“Smart and funny, with characters so real and vulnerable, you want to send them care packages. I loved this book.” –Rainbow Rowell From debut author Mary H.K. Choi comes a compulsively readable novel that shows young love in all its awkward glory–perfect for fans of Eleanor & Park and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. For Penny Lee, high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were … school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she’d somehow landed a boyfriend, they never managed to know much about each other. Now Penny is heading to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer. It’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.
Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him.
When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch–via text–and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to, you know, see each other.
more
Overall Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
I thought Emergency Contact is an adorable read. It took me a little bit to get engrossed in it, but I really enjoyed this book. I just wish that I loved it like everyone else is! It is a super cute book but I just didn’t love it.
I think that this book does deserve all the hype it’s getting. I can see how everyone loves it.
I love the fact that it’s an Own Voices novel. As Penny struggled with writing her characters as white because it’s the most “acceptable” race, I have to think if Mary had the same struggles.
If you haven’t picked this book up, you really should. It enlightens so many worldly issues. Racism, anxiety, unhealthy relationships, etc.
It’s not just a cute read. In a way, it’s almost educational. It’ll also make you laugh quite a few times!
Plot Rating: 4/5 Stars
I am in love with the idea of an “emergency contact”. This would have been so helpful for my anxiety while I was in high school.
Penny finds Sam in an awkward situation. She helps him through it and thus, becomes his emergency contact for when he feels like he may have an anxiety attack. And vice versa. They become quick friends and they get addicted to texting each other.
Penny and Sam are hiding their newfound friendship from her roommate and his ex-niece, Jude. They basically hide it from everyone.
Like I said, this was a cute story. I was really interested in the concept of this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Character Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
Penny is amazing. She’s so intelligent and she knows what she wants in her life. She’s a writer. She has social anxiety. She has so much going on in her mind and I feel for her. I really associate myself with her character. We have a lot of similarities. I just wish she was nicer to her mom who obviously is trying really hard to please her daughter.
I love Sam. He treats Penny with utmost respect even though she’s a bit weird sometimes. He’s a man that’s gone through plenty of hard times. He doesn’t let that shape him as a person, though. He’s the sweetest person ever!
I love all the side characters in this book. Especially Penny’s mom. She’s just a woman who’s trying to get by. She’s just trying to be her daughter’s friend and know that she’s okay. Even if that means adding Penny’s ex boyfriend on Facebook. She doesn’t deserve all the crap Penny gives her.
I love Penny’s friends, even though Mallory was a bit bitchy in the beginning. They shaped out to be really good trustworthy friends.
Romance Rating: 3/5 Stars
This is the slowest slow-burn romance you’ll ever read. I wanted them for fall for each other a lot sooner than the end of the book.
Penny and Sam are perfect for each other and I’m mad that we don’t really get to see them as a couple other than one time. But that one time was enough for me to give their romance a rating of 3/5 stars.
Loved this YA-NA novel so much! Excellent.
Two people meet at a coffee shop and they eventually fall for each other (shocker, right?). Yes, this YA novel has a story about two college-aged people falling for each other, but the author expertly explores those angsty and inexperienced-in-life feelings that come with growing up and having to build new relationships while healing old ones.
This was another selection from my library, and it was another excellent choice. This was actually a New Adult book, which was a nice change from the YA books I’ve been reading. And the main character, Penelope Lee, is a wonderfully strange character.
Penny Lee is an Asian-American who is sooo glad to be heading off to college. All she wants is to get away from her ‘cool’ mom, her boring boyfriend, and her embarrassing life. When she gets to her new school, she meets her new roommate and her roommate’s snarky friend. Though she has gotten away from her mother and boyfriend, she just can’t seem to get away from her own thoughts, which were the main contributors to her embarrassing life.
Sam Becker is a loser inside his own head and full of bad habits. While trying to stay away from alcohol and getting over a bad breakup (for the second time), Sam finds a job at a coffee shop. His day is filled with coffee, baking, and avoiding painful memories, and at night he goes up the stairs to an old store room that his boss lets him stay in. He enrolls in a film class in college, excited to get somewhere else in life, and then his niece through marriage pops into his life, bringing her roommate Penny into his life.
After a terrible panic attack, Penny and Sam exchange phone numbers and become emergency contacts. But as they text each other, they begin to realize that they have a lot in common. With Penny’s roommate Jude forbids either of her friends to date Sam, and Sam demanding that Penny not tell Jude that his life is a wreck, things start to get crazy.
This was a great book that I really enjoyed. Both Penny and Sam were fun to read about, and this was a fantastic look into the not-so-perfect lives of two very different and not-so-perfect people. If you’re looking for a NA book with interesting characters, this is the book for you. Give it a chance and enjoy the awkwardness of being a strange person in a ‘normal’ world.
As a diagnosed Aspie, I can relate to Penny’s askew view of the world. And I recommend this to all of you who feel like life is out of control or who just don’t fit in.
Choi is a born story-teller.
As a massive contemporary lover, this book was perfect for me. It was cute and awkward and delightful and stressful and sad and sweet. This story is told from duel POVs.
The characters are so beautifully flawed.
Penny’s neurotic nuances were charming and fun, and it made her very relatable. Sam…a lanky guy with tattoos who can bake? Sign me up please! Reading his POV and learning of his past, just completely captured me heart. I couldn’t even say whose POV I enjoyed more.
My only criticism would be that I would have liked to know how Penny’s story and Sam’s movie turned out.
If you’re a contemporary fan, you definitely need to pick this baby up! It’s a great read after reading heavy subject matter. Not too fluffy so that you feel disinterested, but sweet enough that you completely loose yourself in Choi’s incredible story.
Honestly, kind of hard to read… and my favorite character was NEVER the main ones.
I really enjoyed this one.
An enjoyable read. Good character development although I found the protagonist’s character was was more told than shown.
Toss Up
Not sure about this one. You’ll either love it or hate it. I didn’t find it funny or smart as the blurb insisted I would. And I promise, my age has nothing to do with it. I have a 19 year old daughter in college and a 14 year old son in high school. Neither of them, nor their friends, or hell any teenager for that matter, speak like the characters in this book. It was weird….
Nothing exciting happens throughout this snarky teenager/young adult book and nothing makes it stand out. Except maybe that kick-ass cover. So many annoying character and trope cliches, and it was difficult to just finish this book without tapping out around the 50% mark. I know the intention was social and family issues awareness, but it was a missed opportunity.
– Teenage girl who quickly judges
– Teenage girl who hates being judged
– Teenage girl who hates and slut shames her mother
– Lackluster hero
– Lackluster romance
– Lackluster action
– Wasted potential