to me, instead, was nothing. I love how the book explores grief and the different ways people cope, but that’s pretty much it. It’s not that the book is bad, it’s just so unremarkable

The plot is solid for a debut book, but it felt repetitive in the middle. I also didn’t feel any attachment to Julie and felt even more disconnected with Sam. And I don’t know, maybe the writing is just too simple and straightforward to really evoke any kind of emotions, but I really didn’t feel anything.

Overall, I wouldn’t say I disliked the book, but I just felt so indifferent towards it.

Even through this book contained the obvious sad part of Sam being dead, it was cute and made it better. I always love a book with magic realism so was especially happy to be able to get to read this book and enjoy it myself for all it is.

This book is a really touching story and personally touched the heart of my own. Even through Sam died, Julie is given a second chance to say goodbye. Which makes it a really heartwarming story.

If you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to a loved one or if you did but not the way you wanted, this book is for you!!

This was such a sad, sweet little book. I finished it in one quick sitting and was impressed - it’s definitely a book I want to add to my classroom library, because I think my students would love it.

💬You’ve Reached Sam 💬 by Dustin Thao opens with a punch. There’s barely any backstory before we find out the narrator Julie’s boyfriend, Sam, has died in a car accident during their senior year. In her grief, she calls his phone - and he picks up.

The writing of the book feels like a movie in a unique way. It’s quick cuts of flashbacks and scenes, fast pacing and no filler. Though I thought the story was prettt predictable, its emotional payoff felt real and honest and so I didn’t even mind. Julie and Sam’s relationship is built so beautifully through the whole thing.

Grateful to @netgalley for the e-ARC - check it out when it comes out on November 2!

If I had to describe You’ve Reached Sam in one word, it’s this: bittersweet. Told through a series of flashbacks and present day, You’ve Reached Sam follows seventeen-year-old Julie shortly after her boyfriend Sam passes away. Heartbroken, Julie tries to cope with his death as best she can — by throwing out all his things, skipping out his funeral, and trying to forget everything tragic about him. But when Julie decides to call Sam one more time, just to listen to his funeral, the most unexpected thing happens: he picks up the phone. Now, with a second chance of goodbye, Julie’s tethered to Sam — and her phone — even more than before.

I really enjoyed the way the timeline would skip around, from past memories to the present, although I’ll also say that the memory montage hit a lot differently the second time around. I noticed several parallel moments, and broken promises that hurt even more. After someone dies, I think it’s only natural to think about all the moments you could’ve shared that you didn’t get to, or all the promises that you made to one another. The first time I read You’ve Reached Sam, I kept getting distracted by the memory jumps, although that might have to do with ARC formatting, rather than the actual novel.

One of my favorite things about You’ve Reached Sam is how it depicts grief. Grief is this messy, ever changing thing. There’s no one way to grieve properly, and the grieving process looks different for each person. Some might withdraw completely, some people might not be ready to talk about that person for a while, some people might crave company — there are so many different ways to grieve, and all of them are valid. I loved Thao’s depiction of grief, and how each character grieved in their own way. In the beginning, Julie deals with grief by compartmentalizing, and self-isolating from her loved ones. She stops replying to texts from Mika, Sam’s cousin and one of her best friends, stops having dinner with her mother, and forgets about her responsibilities. While I appreciated that her friends stood up for Julie when she’s publicly confronted about how she’s coping with Sam’s passing, I also appreciated that they were willing to call her out on her behavior. Julie wasn’t the only person who had lost Sam, and she wasn’t there to support everyone else when they needed her.

As characters, Julie’s character development was one that I kept rooting for, although was a little let down by. I’ll be the first to say that the ending was unsatisfying, but not because of Sam. I wanted to know more about Julie’s life after she had properly moved on from Sam, and wanted to know what that was like for her. On the other hand, Sam felt too perfect. He was sugar, spice, and everything nice, and I wish he had felt a little more real. Still, I couldn’t help but fall for them as a couple, and felt my heartbreak along with the two of them.

As someone from Seattle, I loved reading about the town that Julie and Sam lived in, as well as the characters’ Seattle adventures. I found the side characters so charming, especially Mika, Oliver, and Mr. Lee. However, I wish there was more depth about Sam and Julie’s identities as Asian Americans and how that shaped their relationship, as well as their relationship with the Asian Student Club.

You’ve Reached Sam kept reminding me of Kimi no Na Wa (You're Name), Studio Ghibli, and other Asian films I grew up watching. While some things are never quite explained — particularly the rules around the phone calls, or how that entire system worked, I wasn’t bothered by it. It’s part of the magic and charm.

Overall, You’ve Reached Sam is a story about moving on after a tragedy. It’s equal parts heartbreaking and beautiful, stringing you alongside Julie as she learns how to heal, find herself and find joy in her life. While I have some minor grievances with it, it also left me in tears, and I don’t think I could give it anything less than 4.5 or 5 stars — simply because of how it made me feel.

