You've Reached Sam: review

I was lucky enough to win a copy from Goodreads AND get an e-galley from Edelweiss, so thank you Wednesday Books for being so amazing!

Dustin Thao is a Vietnamese American writer based in New York City. He graduated from Amherst College with a B.A. in Political Science, and is currently in a PhD program at Northwestern University. He writes contemporary fiction, and his debut novel You’ve Reached Sam will be published November 2021 with Wednesday Books.

Hardcover, 304 pages

Expected publication: November 9th 2021 by Wednesday Books

If I Stay meets Your Name in this heartfelt novel about love and loss and what it means to say goodbye.

How do you move forward when everything you love in on the line? Seventeen-year-old Julie has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city, spend asummer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes. Heartbroken, Julie skips his funeral, throws out his things, and tries everything to forget him and the tragic way he died. But a message Sam left behind in her yearbook forces back memories. Desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls Sam’s cellphone just to listen to his voicemail. And Sam picks up the phone. In a miraculous turn of events, Julie’s been given a second chance at goodbye. The connection is temporary. But hearing Sam’s voice makes her fall for him all over again and, with each call, it becomes harder to let him go. However, keeping her otherworldly calls with Sam a secret isn’t easy, especially when Julie witnesses the suffering Sam’s family is going through. Unable to stand by the sidelines and watch their shared loved ones in pain, Julie is torn between spilling the truth about her calls with Sam and risking their connection and losing him forever.

Big thanks to Wednesday Books for the arc.

If you're like me and love Japanese animated films like Weathering with You and Your Name, this book will probably be your top read of the year. This is a deep dive into grief that will surely haunt for a long time to come.

Julie once had her future planned out, and her relationship with her boyfriend Sam was going well until the fateful day when Sam gets in the car to pick Julie up from a trip to Seattle and dies. Lost, Julie finds herself doing everything she can to move on, which includes throwing out his stuff and even skipping the funeral. It hurts too much, and this is the only way she can think of to stop it. But one day, she decides to call Sam's phone to listen to his voicemail and he picks up.

HE PICKS UP.

This is the moment when I felt my heart explode. I knew it was going to happen, but UGH. What follows from that point on is a journey of acceptance, and willingness to move on past Sam's death. Julie comes to realize that she's not the only one grieving and that others around her loved Sam just as much. Her Solitude of Sadness slowly disappears as she learns to lean on those are still living and let go of those who are not.

This is a very slow, but beautiful story exploring guilt and loss. Julie blames herself for Sam's death and so do many others. Her transformation from a sullen, distraught, and prickly teenage girl makes her arc truly magnificent. We all work through grief differently and to see it handled with such care really made me love the book that much more.

I do wish we got more of Sam. Through the phone calls, he came off a bit disinterested and flippant which didn't really make me like him at all. He never truly answered her questions and he seemed very much uncaring. I would have liked to like these two together and feel for Julie over her loss of Sam, but even the flashbacks did nothing for me. I wanted to love Sam. I wanted to grieve him too, but the feeling just wasn't there.

I'm a fan of unexplained magic. I feel like not everything had to have a reason or an explanation. To do s takes away some of the magic. That being said, I didn't mind the whole "ghost talking on the phone from a different plane" aspect. I love when writers can take an out-of-this-world idea and tie it to real-life situations that we can all relate to.

Most of all, I enjoyed Dustin Thao's writing. It captures the tragedy of losing someone and seems to slowly bloom into something warm and hopeful. This book is gorgeously executed with a over worthy of your bookshelf.

EDIT: I had no idea that Your Name was a comp title to this book until after I wrote this review, so I feel slightly proud of myself for this. :D