Emergency Contact

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi     391 pages

For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. 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.

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.

This was a really fun read! I enjoyed the premise of the two main characters forming a relationship over the concept of being eachother's "emergency contact." Their text conversations are funny, relatable, and cute and it made this romance a very contemporary, unique one. 

I will say that this book will become dated very quickly because of how niche the lingo can be at times. There are references to YouTube, Instagram, emojiis, and iphones galore. This story is very grounded in the early 21st century, not just with the technology, but also the slang and the references to apps. However, I still find it an enjoyable read. Only time will tell how the content holds up for the future.

I think both Penny and Sam are well written characters - they are unique in their observations and very human in their reactions. I'm glad the author was able to give them distinct voices, despite how similar they were in many ways. All the side characters were interesting and brought some lightness to the angst of the main characters - I would loved to have seen more of Jude and Mallory, but I understand that the focus was not on college-life, per say, and more on the intimate workings of Penny's and Sam's thoughts and feelings and how they processed the world.

Overall, I'd recommend it to those who are looking for a slightly less "juvenile" YA - and by that, I mean, the young adult period of college/almost adulthood, rather than high school drama. Sam is 21, so we're dealing with a more mature young adult (if you can call him mature), with more adult problems. This would be a great read for teens transitioning from reading YA to Adult Fiction. I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a cute, young romance book.