Emergency Contact
Ratings67
Average rating3.6
3.75. This book is not without it's problems, but I enjoyed it. The characters can be annoying when they make obviously wrong choices- but I felt like that just made them feel more real to me.
I don't have any negative feelings towards this book, but all of the relationships and topics and goals of the book felt underbaked and not delved into enough. I felt like much of the page time was spent on stuff I didn't care about while leaving the important elements (i.e. a fleshed-out discussion about assault or developing the relationship at the beginning rather than introducing the characters and then saying “we text all the time, we're such good friends”) to be summed up in one conversation.
Nothing about this really bothered me & I can't pick out many negatives, but thinking back I really can't think of anything I liked about it either sooo.
South Korea book around the world!
That makes 52 out of 198!
I wanted a contemporary light-hearted novel after the nonfiction from North Korea but this just ended up making me mad for other reasons. Wouldn't recommend.
Read for an upcoming book club. This was very, very contemporary and I would think that a great many of these slang/pop culture references will be dated quickly. That said, I LOVE novels in which characters are not from rich backgrounds, or even middle class backgrounds. More fiction about people putting themselves through college by working hard, please!
Here is my overall problem: there is a lot of telling and not much showing going on here. I feel like everyone is some sort of “type” and acts only within the confines of their “type”. At times, the characters felt like SIMS. Now Penny is doing this. Now Sam is doing that. Sometimes a BIG idea is brought up, but not fully explored. Just one example, in Penny's class, a professor brings up #ourownvoices and it just doesn't actually go anywhere for a page and a half. Why bring it up if Penny isn't going to think about it? Something similar happens with Sam's “documentary”.
I have to say that I enjoyed the anima short story in the novel much more than I enjoyed the novel.
So, some of the reviews of this book are unjustly harsh. To be fair, some of the reviews are based solely on the book's cover (WHY do people do that?) It's not a bad book. I'm looking forward to the discussion of it.
Strong characters and very relatable. I liked that there were two narrators and that both were well developed.
A fast read that looks at all the complexities of young adulthood and falling in and out of love.
(You can also find reviews like this on my blog.)
cw: alcoholism, racism, sexual assault, parental neglect.
This was exactly the kind of fluffy contemporary romance I've been needing in my life. Watching Penny and Sam's romance blossom via text was heartwarming and anxiety-inducing and so, so relatable. I loved both of the MCs so much and literally could not put this book down. Unfortunately, I tore through it so fast that I didn't really take enough notes for a proper review and all I can do is gush about how cute and wonderful it was. The writing was excellent and I enjoyed the plot. There were serious topics, which were all good to see and which were handed well, in my opinion. I loved loved loved this book and cannot recommend it enough if you're looking for a cute NA contemporary.
So good - lol @ people calling Penny ‘unlikable' in the reviews, because I found her so realistic and sympathetic, if not always charitable in her internal monologue (but seriously, if that's your standard for a likable female character, you're not gonna like many characters). Especially when a major part of the story is Penny learning to be more open to people and less closed off from new things ... how do you show that growth without having her be closed off in the beginning? Like.
ANYWAY. My only issue with this book is that it was sometimes hard to tell who was who in the text conversations (especially early in the conversation). I was able to figure it out with a little closer reading, but that's a minor formatting issue, really. I love Penny and Sam and I love Jude and I even love Mallory and Celeste. The only character that started flat and stayed that way for me was Lorraine, and I would've liked to see a bit more there, but that's not at all a dealbreaker when everything else about this book is so good. The author has lived in Austin and it really shows, which was super-refreshing as a Texas native. I just flat-out adored this book and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Loooooooord. I blazed through this book as fast as my eyeballs could read and I'm sad that it's already over. God it was just so perfect. It was cute and fun and romantic but not in a gross or unrealistic way as some of these young adult contemporary books can be. It was just perfect. I loved the depth of the characters, and the way the author made them feel so real. They were quirky and relatable and also dealing with some real shit. My only complaint was that it ended too soon, but that's also kind of a ridiculous complaint because it was 391 pages.
