oraclereadings 's review for:

You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao

3.5

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“If the ending is this painful, I don’t know if it was worth it all.”

Julie’s boyfriend Sam died in an accident. She tries to move on by getting rid of his things, but a message written in her yearbook has her calling his cell phone number. Sam answers.

This wasn’t quite as emotionally damaging as I thought. I rarely cry while reading books, though. There’s just so little amount of time for me to get invested. It also felt like nothing happened.

Julie was kind of a plain character. I understood that she was going through her own way of grieving, but I just didn’t care for her at times.

What kind of person just throws out someone’s belongings right after they pass? I was internally screaming in the first chapter for her to stop and not leave the box of Sam’s items on the side of the road. I know that it’s the consequences of real life, but I was really hoping that the stuff would have turned up somewhere in the end. Like, Mika or whoever would’ve seen them and saved them for Julie when she was ready.

I felt bad for Sam’s family, especially Mika. I think I was more attached to her story than anyone else and I wish we would’ve gotten more of her. And Sam’s little brother almost had me to the point of crying. Almost.

I’m not a fan of books that time jump. Even though there was little confusion of when the events were taking place, every now and then Julie would go off in a fantasy world, but it wasn’t hard to indicate whether they were real or not.

I loved the concept of this book, though. There’s been so many times when I’ve wished I could just call someone that’s passed and talk to them one last time.

I’m really glad that Julie didn’t keep Sam to herself and gave Mika and James the opportunity to say goodbye.

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