#whoever created the queque funtion fucking hates me

[childofsquidward]

Books I Read In 2022 (and by read I mean actually liked)

You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao

"You are my entire world, Julie. And one day, maybe I’ll only be a small piece of yours. I hope you keep that piece.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

This book hurt me a lot more than I thought it would. When I first picked it up I was like “okay, this sounds kinda sad, but I’ll be fine” and you know what, I was WRONG. I finished it all in one night and somehow powered through all the crying that I did. I honestly think this book brought up a lot of my own repressed grief and that was something that I absolutely was not ready and willing to deal with a three in the morning, so I was personally affected by this book in a way that I absolutely did not expect.

Okay, time for me to shut up about my own shit and actually talk about the writing - Dustin Thao I will be billing you for my therapy. Having the prologue be this sort of warm, beautiful montage of Julie and Sam’s relationship and then immediately hard cut to Sam’s death as if to remind the readers that he is in fact gone was a fantastic way to start the book, it really set the tone for the rest of the story. It was rude as hell, but I loved it.

Now, based on the summary alone, I had no idea where this story would go. Is this some alternative universe shit? Will Sam somehow be brought back to life at the end? Or is this all just Julie’s way of coping with her grief? Well, I was wrong on all accounts, but what else is new? There was actually this section of the book where right before Sam picks up the phone, Julie talks about how she’d do anything that she possibly could do to end up in a reality where Sam is still alive and at her side, and I thought it was an interesting nod to the many people who shared my alternate universe theory.

I love the way Dustin Thao uses transitions in this book. I think transitions are such an underused form of storytelling in books and they just worked so well for this book. A great example of this would be this section from one of the flashbacks: “The sheets fall over me, covering my face, and then rise again in the air before they shift and fall into flakes of snow as the scene changes around me.” Like, are you kidding me?! And that’s the thing about Dustin’s writing. While the language he uses seems very simplistic, there is a certain vulnerability to his writing that I found to be rather heart-touching.

No, I will not be addressing Sam’s final goodbye to Julie. But hit me up if you also wanna be destroyed by the playlist I made. x