Young Adult Fiction: Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi

Every Christmas Day, my mom and I make the trek down to 6th Street in Austin, Texas to visit BookPeople, one of the best bookstores in Texas. Today's selection is one of the four books I picked up that day, and another shout out to K. Hogan for bringing it to my attention. Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi is also set in and around Austin, as one main character attends UT Austin, while the other lives and works near it.

The Situation: Penelope "Penny" Lee is 18 years-old and off to college. Finally, she is able to leave the needy mother she feels she has nothing in common with and begin her adult life in Austin while attending the University of Texas. She does not feel much for the people she is leaving behind, including her barely boyfriend, her nonexistent friends, her mom, and the people who made a sport of judging them both. Maybe at UT she can learn to be a writer and also meet people she actually wants to hang out with. Penny does end up meeting Sam, a barista at a local coffee shop, and the family relation to her roommate, Jude. Unbeknownst to Penny, and Jude, Sam has his own issues, the least of which being his current residence situated above the coffee shop in which he works. While in the middle of a more off than on relationship with his poisonous ex, Sam is struggling to find his way, and oddly enough, he and Penny find solace in each other, though their relationship almost depends on them never actually talking or seeing each other in person.

The Problem: It turns out that Penny's desire to interact with other humans, or be able to hold a decent conversation, did not increase as she crossed zip codes. Jude is nice enough, though she has boundary issues, and her best friend Mallory is only slightly racist, though incredibly condescending. And while Sam knows deep down that Lorraine is not good for him, something that is easily proven given her actions during a pregnancy scare, he cannot help diving right in and torturing himself. He is beyond broke, his laptop is dead, he wants to be a documentary film maker but cannot afford the classes, and his relationship with his mom is almost beyond redemption. Despite their respective issues, and Jude's warning for her friends to stay away from Sam, he and Penny manage to hit it off...through texting. Through those little speech bubbles, they talk about things they find it impossible to talk about with most everyone else. And like most intense relationships, it is not long before things escalate into something more.

Genre, Themes, History: This book is a YA novel set is present-day Austin, Texas, mostly around the UT campus. It is Penny's first semester in college, which also means it is her first time away from her mother for a significant amount of time. And while she is fine with this transition, her mother is having a harder time. At some point in her life, Penny got over her mother acting more like a friend and started wishing Celeste would act more like a mom. Penny also has to get used to sharing a room with Jude, which is made much more difficult when she is secretly communicating with Sam, Jude's uncle. Both Penny and Sam have issues with their mother, but they also have issues with communicating, which is why texting between the two becomes optimal. But to sell this book as a cute rom-com type where the heroes develop a relationship through texting would be misleading. The texting does not begin until you're fairly well into the book, and the two do manage to meet in person quite a bit (as well as talk on the phone and email). If anything, it is a study in how relationships are complicated, and people can be terrible.

My Verdict: One Goodreads reviewer described this book as triggering and problematic, and I feel like those two words fit the novel perfectly, as heavy issues are brought up and dropped unceremoniously. I immediately did not like Penny, which was hard to recover from for the remainder of the book. She is unlikable as opposed to flawed, judgmental, and quick to bat away attempts to stereotype her Korean heritage, while also managing to throw around her own offensive bits. Also, and this is by far the smallest of her many offenses (and honestly probably says more about me than it does about the book), she asserts that Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a classic, in the same vein as Ender's Game and Dune. It is a fantastic book, but it is not a classic...not yet. While Penny's infatuation with Sam seems plausible, how their relationship develops does not. Her roommate Jude, as a character, is confusing, while Mallory is flat and almost one-note. 

The bright spots? I'm all for YA books that explore early college life. And as a Texan, I enjoyed the references to the bad taco place that has the nerve to charge for extras (you know who you are...and shame on you), and also Amy's Ice Cream. And then there is Sam, who, for the most part, I liked. But there were some moments where his blind spots were hard to swallow, even when he was admitting how bad they were. He also said and thought stuff that made me question the blind spots of the author.   

Favorite Moment: It can all be summed up in Jude's quote: "'I make a good friend, Penny,' Jude said. 'You didn't even give me a chance.'" I think we have all wanted to scream some version of that at some point in our lives.

Favorite Character: I do like Sam, though he certainly has his issues, as a person and a book character.

Recommended Reading: This general idea was better executed in Rainbow Rowell's Attachments. Though not YA, and more centered around email (set before texting was really a thing), it is a delightful story of our terrible attempts to connect to real people.