Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. ChoiMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book had the worst start out of anything I've ever read. It actually shocked me pretty badly that an author could be so out of touch with the current YA reading world that she would actually start off her novel with chapter after chapter of girl-on-girl hate. This book can easily be dropped right off the bat by many people because of that. The terribly clichéd main character acts as a secondary blow, and the high school level writing as a third just for those who remain barely hanging on.
The main character Penny is the cliché nobody with no friends or social status whose low sense of self esteem and unscalable levels of self pity rival only the plethora of identical characters from other books who display the exact same qualities in similar contexts. This is exemplified very prominently every time she lays eyes on or thinks about another woman, as she degrades, slut-shames, and belittles them to no tomorrow. After three chapters I had yet to see a woman who Penny didn't regard as either an asshole or an idiot. She is so insecure that maintaining relationships with other women is nigh impossible; Except in the case where the other woman is the unrealistically super nice person who forces their friendship on her without real cause, reason, or motivation.
This overly-friendly trope is very often paired with Penny's clichéd character type because otherwise it would end up being too realistic in that she would remain friendless and alone forever because she's a huge loner asshole. How about a book where instead of other people compensating for the main character's shitty qualities and personality, we see they themselves start to awaken and grow and then be able to form realistic and healthy relationships through the help of social awareness and self realisation prompted by not only the acknowledgement of their shitty personality, but also the active effort to repair it? Nah, that's too much effort, let's just stick to the clichés and tropes that have already been written and laid out for us in advance. Ugh.
The writing was also off-puttingly juvenile, and greatly reminded me of reading the shittily written works of my peers back in high school when we were practicing creative writing. I could see this point being countered, as the main characters are essentially high school aged (newly graduated) so the writing could be there to reflect that. If that were the case then I don't see why this was written in 3rd person instead of 1st person. Nonetheless the writing was a definite dampening to my enjoyment of the book right off the bat. I will say that I was able to get used to it and not notice it as much by the end of the book.
These are problems I had with Penny and the writing in her chapters, but this book actually had two main characters, the other being Sam. His chapters were significantly more enjoyable and the writing was slightly less annoying. Whereas I almost couldn't see past the mountainous levels of salt flooding Penny's chapters, Sam's chapters were like a relaxing read in a coffee shop sipping on a hot beverage of choice. His chapters were also often literally set in a coffee shop. (view spoiler)
Eventually, once the story gets past establishing Penny as a mouth-frothing clichéd loner bitch, the story gets moving along and actually starts becoming interesting and even engaging. Both Penny's and Sam's perspectives are prominently independent from one another since they go about their own private lives with their only contact with each other being through text.
Usually one perspective is preferred over the other, but I found both their lives to be interesting and enjoyable to read about. Insights into their text messages kept their stories connected and acted as a way to further develop their relationship without inducing stagnation in their individual plots. When they interacted in-person the perspective would switch back and forth between them to see both their thoughts on a single conversation, which is something that I liked a lot and that kept reader engagement high. The blurb states "From debut author Mary H.K. Choi comes a compulsively readable novel" which was very true as the pages would fly by in no time.
While the beginning felt like an irredeemable train wreck, the rest of the book picked up into an enjoyable and engaging story that bumped up my star rating to three stars. But then the ending happened.
I really don't understand why that would be the ending. It just stops in the middle of a conversation and there's no payoff to either their relationship or Sam's documentary. I was super interested and invested in his documentary work, but there was no mention of it after a certain point in the novel and then the book ends! You can't just introduce a subplot like that and then leave readers hanging! Incredibly unsatisfying. The same can also be said in regards to Penny’s and Sam's relationship.
This book was a real rollercoaster ride. One that starts with a hard 90 degree plummet, slowly starts climbing back upwards, and then abruptly dumps riders into a lava spewing volcano. That middle climb was truly enjoyable, it's just unfortunate that most riders had already died from cerebral hypoxia by then and any remaining survivors were thereafter liquefied.
*I was granted an e-arc of Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi from the publisher Simon and Shuster via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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