You've Reached Sam

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You’ve Reached Sam is a hauntingly remarkable debut. Dustin Thao gently weaves grief, regret, second chances, and the honestly beautiful moments we carry from a first love. Every tear you will shed reading this book will be worth it." —Julian Winters, award-winning author of Running With Lions which is such a shame because i think the story at its heart is a really good one and one i think will resonate with any reader who has ever struggled with letting someone go and moving on. the last chapter and epilogue are really quite touching, its just that i know i would have emotionally felt more if i had cared about julie. but i didnt. and sam deserved better, tbh. I wondered why someone would want to intentionally experience that. I think I figured it out. You want to feel something. Something meaningful, and intense. You want to feel that thing in your heart and stomach. You want to be moved. To care about something, or fall in love, you know? And you want it to feel real. And different. And exciting. This… had so much potential. The premise made me believe that this book had the markings to be a five star read. The plot sounded absolutely amazing. However, the execution failed on so many levels that I don’t even know what to say. I think that my biggest problem with this book is that, in my opinion, this sort of premise and this sort of topic are too good to be dealt with in a YA setting. The story should have explored themes of death and grief but given the fact that this is intended for a younger audience, the author barely delves into these topics, which was this novel’s biggest downfall.

If only he’d listened to me and stayed with his friends. If only he didn’t forget about me in the first place. If only he just this once let me be upset instead of always trying to fix things, no one would be blaming me for what happened. I wouldn’t be blaming me. Now I can’t wait to move on and make new memories with you. Just don’t forget the ones we made here.”The romance in Your Name was effective in that we were able to slowly watch the connection build up between the characters before the heart-wrenching part happens (if you watched it, you know what i mean). Here it was kind of done the other way around and while I think the premise was really promising and interesting, I had a hard time feeling a connection to Sam and Julie like I did with the main characters in it’s anime comp. It had original part: the phone calls between late boyfriend and alive girlfriend, and I do appreciate it's uniqueness, but if I am being completely honest, after a while I just didn't see the point. Like a lot of other reviewers, I'm sad to say that I was also disappointed as it didn’t really live up to my expectations of a mystical and, though heart-breaking, still a fulfilling read. It made me wish that they didn’t compare it to Kimi no Nawa because I think it ended up hurting this book more. I did still enjoy I also loved Dustin Thao's writing 💖💖 It was just beautiful and conveyed a lot of emotion. I found it very easy to digest, which was great in a book with such heavy topics. I would love to read more by him!! 🥰🥰 I loved how diverse this book was, how it dealt with emotions, not only read, I felt them. Every word was piercing my heart. The characters, the diversity, the wide range of topics it covered while dealing with the main focus of handling loss and grief. It’s outstanding. It’ll teach you multiple lessons, loads and loads! Never forgetting, Julie and Sam were gold!

The “Before” chapters are so unique in the way they’re written. In the memoirs, you see a visual of it playing in your head as if it were a movie. You can’t help but fall in love with the way it’s written and the seamless transition from one memory to the next.The MC, Julie, is profoundly unlikable. She is grieving not because Sam died but because SHE lost HER boyfriend. Julie is whiny and self-centered and carries around such a big ole bag of “woe is me” that she doesn’t have any room in it for empathy or true grief. She’s cruel to her grieving friend, mean to her mom, and even unkind to her dead boyfriend and his entire family. She literally thinks to herself that she needs to call Sam because he’ll understand how difficult her day has been. Seriously. She calls her dead boyfriend to complain about her school day. Could she be any more shallow? No, no, she could not. The rest of the characters as previously mentioned, didn't do much for the story, and I would've loved for it to be otherwise. Alas, not all happily ever afters are possible. The main problem that I feel like this book had was that the conflict was coming from too many different areas that the story had a hard time pulling that together at the end. I’m going to once again bring up Your Name since it’s everywhere in the promotion of this book and it’s hard not to compare it when they do that… but in that movie the characters are mostly fighting against this natural phenomenon and that’s really where the main conflict was. And although multiple conflicts isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, it needs to form a cohesive storyline that comes full circle in the end…. which was what Your Name was able to do successfully but this particular plot failed to see through, in my opinion.

I guess I better prepare some tissues and hope I’ll be able to make it through this. *crosses fingers* The thing is, I really wanted to like her as a person. I wanted to feel every inch of heartbreak, alas, I felt a small portion of that same emotion that I was craving to experience (again, why am I like this). I loved how strong she was at times, but it faded into nothing once I started realizing "dang, this girl is a piece of work". Why? Well because she couldn't keep promises, was sadly naiive and obviously didn't have the brain to begin to comprehend NOT TO TURN THE DANG PHONE OFF. One scene, y'all. ONE scene. And she messed it up. representation :: Japanese American LI, Japanese American character, Thai mlm side character, Vietnamese side character, gay side characterI’m in the minority here (as usual😩) so y’all will probably end up liking this more than I did! Give it a chance if you like YA and if the premise sounds interesting to you! Anyway, here’s a short review to encapsulate my rage: These calls weren’t just so Julie could get a second chance and say goodbye. It was about Sam, too. These two weren’t ready to let go yet and having the chance to talk to each other helped them move on. The MC was extremely infuriating at times. And yes, I do understand her grief, and we all have different ways of coping with it (personally, mine is food and annoyance), but even before she lost someone whom she didn't deserve (*smirk), she was extremely whiny, and frankly not a very interesting person.

The connection is temporary. But hearing Sam's voice makes Julie fall for him all over again and with each call, it becomes harder to let him go. And in each of those impossible cases—the test, the friendship, Sam—Julie had to decide what to do next.Since that day, Julie’s life has pretty much stopped, too. The heartbreak and grief consume her. She hasn’t been able to move, much less talk to others. She couldn’t even attend Sam’s funeral. She’s a hollow shell of a 17-year-old girl. Sitting on her bed day after day. Staring at the wall. i think that's what thao was trying to do here: make us feel. and that passage got me primed for my cry sesh at the end of the book, which brings me to...