Book Review: Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi | Blog Tour

Pages: 400
Publish date: January 1, 2019
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Australia
ISBN: 9781534425934
Purchase: Book Depository – Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU – QBD

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.

Emergency Contact:

I received an arc of Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi from Simon and Shuster Australia as apart of the blog tour in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way influenced my thoughts and feelings about the book.

I was really excited when I first heard about this one. It seemed exactly like the book that I would love and easily be able to fall in love with. However, it really didn’t go that way.

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi follows protagonists Penny and Sam as life throws all it’s curve balls. Penny is just starting college in a new town away from her mother and the life she went along with. She’s studying writing, has a roommate that might end up her friend and then she meets Sam.

Sam is a little complicated. He has dropped out of college, working at a cafe and living in the spare room upstairs and sleeping on a mattress on the floor. And then he meets Penny. When the two find out they have more in common then they thought, they become each other’s emergency contacts. They will be there for each other via text when every they need someone.

From the beginning of the novel, Penny really rubbed me the wrong way. At first, I couldn’t figure out why, but as the novel went on I found that it was how she treated and thought about people. Penny was very judgemental especially through the first half of the novel. It was just so hard to get into Emergency Contact when you don’t like the protagonist. Her thoughts on people also hinder her from making friends, there were people there wanting to be here friends.

In saying this, I felt that Penny and her group of friends acted much younger than they were. I don’t know if it was just me, but I don’t think I acted the way that Penny and friends did when I was 18. I felt that they were more around the ages of 14/15, then 17/18. Don’t get me wrong, if I know that characters are going to be younger I go in knowing that. But I just felt that they acted so much younger for their age.

Sam was much easier to get along with. I felt that I was able to connect with him more, and throughout the novel, I grew to like him more and more. He felt more real than Penny. He made mistakes, but he was able to stand up to his problems and he was prepared for his life to change.

It also took me a long time to get into the novel, I felt that the first half was really slow and nothing really motivated me to continue reading. When reading I felt that there was nothing really that motivated the characters. Nevertheless, as soon as I hit the second half of the I really go into it.

The second half I was able to connect more with both Penny and Sam and the plot was able really moved the story along. Penny was able to really find herself in this second half and it was really nice to see her characterization and character arc. While it didn’t redeem all the things that made me dislike her in the first half, it did make me like her in the second half.

I really liked Penny and Sam together, I liked that they were friends first and they took the time connecting with one another before anything more happened. I really enjoyed the concept of an “emergency contact.” Someone being there when you need them most. And both Sam and Penny were great to each other for that. I do the romance was present a little more. But I still really enjoyed being about to see Sam and Penny become friends and then slowly fall for each other.

Penny relationship with her mother is also really strained throughout the whole novel. There were times where I understood Penny’s hostility, but there were also times where I didn’t. She didn’t even give her mum a chance to change things. While yes her mother was free-spirited, it felt that Penny couldn’t care less and that was really hard to read. The reader is able to see that her mum was trying to be there for Penny and be a better mother, but Penny wouldn’t give her a chance.

Overall, I liked Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi for the most part. While I did struggle a lot reading the first half, I really enjoyed the second half. The protagonist becomes more real and I was able to connect with them a lot. The plot also started to move forward in the second half and things started to come together. I also really enjoy the slow-burning relationship of Penny and Sam. Throughout the whole novel, Sam and Penny were able to confide in each other and as the novel goes on their relationship changes. Emergency Contact explores the notion of finding yourself and those around it. It’s about family, friends and finding new paths.

Mary H.K. Choi is a writer for The New York Times, GQ, Wired, and The Atlantic. She has written comics for Marvel and DC, as well as a collection of essays called Oh, Never Mind. She is the host of Hey, Cool Job!, a podcast about jobs, and is a culture correspondent for VICE News Tonight on HBO. Emergency Contact is her first novel. Mary grew up in Hong Kong and Texas and now lives in New York.

Have you read Emergency Contact? What did you think of it? Are you planning on reading it? Let’s Chat! Also, don’t forget to check out the rest of the blog tour this week.

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