Everything Voicemails for Isabelle Got Right (And What To Watch Next)

I knew what I was pressing play on. I watched anyway.

Jun 24, 2026

It took my husband about 12 minutes to ask with a half-smile, “Why do you do this to yourself?”

We’d watched the preview for Voicemails for Isabelle before hitting play. We (I) knew what it was about. It’s why we’d closed down our home before 8 o’clock and were already under the covers with the blinds drawn and the lamp’s lighting set to warm. I knew what I was pressing play on. This was a movie about a girl who loses her sister, keeps calling her cell phone and leaving voicemails, all the while a guy (who you know she will fall in love with) gets the dead sister’s voicemails.

And, yet.

“Well, I thought they were just going to have her sister die as a memory,” I said at minute 13 with tears already streaming down my face.

My tears only kept piling up from there, with no place to go but my cheeks, because there was no way I was wiping away my nighttime skincare routine.

And on we watched. It was romance, comedy, and grief, in a perfect pretzel.

All the grief details Voicemails for Isabelle got right

The choked back tears

When you have to be strong on the phone, but know you’ll break down as soon as you hit the red button. You see it on the sisters’ faces as one delivered the news that her prognosis wasn’t good, and the other said, “But you’re a superhero, the doctors have always been wrong, they’re wrong again.”

The fall in the hospital hallway

Jill’s mom tells her that her sister didn’t make it, which doesn’t click in Jill’s brain until a full minute later, as she’s barreling down the hallway, looking for her sister, and finally falls to the floor. I couldn’t decide which felt more real — the fall or how this new “she didn’t make it” puzzle piece just didn’t compute.

Picking up the phone to call them

The urge to talk to someone you want to talk to is animal. Jill’s voicemails are relatable. We are all left re-inventing how to keep a relationship going when one party is out of cell range.

Memories tied to music and food

When I first smelled Odele’s clarifying shampoo, it brought me to tears because it smelled just like my mom’s sunscreen. Wes has that same reaction at the first taste of the cornbread chicken pot pie Jill made for him. He may not know his mom’s recipe on paper, but he remembers its taste instantly.

The look between two people who “get” it

In the moment after he takes the first bite, the air is suspended. He doesn’t have words. She’s fully aware of how much he’s feeling. It’s all unspoken, but clear to anyone who “gets” it too.

Noticing all the signs

My favorite part of the movie is when Wes starts asking Izzy for signs. We all want to feel some form of connection, no matter how personally you did or didn’t know someone.

Every minute of this movie felt intentional. What was left unspoken was never left unsaid because the actors embodied it. What was said was relatable to anyone who has experienced grief firsthand. And through it all, Jill and Wes fell in love and laughed and lived because that’s exactly what happens in real life. Life keeps moving. You keep grieving. There are no perfect starts and stops.

If you loved Voicemails for Isabelle, you’ll love…

Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone

Lenny loses her best friend and rides the Staten Island Ferry back and forth through the night because that’s the only way she can sleep. Then she meets Miles, and grieving starts looking different.

This Book Made Me Think Of You by Libby Page

Hands down one of the best romance books I’ve read this year. Tilly just lost her husband, but before he died, he left her 12 books, one for every month in the first year without him. She can only get them one at a time from her local bookstore. There she finds love, adventure, and a new way through grief and back to reading. I wrote all about this book a few months ago: