Emergency Contact has been on my “To Be Read Pile” for a very long time. But I had to wait for it to be available at the public library to be able to read it.
Do you know how sometimes you have high hopes about a book but fear of being disappointed? That’s how I was feeling about this one. I found out that either people loved it, or hated it…
I am part of the “I really enjoy reading this story” group, though. The two main characters, Penny and Sam, were relatable in some ways and I grew attached to them. I can totally understand how easier it can feel to be yourself through texts than in-person, as an introvert woman. The characters are quirky and even the secondary ones, like Jude and her best friends, become quite likeable.
I usually enjoy Young Adult books where the parents still have a part in the story, and this is the case in Emergency Contact.
It was a book I enjoyed reading, and the characters were in my thoughts even during my day. That’s usually a good sign of how much I get into a story 🙂
About the author
Mary H.K. Choi is a Korean-American author, editor, television and print journalist.
She is the author of young adult novel Emergency Contact (2018).
She is the culture correspondent on Vice News Tonight on HBO and was previously a columnist at Wired and Allure magazines as well as a freelance writer.
Amazon.com | https://amzn.to/2Wlc8h0
Indigo Chapters | Emergency Contact
Emergency contact
Young Adult
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
March 27th 2018
Hardcover
394
For Penny Lee high school was a total non-event. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads 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.Â
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 see each other.
