Emergency Contact by Mary Choi (review)

Emergency Contact is a cute and thoughtful book about friendship and strained/tense mother relationship, This book also deals partly with depression, assault and abuse. However, the story doesn’t drown in these heavy issues.

Emergency Contact
Mary H.K. Choi
391 pages
My rating: ★★★★

The book is told by a third-person narrator, shifting between Penny and Sam as the focus/centre. I usually read books with a first-person narrator so it took me a while to get used to this kind of narration.

It took me a while to get used to the narration but not to get to know the characters. I felt something for them rather quickly and when Sam and Penny met for the first time I was hooked. I mean they were both gorgeous and they were even wearing the same clothes! So cute!!
Sam and Penny’s meet-cute maybe wasn’t the most epic. However, their second meet-cute was quite something. For those of you who have read the book will probably agree with me that the circumstances they met under weren’t the best… (I feel so sad for Sam, being alone in a situation like that.) I am so happy that Penny was such a lifesaver and being that cute at the same time. I also loved how they both opened up, probably under the affection of adrenaline. ““The first one is the worst. By a lot,” she said, crunching. Sam wasn’t sure if she was talking about panic attacks or pregnant ex-girlfriends. Not that it mattered.” Anyway, what followed this second meet was the start of something special.

The conversation that Sam and Penny later had, after Sam forgot to text Penny back and then falling asleep and Penny was waiting up all night for him to text her back, was the cutest thing ever!! ((Please be aware that I am probably gonna continue to use the word cute several times more, my apologies, but now you have been warned 😉 )) Sam and Penny continued to text after that, and they kept growing on me as well as on each other. “Sam enjoyed texting Penny. They talked about work, sleep, food, random facts. It didn’t need to be anything important. Their last text had been what to eat for breakfast. Since Penny had seen him at his lowest, there was no reason to act cooler than he was.”

I don’t think there was any big character development in Emergency Contact. Not that it was a bad thing. It was more the characters view of themselves and others that changes. They started accepting themselves and others. And I really liked that.
Sam and Penny both learned to open up and be more honest about themselves. As a result, Penny developed a great and peculiar realtionship with her roommate Jude and Jude’s friend Mallory. In the beginning, their “friendship” was quite tense. But I liked how the girls started to accept their difference and just had fun. I particularly liked how they bonded over their mothers and Mallory’s brilliant remark on moms:  “Moms are like cows, you’ve got to milk them or they lose their minds.”
Due to Sams beginning acceptance of himself, he finally got over his ex-girlfriend, Lorianna. That took a while!… She was just playing him and messing with his heart. But eventually, Sam saw his own worth and ended it with Loriane delivering a killer cute odd line. I really considered writing the whole thing here but it is almost an entire page and I didn’t want to spoil that much. 😉

Even though this book deals with tough issues it never got too depressed or dark. I liked that; the focus was on the friendship and how important human contact is. Sam and Penny became each other’s emergency contact’s caring and helping each other as well as they could. “I asked if you were okay. You didn’t respond. I became momentarily worried.” “Honestly if Penny had to choose between saving a puppy or her phone from an oncoming train, she’d lunge for the phone and that was awful.” Nonetheless, they both realised that every human needs real human contact, text and calls are not enough. Not for anyone. 

I really enjoyed reading this book! It was so sweet and cute! By that, I guess I just mean that the characters were so lovable, they were flawed unique and fun. At the same time, the story was serious and realistic. Such a great read, 4 big stars from me.
And I apologise for this messy review!

Have you read Emergency Contact what were your thoughts? Or do you plan on reading it?