The fourth book in my ’10 before the end’ challenge was the book by Dustin Thao called; You’ve reached Sam, which is a beautiful book about young love and grief. This book is very PG so it can be read by teenagers.

I’ve gone in somewhat blind, the only thing I guessed correct was about a couple in love where the boyfriend dies and the girl lives and they somehow could make contact. It reminded me a lot about that movie with Emilia Clarke in it called last Christmas.

Julie recently moves from Seattle to Ellensburg and attends the local high school and even found herself a job at a bookstore. This bookstore isn’t busy at all, but one of the boys from school sometimes strolls through the store without buying something, a boy she likes a lot. It’s not until she sits at the café he works at that something finally happens, he brings her her favorite drink, on him! He introduces himself as Sam and even though it isn’t break time yet, they sit there for hours. Talking about school and music; it was so easy to talk to each other.

Throughout their time together their relationship blossoms and they make a lot of memories together. But when tragedy strikes, she can’t handle the loss. She can’t go to his funeral or any other event thrown in his name. The only thing she wants is to forget. When live seems to pass her by and the grief she’s feeling seems to be blocked because thinking about him hurts too much. The fact that they couldn’t say a proper goodbye to each other, it feels like unfinished business. So, she doesn’t expect anything to happen when she rings Sam’s number. But someone picks up, that someone has Sam’s voice… But that can’t be real?! He died!

But somehow, it is. She gets to speak to Sam again… They are connected through their phones; she can call him whenever she needs it until it’s time to say goodbye. She goes from blocking out her grief and trying to forget her time with Sam to someone that lives for the memories, talking about what could’ve been and how much he is missed. When she lets Sam’s niece Mika in on her secret and let’s them talk on her phone; the connection is getting more static and they can’t talk to each other as frequent as before. But Mika was sliding, her grief was overtaking everything. She needed to hear that he’s okay.

after months Julie still isn’t ready to say goodbye, what if she can never say goodbye? She knows she has to, but she doesn’t want to. Even though she knows with the amount of static and the number of days in between calls that the end is near. Will she be okay?

I’m giving this book ⭐⭐⭐⭐stars.