Reviews with content warning for Racism - You've Reached Sam

3⭐️

⚠️THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS⚠️

You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao is a contemporary YA book about Julie, who struggles to readjust to life after the sudden death of her boyfriend of three years Sam. After a week of her loss and not knowing how to deal with her pain and after her not going to his funeral to say goodbye, she tries calling him on the phone and he surprisingly answers. After this second chance life has given them both, she realizes she can tell him everything that she wanted to say to him while he was still alive but didn’t. But as they talk more and more, Julie has to accept that at some point, this weird connection between them will result in her having to let Sam go all over again.

➵How many more calls before I lose you?

The characters of this story were… meh. I think I disliked most of them, and I didn’t connect with any of them either. Also, I would’ve loved to know more about the secondary characters (Mika, Jay, Rachel and Tristan).
-Julie was really annoying throughout basically the whole book. I understand that she’s grieving and everyone grieves differently, but she acted like she was the only one who lost Sam. She’s just a “pick me” girl, not caring about other people’s feelings and she loves avoiding problems like the plague. I know she’s in her last year of high school, but she was also really immature.
-Sam is a good character, and even though he dies and we get some insight of his life through flashbacks, I would’ve loved to know more about him. I think I would’ve connected with him much more if he appeared more and if he didn’t die in the first chapter.
-Oliver is Sam’s best friend and I think he’s one of the few characters that I liked, but again, this book should’ve been longer so I could connect with him/feel much more things about their friendship.
-Mika is Sam’s cousin and I feel like she was the only one who I connected with. I love how the author portrays her grief and she’s just basically my favorite character.
-Jay, Tristan and Rachel are Sam and Julie’s friends, but we don’t get too much about them to form an opinion on them. Nonetheless, they’re great people.

➵We were two parts of a song. He was the music. And I was the words.

This book was good, but I read other reviews saying that it was “heartbreaking” and that I “was going to sob nonstop” but that never happened. The first chapters were sad but after that it was just boring. The worldbuilding was acceptable, but I’ve read better stuff. Although I love how Thao portrays grief in so many different ways. The fact that I didn’t connect with any character really threw me off. It is very difficult for me to connect with someone who’s dead at the very beginning, that’s why I would’ve love this book to be much longer so I could get a backstory on every character and even though we get flashbacks, it is just not the same, and sometimes they were just repetitive. Yes, with the phone calls you could feel how much love Sam and Julie had for each other, but I think it would’ve been more painful (I guess I love to suffer) if we knew more about their relationship before tragedy happened. This applies to every character’s relationship with Sam, because there’s just a lot of problems between them and with most of them I was like “why?” because the author just doesn’t explain the reason behind them.
Overall, I liked it but I sure am going to forget about it really soon. The start and the end of the book were good, but the middle of it was boring. The hype this book has is tremendous, and I can understand it to some point, but I didn’t cry at all (I just never cry, and no, there isn’t any problem with me) and I expected more, and the fact that I don’t get the reason why Julie can connect with Sam through the phone just made me angry.

➵Letting go isn’t about forgetting. It’s balancing moving forward with life, and looking back from time to time, remembering the people in it.

I think I recommend it if you want a book with a good message, but <b>if you’ve gone through the death of a loved one and/or you’re grieving from a great loss, please do NOT read it, as the book talks mainly about that topic and check the <u>trigger warnings before doing so (tw such as: grief, death, car accident, bullying, violence, racism, etc.).

(English is not my first language, if you find any mistakes please let me know).

Content Warnings

66brookeb's review against another edition

Go to review page

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I went into this book with higher expectations than I should have. I had heard decently good things about it, but it was not great.

Apart from Julie and Sam, I could not stand the rest of the characters, and at times I could not stand Sam either. I felt that all his lines read almost robotic. Also, her mother being a technophobe and having weird time theories added absolutely nothing to the story.

I would not read it again, and it was just an okay read in my opinion.

Content Warnings

holiday7's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I actually liked this a lot more than I thought I would. And honestly, Mika is definitely my favorite character.

Content Warnings

macliffe's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

dajaelizabeth's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

So this book wrecked me throughout it. I have seen some comments saying Julie was rude and annoying; I think people forgot what this book was about. Someone said she was rude in the flashbacks where was she rude. At no point was she rude in my opinion she was someone grieving the loss of plans she had made and someone she loved with all her heart. This was her learning to let go of someone she thought she would have more time with maybe even a lifetime. She felt like she was shorted time.

They had planned their whole life together. Julie and Sam both had to learn to let go of what they thought would happen.

I do feel for Sam. He was robbed of a future he thought he was going to have. Was he being a little selfish yes and in this situation, he had every right to be. He wanted to get the chance to have final moments with Julie and say goodbye to his girlfriend and family. He died suddenly and to him without reason. His final voicemail hurt to read.

Throughout this book, you knew the ending was coming the same way Julie did but you hoped that it wasn't that wrecking. And you know there are going to be a lot more things that he misses out on once that last phone call happens. Those phone calls were for him as much as they were for Julie. To me this was the perfect book about grief.

I cried throughout this book and there was a point where I thought the ending wouldn't be good and this was just another overhyped book. This book to me captured what I think a lot of people would feel if they thought they would spend the rest of their life with someone only to have them die before that life even got the chance to start.

Her not being able to go to her funeral and candlelight was something I could relate to. This might not be everyone's way of grieving but this is sometimes what it looks like. It wasn't over-dramatic like in movies sometimes this to me was the natural progression of things. The ending showed that she would never forget him, never fully let him go but she knew they both had to move on and say goodbye. And that is all this book was a final goodbye for them.

I am happy that Sam and Julie both got the goodbye they needed. Sam so that he could rest and Julie so that she could live. This is what it was about. It made me feel like I was going through their grief of living and dying with them.

This represented what to me a lot of people would do if they could call a loved one who died so they could say goodbye on their own terms.

So I would recommend this book but I will say that if you are anything like me this book with break your heart. I can say this is the first book that I think really altered my brain as the girls on TikTok say. This changed me for the better and also helped with my grief as well even though they have been gone for a while.

Content Warnings