Spoilers Ahead: 

This book had me completely in my feels. I knew it was supposed to be an emotional book, but this really got me feeling emotional. If you’re not a fan of heartfelt goodbyes, this is definitely not the book for you! 

We follow Julie as she deals with the grief of losing her childhood sweetheart Sam in a car crash when he was on his way to meet up with her. She calls Sam’s old number to get some peace, to pretend like he is still close to her, and is surprised when he picks up. She talks to him and quickly gets attached to him, grateful to be able to talk to him again. 

However, she quickly finds that it is not the same as when he was alive. She still wants to believe he is there, but he is trying to get her to understand that he won’t ever be coming back. She finds out that she has a limited number of calls with him, and the calls get shorter and shorter and with more time in-between them, as she’s trying to juggle school work and her social life and making friends. Not only that, she can’t talk about this to anyone, for fear of the connection breaking and she won’t be able to talk to him anymore. She reconciles with Sam’s other best friend, who tells her that he was in love with him, and that’s why they get along. They both loved him, and so they decide to get along, and become a place of peace for each other. 

She neglects Sam’s family, but his little brother goes missing, so she has to go and find him. She has to convince him that Sam didn’t hate him because of an argument that happened before Sam died. Julie works to bring peace to his cousin and his brother, and she does that by letting them speak to Sam. However, after she’s allowed that, the connection is pretty poor. 

Sam calls her one last time towards the end of the connection, and Julie is one step closer to being able to move on. When they say goodbye, he has to call her back and she has to pick up, to allow him to rest peacefully. And it’s the hardest thing ever, but she feels strong enough to do it. And she goes back to his house and rekindles the relationship between him and his family. 

To be completely honest with you, I don’t remember a lot of the plot. I was thinking back on it when I was writing this review, and I honestly had no clue what the main part of the story was. I know it’s mostly about Julie and Sam’s relationship and moving on and dealing with grief and things like that, but there also kind of needs to be a plot to the story, me thinks. And that was what this book was lacking, me thinks. 

The real heartless side of me thinks that having Sam’s death should be at the end of the book, so you have time to get attached to the characters; makes it hurt more, and I love books that hurt. Not that this doesn’t hurt, but you get what I mean. Anyway, this book doesn’t do that, so we know from the start that Sam is dead and that means we couldn’t get to know him, and there is a sort of detached mourning towards him, in that I feel sorry that Julie lost the love of her life, and it is tragic, but it’s also like losing a stranger for us, and that makes it hurt less. That being said, the way Julie has to say goodbye, essentially mourning him for the second time, and then when she has to not pick up, does completely break my heart, and I definitely won’t forget it. 

I didn’t like Julie as a character, though; I thought she was very selfish. Although people deal with grief in different ways, I thought that she wasn’t trying to help any of the people who tried to help her. To be honest, she didn’t act like a teenager either, and it made it sometimes really hard to follow along with. Honestly, I wasn’t even a total fan of Sam either; I don’t even know why!!! I can’t even pinpoint a reason as to why I don’t like him, I just don’t. I think with multiple of the characters in this book, I just didn’t take to them, and I was reading other reviews and they were saying the same thing as me. 

I would definitely recommend this book, however, because it’s a great book on dealing with grief of a loved one, and it’s a very sweet book.