Title: You've Reached Sam
Author: Dustin Thao
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Publication date: November 9, 2021
Language: English
Hardcover: 304 pages
SYNOPSIS
If I Stay meets Your Name in Dustin Thao's You've Reached Sam, a 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 a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes. 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.
What would you do if you had a second chance at goodbye?
Filled with a diverse cast of characters, the heartache of first love and loss, and the kind of friends that can get you through anything, plus a touch of magic, You've Reached Sam will make an instant connection with anyone looking for a big emotional romance of a read.
How do you move forward when everything you love is on the line?
From the moment I saw the cover and synopsis of this book I was hooked. I knew it would be a story that would make me suffer because Sam was dead and Julie was going through her grief in a way that although I don't like I can't judge, everyone grieves in different ways.
I can't lie and say that the way Julie behaves after losing Sam I liked or understood but as I read I could see through her eyes the relationship and plans she had with Sam. Julie goes from trying to get rid of Sam's personal thinghs to clinging to those calls that only tie her closer to him and keep her from moving on.
I don't care how any of this is possible. I have Sam back. I don't want to let him go.
I think this has been a story that even knowing that it was very sad I wished that for some strange reason or magic at the end it would have a miraculous or magical ending, it is obvious that it could not be and on the contrary we will find at the end accepting the loss of the loved one and letting go in order to move on, not only to those of us who stay here but also to those people who cling to us and do not want to let go.
The ending has made me shed some tears, but I understood that you can't stay stuck in pain and that life goes on and we go with it.
I think the author has reflected very well the way people carry their grief for the same person, parents, siblings, friends or girlfriend, because not all of us react to grief and loss in the same way, and that doesn't mean that your grief is less than anyone else's, it's just different and very much your own.
This was my debut with this author and it won't be the last I read from him.
And this is a great debut for this author, I can only wish him the best on his next releases.
Many thanks to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC, this is my freely given opinion.
About the author
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 where he studies critical media literacy. He writes contemporary fiction, and his debut novel You’ve Reached Sam will be published November 2021 with Wednesday Books.
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