Title and Author of the Book: Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi

Plot Overview (from Goodreads): 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.

Critique: My favorite character was Penny because she was a very unique and someone that I’d love to be friends with. Her personality was really realistic and I just thought that the author did an incredible job at making her seem like a real person. Penny had many little quirks and things about her that made me laugh because it’s something I can see a college student doing. I would definitely recommend this book to a friend and I’d tell them that the plot was really well done, the struggles that the characters went through and their train of thought was so relatable that it’s scary and the ups and downs both Sam and Penny went through made it a great read. Another thing I really appreciated was the fact that yes, this was a romance novel but it wasn’t the main thing of the book, it was more about the two characters stumbling through life.

Cover Critique: I really liked the cover I had a new appreciation for it because I feel like it closely resembled the theme of the book and the art was really well done. I wouldn’t change the cover at all because it was very creative and well thought out.

Star Rating: I would give this book a 4.5/5 being the only thing I’d change would be a sequel :)

From Ms. Yang: I really liked this one too! There are quite a few books where the main characters interact only by text and this one was definitely done like it could possibly be real.