Book Review: You’ve Found Oliver by Dustin Thao
You’ve Found Oliver by Dustin Thao
Published: September 30th 2025 by First Ink
Rating: ★★★★ (4 stars)
Genres: Young Adult // Contemporary, Romance
Quick Thoughts: Beautifully bittersweet, heart-wrenchingly sweet and laced with the nostalgia that comes with Dustin’s profound way of writing. I shut the last page with a feeling like I’d read a book that made me believe and hope in the impossible and ordinariness of life.
I was gifted this book via the Publisher/PR. There was no obligation to post/give this book a certain rating. All views are my own. I remain entirely impartial.
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Reader Information: View Content Warnings.
TW: this book contains mentions of loss/grief, and mental health discussions. Readers 14+.
Best Friend Loss
Messages to the dead
Surprising connections
Strangers-to-Lovers
About This Book:
A new story, a new love, an impossible divide. The much-awaited companion to the New York Times bestselling You’ve Reached Sam will break your heart open.
I’ve missed you every day since you left. But I’m sure you already knew that. It’s time to let you go now. I’ll miss you all the time, Sam.
It’s been a year since his best friend, Sam, died. Even though Oliver knows he won’t get a response, he can’t stop texting Sam’s number, especially as the anniversary of his death approaches.
Then one day he accidentally hits the call button, and someone picks up.
The voice on the other end isn’t Sam—Sam’s number was reassigned and a stranger has been reading Oliver’s private and vulnerable messages for months. But Ben, an astronomy student in Seattle, won’t remain a stranger for long.
When they finally meet in person, their spark is undeniable. Everything seems perfect until Oliver discovers something strange that could keep them from being together.
First Thoughts
When I read You’ve Reached Sam back in 2021, I remember being utterly captivated by Dustin’s writing and the way the story wrapped so tightly around my heart. I was elated when I found out about You’ve Found Oliver from First Ink/Book Break, who very kindly sent me a package of goodies and an ARC to celebrate the sequel (which can actually be read as a standalone or in any order.) Prepared to get my feelings shattered, yet completely willing, I read it over a two nights with an aching and full heart.
My Review
It’s been a year since the events of You’ve Reached Sam, Julie’s story of moving through the loss of her boyfriend, Sam. In You’ve Found Oliver, we’re reunited with Sam’s best friend, Oliver, a year on from the loss and yet understandably still tethered to the connection he shared with Sam. His thoughts are still consumed with what if’s and memories of the life he wishes was still a reality when Sam was here and life hadn’t been tainted with sorrow. He knows that texting Sam’s number won’t bring him back to life, but he just can’t stop wanting that last remaining part of contact.
As Sam’s death anniversary approaches, Oliver accidentally presses call, taken aback when someone answers his dead best friend’s phone. Of course, it isn’t Sam, but instead Ben. Sam doesn’t know what to think of Ben, an astronomy student in Seattle, but they don’t stay strangers for long. When they meet, there are sparks that could be seen from space. Only, when Oliver stumbles across something bewildering that changes his entire outlook on the situation that could cast their paths in different directions—quite literally, in some puzzling sense—it’s going to take all of their extraordinary bond to kick up the spark once more and keep Oliver’s feet on steady ground.
Overall, You’ve Found Oliver was beautifully bittersweet, heart-wrenchingly sweet and laced with the nostalgia that comes with Dustin’s profound way of writing. Books about loss can always stir up some feelings in the reader, and I was no stranger to noticing flickers of my own grief journey in parts—the longing, the questioning, even the unwillingness to let go of small parts of a connection that remains—and so this story, as predicted, got into every little crevasse of my heart. I had suspected the twist, but not to the carefully creative style Dustin executed, so uniquely magical that I shut the last page with a feeling like I’d read a book that made me believe and hope in the impossible and ordinariness of life. It took me a few days to even process how to word it (and if you know me, that’s definitely not a regular occurrence.) If you love your books with tons of heart, a whisper of enchantment and heaps of love, this should be in your hands.
RATING:
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Happy Reading!
