You've Reached Sam

Product Information

you know what would be crazy, if I rewatched Your Name for the 100th time and then read this book. I wonder how hard I'm going to cry. A book where the author would create a unique explanation and reason as to why and how Julie could connect with her dead boyfriend. 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. representation :: Japanese American LI, Japanese American character, Thai mlm side character, Vietnamese side character, gay side character Hellooooo, it's me. I was woooondering if afterrr all these years you'd like to meeeeet. Sorry, the opportunity was too much to miss.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I find my mother leaning over the sink, staring out of the window. It’s Sunday morning, so she’s working from home. The bottom step creaks under my foot. For Julie, just meeting and falling in love with Sam Obayashi was impossible. All the pieces had to fall together perfectly for it to happen. But it happened.DISCLAIMER: I understand veryyy well that people cope with grief and loss in VERY different ways. We all process emotions differently and that’s completely fine (and normal). I’m not trying to say in any way that if a person doesn’t cry or doesn’t explicitly state that they’re sad it means that they’re not… that’s not at all my intent here. However, I still believe that the portrayal of grief in this book was wildly inaccurate and unrealistic. I understand that this is a YA novel and that it’s catered to a younger audience but I still think that all the important themes in this book were just simply overlooked (which is honestly such a shame imo). I got an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher and already spoke about it in my ”ARC Book Haul” BookTube video. 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. I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher (thank you!) in exchange for an honest review. ** I’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:

I did like Mika though. She was definitely my favorite out of the characters (not saying a lot, but still). Overall, I loved this sm!! 💗 SO sad, but SO good nonetheless. I would absolutely recommend if you want: Sam still has things to show her, presents to share and Julie slowly adjusts in life before Sam. Telling their secret phone calls to anyone can mean they can be disconnected forever! So Julie cannot risk it by sharing with Sam’s loved ones who are struggling badly like her. But what about Mika! They were best friends and she slowly drifts away. She’s in deep pain. She thinks Julie already moved on her life, forgetting Sam, making plans to leave the city. But how can Julie leave Sam? One day she has to say goodbye because their connection on the phone gets weaker at each day. Can she handle to say last goodbye! I received this ARC from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book!* we've got a whole lot of cheap cliches going on here. one-dimensional bullies who are mean for no realistic reason! dramatic fight with said bullies! closeted friend who we discover had a secret gay crush on sam! the trope of casually chatting with a mysterious stranger, only to find out they're a celebrity later on! julie's extreme guilt about sam's death (but for some reason that stops being a thing and is never resolved??)! thao had a lot of ideas, but they're all jumbled together, and none of it feels real.One thing I loved was the characters. The story begins after Sam's death, and our protagonist, his girlfriend Julie, is grieving. She isn't the most likable character in these early chapters, and that made me love the book even more. Grief is messy. It's painful and can turn you into someone you don't recognize. And I love that Dustin Thao did not shy away from this. Julie's journey is incredible, and the use of some magical aspects only enhances it. The other characters are equally well-rounded, and each has their own development. I especially loved Sam as a character. We learn more and more about him and Julie's past as the story goes on, which just adds to the pain you feel over his death.

Finally, I hate … nope, despise is a better word … that the author aims his intellectual snobbery at community colleges, as though attending a CC is some sort of punishment that Julie has to endure because she didn’t get accepted to the school of her choice. What a terribly disrespectful thing to do. Community college is not a punishment but reading this book certainly was. Wow. This is a short review by my standards. Maybe it’s because I don’t remember a lot of the book. Why do Sam and Julie have a limited number of calls? Sam says they’ll be able to talk until julie is ready to say good-bye, but then their calls start running out. That doesn’t seem like waiting. I did not care much for the supporting characters, except for maybe Mika. I wish we could've seen more of Sam's family, we only got to see little bit of James. I also wish we could've known what happens to Sam after the calls end. It's obvious that he moves on, but it's more to do with growing attached to his character that as a reader it wasn't easy to let go. chapters about julie's current life and grief are interspersed with chapters of before, which show us romantic moments from julie and sam's relationship. some of these are cliche, but i'm a softie and i enjoyed them anyway. and these before sequences are very dreamlike and cinematic. i think this is when thao's writing is at its best, and i could definitely envision a movie version!so. this book absolutely let me down, but it was still able to bring out the mushiest side of me. i love the themes of loss and letting go, and it's interesting to read something that takes place primarily within the denial stage of grief. terribly romantic and terribly sad. but it's disappointing that the story never really comes to life. it has such an intensely emotional premise, but much of it feels like a dream being narrated within julie's head. 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. I sigh. “You’d think at least one thing would work out, though,” I say. “Sometimes I wish I could skip a few years into the future to see where I end up. So I don’t waste all this time planning things out, only to have none of it go right.” In her moment of grief, Julie called Sam’s number, wishing to hear his voice one more time. The voice that answers her shouldn’t be real. Sam shouldn’t be able to answer the call and talk to her like nothing happened. But he was, and Julie never wants to say goodbye. Julie didn’t really seem to change throughout the story. While it’s true that character development isn’t entirely necessary and can be a lot to ask sometimes, it felt disingenuous with the book’s storyline being about closure and having the main character pretty much not change at all. Over the whole plot, Julie’s perspective didn’t really seem to develop and she didn’t really “learn” anything, which doesn’t go with the whole “learning to let go” plot that the book was supposed to focus on.

You’ve Reached Sam is basically about the question “what if you get a chance to talk to someone who has already passed?”. 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. Sure, it was sad. It made me feel emotions. But they weren’t very strong emotions. I wanted a screaming-and-crying heartbreak type of thing, and what I got was me staring at my tablet thinking “well that was sad”, frowning out the window, and then continuing like nothing had happened. There’s a lengthy -- and I do mean lengthy -- prologue that, I guess, is supposed to make us like Sam and Julie so much that we’re grieving for them too but it’s a hot mess of clunky writing that attempts to blend memories into something like a camera fade in a movie. Major fail. It’s hard to follow and is so deeply one-sided that all we know at the end is that Julie sure does like herself but maybe doesn’t like her boyfriend that much. The book really resonated with me because one of my most intense fears is losing someone I love. And this book is that fear in book form. For Julie, this fear becomes a reality - and it follows how she grapples with his death.If you like your contemporaries with a tiny piece of magic, this emotional YA is perfect for you." —BuzzFeed When I got an ARC of “You’ve Reached Sam” I had a lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand I was looking forward to read this book because I was very intrigued by the concept and the idea of being able to talk to your loved one even if the person is already dead, but on the other hand I was also worried because I was pretty certain this would hit close to home. I won’t go into detail here but suffice it to say Julie and I have way more in common than I’d like to admit. I guess I better prepare some tissues and hope I’ll be able to make it through this. *crosses fingers*