I have NEVER cried this much from reading a book. You’ve Reached Sam is a beautifully written, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and realistic book about the death of Julie’s boyfriend, Sam and her journey towards healing and acceptance.

I was very happy to be able to read an ARC of it because I was absolutely intrigued after reading the synopsis. I went into the book not knowing what to expect. Very quickly, I found myself completely immersed into this story - it didn’t feel like I was reading anymore. It was like watching a movie or even living inside of the story. Every time I picked up the book, I was whisked back into Julie’s world, Julie’s emotions, Julie’s heartbreak.

Julie starts off as a really bad friend. She goes through cycles of avoiding her friends, feeling guilt for Sam’s death, and detachment from the world and relationships around her. Although some may find this part repetitive, I did not. It was a realistic look into the life of a grieving person trying to make sense of the world and how to move on in life without the person they used to spend the most time with and the person they made plans with to spend the rest of their life with. It was especially heartbreaking for me as I imagined being in Julie’s shoes with my boyfriend.

This was a very character-driven story. There is not a whole lot going on plot-wise but so much goes on in terms of Julie and her emotions. It was like following along her grief journey and even living it in her shoes to some extent. The fact that she could talk to her dead boyfriend was obviously magic realism. There are no explanations, and some of the attempted explanations don’t fully make sense but for me, that was completely okay. We don’t know where Sam was, why he could talk to Julie, or how he knew he had to go soon but it was okay - it felt like we weren’t supposed to understand those things since they are literally out of this life.

Throughout the book, there were some flashbacks of when Sam and Julie were together and just seeing what their dynamic was like which also allowed me to feel the loss of Sam even more. They both seemed to really get along well and love each other. While there are no perfect relationships in life, Julie’s grieving mind goes to all the positive moments between her and Sam. It is evident early on that Julie didn’t get along well with Sam’s friends because they felt that she took him away from them. Sam loved Julie so much that he sacrificed time with friends for time with Julie. Although this is not a sign of a super healthy relationship, we need to keep in mind that Julie and Sam are high school students.

Their behaviours were indicative of deep, young love. They hung out all the time, talked about their futures together, Sam’s mom even regularly packed lunch for Julie. I really felt Julie’s loss throughout the book and even more so when she had to say goodbye to Sam for the last time. That part wrecked me up so badly. There was this one line that really did it for me and released the floodgates. I’m not going to mention it here because I don’t want to spoil too much but I would love to talk about it if you ever read this book and want to reach out.

Overall, it was good to see Julie slowly reconnect with family, friends, and find a renewed purpose. Sam helped with that but she also slowly began to recover as her phone calls with Sam became more and more sparse due to their static connection. She gained more confidence and made new friends along the way.

The ending was oh so bittersweet. Yes, it felt kind of sudden. Yes, I wanted more. Yes, I know many readers would have enjoyed another ending. But I loved the way Dustin Thao ended this book. Just like in reality, grief takes a long time to recover from - it’s a slow process. If you’ve ever lost someone that meant a lot to you, you’ll know that you never really ever forget them. Just like grief and moving on in real life, one day you realize you just have to move on. It isn’t always something that comes naturally; it is something that you must decide to do. This was all illustrated so well in this book.

Although after finishing the book, I felt such deep sorrow and felt I needed some type to really mourn Sam, mourn the situation, this book also showed me the importance of friends, family, and hope. Hope that you can carry on and that no matter how faint it seems, it is there.

Full review of this book will be posted on my blog in September.
https://andreasbookcorner.wordpress.com/

A big thanks to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest and fair review.

This review is based on an ARC copy. Spoilers.

This book had an interesting concept and was unique in its approach to grief. I definitely can relate to wanting to talk with someone who has passed just one more time, so this novel took that premise and ran with it. I like how in the end everyone still learns how to move on and move forward.

Make sure you have tissues on hand for this one, because there are tear-jerking moments all throughout this book.

You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao is a heartbreaking #ownvoices read (but in a good way). It is a romance, but more of a Hallmark-type feel versus a bodice ripper one. Julie, the main character, has just lost her boyfriend Sam and is in the process of dealing with her grief. It is a story about love and loss, and how the ones left behind are the most affected after death. I think it’s a very timely read, considering how many people have experienced loss in the last year alone due to COVID. It was emotional to experience how the different characters of different ages and with different relationships to Sam coped with the loss. While reading, I couldn’t help but imagine, what would I do with the chance if I was given the opportunity to say goodbye to someone I’d lost? I can’t really say much more than this without spoilers, but just trust me when I say that you NEED to read this book. You won’t be disappointed!

Overall, a stellar debut novel by Dustin Thao. I’m ecstatic to read what else he releases in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for allowing me to read an early copy of You've Reached Sam at no cost to myself.