You've Reached Sam

by Dustin Thao

[lessthelonely]

3.25/5 stars.

tl;dr: Marketing as a tear-jerker ends up being what ultimately makes this book bland, as it fails to find a balance between a pre-established romantic relationship and an initially enticing magical element that turns half-baked or too conveniently flexible just to suit the plot's needs.

TikTok made me buy it indeed. I was expecting this to be a little bit less... meh, to be honest. I don't mean to trash this book because I don't think it has anything problematic or laughably bad, and truth is that if it didn't have some merit I wouldn't have finished it.

The start is slow. The first few chapters are long, and I believe that for 20 pages you surely need to give out something that grabs the reader. I wasn't really grabbed from the beginning, I'm going to be real. I don't get why this book was marketed as a tear-jerker, because I don't even think the author intended that. Or maybe he did, of course, but then I'd argue there is quite a bit to mention when considering how this book misses the mark on that end.

To start: this book has its fast moments (the ones you read and you don't even notice pages are passing you by) but it suffers a little from description that is wordy... and that's it. At the same time, while there is a clear point to some things here, just subtle enough for some people to miss them while also clear ennough to catch easily, I can't say I felt really attached to any of the characters. I've read reviews saying the main character is unlikable - I don't think that's the case. If anything, I don't think one can really like or dislike her because I don't think there was much of a personality, which is fine! I'm not saying I found it annoying, but I notice that I couldn't really say much about Julie: she likes to write (but she doesn't), she had friends (we don't get to know much about them), her mom is a little paranoid but ultimately a nice presence in her life (nothing comes out of this information). At the same time, Julie forgets and forgets and forgets and while you can definitely understand why she forgets, it becomes frequent and expected, especially if you read this with some speed like I did. Granted, the book tries to distract the reader with other things, but it doesn't really succeed in that.

I felt for Julie because you could tell she was really hurting herself by keeping the secret (pitched in the synopsis of the book) from others and how holding on to Sam was clearly putting her life in pause and isolating her from who and what was, in fact, still there. This seemed to be the point of the novel, but at some point, I was mostly interested in the LGBT representation that I wasn't expecting but found very tasteful, and to see what this book did with its premise. I believe this could've leaned way more into the fantastic, because it read as incredibly wishy-washy: these are the rules (we don't know why though, just trust the MC), how does she know, though? (the book never explains this, nor how Sam knows it).

The "magical" element of this book should've been a little more watered down and less prevalent - Julie asked the right questions, but the answers weren't ever remotely satisfying, easily summarized with "c'est la vie, trust me it makes sense" or it should've been more fleshed out and had a little more spice. While the book does answer some needed questions, it doesn't try to make something more substantial out of the very interesting premise it has.

Finally, I have to talk about Sam and Julie: I wasn't really invested. This book could've warranted a few more pages (like... 100? maybe just 50) of setting up Julie and Sam as a couple, hell, it could make the true inciting incident the middle point, but it doesn't. It's hard to connect to a character death if we're not really exploring in depth why it is such a big deal for the main character, and doing it interspersed with actual plot that leans a little to the magical just undermined its impact. I didn't really enjoy the romance and because of that, angst didn't hit as hard.

So, while I can't say I disliked it, I call this one some wasted potential but that is ultimately a harmless read.