“Loving someone was traumatizing. You never knew what would happen to them out there in the world. Everything precious was also vulnerable.”

Penny is awkward, beginning college away from home, with a high school boyfriend who barely understands her. Sam is struggling to make ends meet, he has big dreams but right now he’s living in a storage room on a mattress at the café he works at. Penny and Sam swap numbers and so begins a friendship by text, each too awkward to meet in person and tell the other how they really feel.

Emergency Contact drew me in from the beginning. It read a little bit like a YA movie with the narrator pausing a scene and filling you in on the background. It made getting to know Penny’s world fun, but also as a stylistic choice, it fitted the character’s voice well.

Penny is the kind of character where you spend the entire book not quite getting why she acts a particular way toward everyone she meets. Why does she actively spurn her mother? Why does she avoid real relationships with others? She was a puzzle to me, and early on her behaviour frustrated me. The truth of it, of why Penny is like she is, is devastating and once I understood, I saw Penny in a whole new way. I found this to be really powerful and reminded me of how in life – and in books – we can’t always judge those as we see them.

“To be a hero, you had to decide it was you.”

Penny’s character arc is the thing about this book I liked most. The jokes were fun, her relationship with Sam was kind of adorable, but the real winner in this book is how real Penny became for me, and how I cheered her on as she became the hero of this story in entirely her own way.

This is a cutesy romance about young love. I loved reading as Sam and Penny tried to navigate their growing feelings for each other, as each of them were trying to reach toward their own futures, unsure of where the path will lead them. Choi balances the seriousness of Penny and Sam’s pasts with light-hearted humour well. At times, when I was reading I laughed, and at times, I nearly cried, especially as the climax of the novel was revealed.

Emergency Contact was a fun read, and one that I have recommended to friends. Since reading, I have also picked up Mary H.K. Choi’s latest, Permanent Record and look forward to reading it soon.