About this one… I understand that teenagers can sometimes be extremely mean. Hell, most of the time I’m scared of them myself. That said, we have got to stop portraying people from this age group as these heartless, stupid, unbelievable beings. If anything, I would have thought that having Julie experience survivor’s guilt would have been a hell of a lot more believable than having other people randomly tell her that she killed her boyfriend. But I digress, maybe some teenagers are actually like that and I’ve just never met them?😅 Saying goodbyes to our loved ones has never been an easy thing to do and Dustin Thao brings those emotions, that heavy reality to life in his book. Honestly, it would make an amazing movie. I hate this so much. But I love this so much. I know it doesn't make sense. It was painful, heartbreakingly beautiful, and so real to deal with regret, grief and loss.

The writing also made me feel numb because it encompassed so many emotions. Also, it was so dang quotable. the writing is weak. it's all telling and no showing! the narration of our protagonist, julie, is ridiculously rambly and repetitious, which really takes away from the experience of grief that the reader is supposed to be empathizing with. Seventeen-year-old Julie Clarke has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city; spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes. You've Reached Sam is a fantastic debut. It is an emotional journey, that will having you crying, laughing, then crying again. And again. I cried a lot. A story about a girl who somehow is kind of fine after two weeks of her boyfriend’s death and who functions pretty well in my opinion.

Did we miss something on diversity?

Later we find out that it’s possible for others to hear Sam, too. How it all works is never fully defined. There is, however, a certain set of rules about their calls—calls that become less clear and spaced further apart with time.

HOWEVER. despite the fact that it delivers on the crying front, you've reached sam is an extremely disappointing read. Thank you to Macmillan for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! This did not affect my opinions in any way. And in each of those impossible cases—the test, the friendship, Sam—Julie had to decide what to do next. I knew full well that I was signing up for a tragic love story, and that's exactly what I got. So now I am here to warn you: This book will absolutely make you cry. Make sure you've got a box of tissues handy, and I mean a full box."Out of the house?” my mother asks. She shuts off the electric kettle and wipes her hands with a dish towel. 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. All told, “You’ve Reached Sam” is still a great book with a diverse character cast and a lot of different and well done grief representations. This book might not have had the impact I expected it to have, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t good. Thao’s writing style isn’t only effortless but also easy to read and I’m definitely looking forward to read his next book. For a debut novel this was actually pretty good. Being the smart, intelligent, soulless being that I am... you would THINK that I have a semblance of something in my head. You know what I have? ~static~ Ergo, why I went into this book LOOKING for a heart-rending, shattering, soul spilling story which would wake me up at dawn in reminiscence of its pain and make me bawl my eyes out. 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.

Following a teenage girl who lost her boyfriend to a car accident and magically gained a final opportunity to speak to him through phone calls, the haunting premise of You’ve Reached Sam promised an emotionally devastating study of grief, loss, and letting go. While I appreciated its depiction of the different ways people grieve and cope, never shying away from what might not be the cleanest, most acceptable forms of grief, I unfortunately didn’t feel very connected to the story or emotionally affected by it. There is poignant, heartbreaking beauty to be found in this book, certainly, but this is a story that you feel all or nothing for—and unfortunately, it was erring on the side of nothing for me. You will probably cry. and cry. and cry. just like I did. Because death is unimaginable, but letting go is impossible. And if you've ever lost someone, this book is for you. 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.Why can’t Julie share the phone calls with someone else? All Sam says is that their connection might be disrupted, but how can neither of them know for sure? What was the reason for this? A heartfelt YA read. At times maybe leaning toward the younger YA age range, which is entirely fine - but I do think it missed out on some depth because of this. A book where the author would create a unique explanation and reason as to why and how Julie could connect with her dead boyfriend. No one would believe that Sam and Julie are in love from their brief, banal conversations. Where is the pining? Where is the heart-wrenching good-bye, that conversation that makes you cry, even as you realize that Julie is going to be okay and that Sam is ready for whatever comes next? Instead, they talk in cliches like disinterested neighbors who occasionally see each other in the shampoo aisle of their local grocery store. After all, “impossible” things do happen. Getting that A on a test that you didn’t study hard enough for, for example, or finding a totally unexpected friendship in the midst of a group of people you’ve never been able to stand. Both are kind of impossible, but they happened for Julie.