Emergency Contact
Ratings37
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings37
Average rating3.8
“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 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
A fast read that looks at all the complexities of young adulthood and falling in and out of love.
i think i was in the perfect mood to read this when i did lol
Loooooooord. I blazed through this book as fast as my eyeballs could read and I'm sad that it's already over. God it was just so perfect. It was cute and fun and romantic but not in a gross or unrealistic way as some of these young adult contemporary books can be. It was just perfect. I loved the depth of the characters, and the way the author made them feel so real. They were quirky and relatable and also dealing with some real shit. My only complaint was that it ended too soon, but that's also kind of a ridiculous complaint because it was 391 pages.
So good - lol @ people calling Penny ‘unlikable' in the reviews, because I found her so realistic and sympathetic, if not always charitable in her internal monologue (but seriously, if that's your standard for a likable female character, you're not gonna like many characters). Especially when a major part of the story is Penny learning to be more open to people and less closed off from new things ... how do you show that growth without having her be closed off in the beginning? Like.
ANYWAY. My only issue with this book is that it was sometimes hard to tell who was who in the text conversations (especially early in the conversation). I was able to figure it out with a little closer reading, but that's a minor formatting issue, really. I love Penny and Sam and I love Jude and I even love Mallory and Celeste. The only character that started flat and stayed that way for me was Lorraine, and I would've liked to see a bit more there, but that's not at all a dealbreaker when everything else about this book is so good. The author has lived in Austin and it really shows, which was super-refreshing as a Texas native. I just flat-out adored this book and I can't recommend it highly enough.
