Mary H.K. ChoiCritiques

5/24/2018 Update: As promised, here's the link to my full blog review! :) https://thedeborahembury.wordpress.com/2018/05/23/emergency-contact-by-mary-h-k-...

I'll be posting a full review for this one on my blog, but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by "Emergency Contact". After reading the first couple chapters I almost put it down because it seemed annoying and pretentious, but I gave it a chance. There are definitely a few flaws (glamorization of depression, unadressed girl-to-girl hate), plus one of the major plot points just completely vanishes?? But somehow...I liked it. I ended up liking the main characters much more than I thought I would, too. I enjoyed how they each had passions and projects they actually pursued.
I'll dig into these thoughts more in my blog review!

Romance where the characters fall in love mostly via text message.

I liked it - good for reading on a hectic travel weekend when I was also running a big race.

Realized I had it in my kindle when I got a second book by this author in my subscription box.

This came in one of my subscription boxes. It’s a YA, I guess, but with actual young adults not high school kids.

Our main character is 20 years old, working nights at a bodega, up to his eyeballs in credit card debt, embarrassed that he dropped out of college after a semester, too full of shame to ask anybody for help getting out of the messy hole he dug for himself with bad decisions he made. He’s alienating his family & his roommates with his behavior and his only happiness comes from if Instagram account devoted to exotic snack food & sneakers.

One night a pop star (I think it’s supposed to be Ariana Grande maybe?) wanders into the bodega in the wee hours of the night and she happens to share his affinity for weirdo snacks. They spend a few hours together in the store and an unlikely romance takes root.

The rest of the book is about their complicated and unlikely romance. It’s all top secret because of NDA contracts and It’s a mess for a million reasons. How it all plays out, good and bad, is the bulk of the story and how things change because of it.

It’s a wacky way to explore the drama, fear, and uncertainty that overwhelm people when they are taking their first real steps into adulthood but somehow it all worked for me.

This was a pretty cute geeky gal discovering college and love story.

While this was not my favorite one of hers, this still held it's own with the rest of Choi's books. The relationship between the sisters was EVERYTHING.

Saw this book blurbed online and enjoyed the heck out of it. Emergency Contact is a funny, well-paced coming-of-age romance with two memorable leads - Penny, a quirky, anxious Korean-American college freshman who has trouble connecting with people, and Sam, a big-hearted, insecure baker from a working class background recovering from a toxic relationship. The two strike up a friendship via text message, becoming emotionally intimate but preferring the safety of a phone relationship to one IRL.

This book touched on so many timely themes - navigating differences of race and class, how technology connects and disconnects us, figuring out how to love after trauma. If anything, the book had so much going on that the narrative felt a bit crowded, but it was still deeply enjoyable.

Rainbow Rowell blurbs it, and it especially reminded me of Fangirl. Hurrah for college novels being published as YA!

5

What an incredible book about familial and romantic relationships, dealing with trauma, and mental health.

I have to say while a lot of Young Adult books cover similar subjects, this one feels a lot heavier, emotional, and authentic. I wouldn't necessarily categorize this as a YA - I'd probably mark it as a New Adult - but assume it's marketed that way because of the age of the characters, not the content.

Pretty awful topics that need discussion, but I found it hard to grasp the story at certain points.

This one’s pretty emotionally dark throughout, touching on eating disorders, cancer, anxiety, etc., it’s the kind of story you’ll need to be in the right headspace for, I definitely preferred reading it in short intervals rather than sitting with it for long stretches.

The entire story is told from Jayne’s point of view, but her sister June’s personality and psychology ended up being of such interest to me that I found myself wishing this had been a duel POV book, I would have loved to have spent some time in June’s undoubtedly fascinating head and heart.

My favorite thing about this book was how warts and all it was about its characters and their relationships, how much of a struggle it is for them to connect and reach out, they are messy and ugly at times, even the relationship between the sisters and with their mother has more cringe-inducing moments than heartwarming ones, which made them come across as really human and achingly vulnerable and when those few and far between heartwarming moments do materialize, there’s nothing schmaltzy in them, nothing false.

I imagine some readers would prefer a more traditionally satisfying ending, but given the life-like quality of the story and the fact that mental health and cancer battles don’t tend to wrap up tidily, I was good with things not being tied up in neat little bows here either.

It's been a while since I shipped something so hard.

"Alice is an editorial assistant for a book publisher. . . She lives in Midtown in a brand-new studio apartment with a washer and dryer, with her boyfriend, who pays half the rent since he got a job in Albany and reverse commutes for weekends."

Ummmm WHO copyedited this book?! Which editorial assistant worked on it?! Did the editor read this?! Because I assure you that, even going halvsies, an editorial assistant would not be able to afford a frikking MIDTOWN studio with IN-UNIT laundry. This is publishing! They don't pay us! NO WAY! Show me that lease and that girl's paystubs because I am CALLING BULL.

Anyway.

And we never hear what happens with Alice anyway. Well. My real issue with this book is my own darn fault: I was stressed out the whole way through. I come from a culture that is very different to the US in terms of money. Kiwis barely have credit cards. Loans are thought about drastically differently. And while I relate so hard to being paralysed when I'm overwhelmed like Pablo, I can't fathom the not acting for so long.

I was accepted to my first choice school, Sarah Lawrence, which at the time was the only school in the country more expensive than NYU. They gave me minimal scholarships. At that point, I'd already been accepted to other schools with almost full scholarships. And there was the option of community college. Turning down SLC SUCKED. But did I even remotely seriously consider going? No. Because to be over $200k in debt sounds ridiculous to me. So I just can't relate to Pablo's decisions at all.

But Pablo was so well crafted that though I didn't relate, I could understand exactly his actions at all times. And I adored this throughout. I loved everyone's characters, from Rain and the vibrators to Wyn and the old nemesis. Even Lee was beautifully multifaceted. Choi is a brilliant writer and this is 2/2.

No lie, Pablo gave my anxiety anxiety but this was like reading about myself if I was a twenty year old half-Pakistani half-Korean manboy (I am instead a thirty-something half-Puerto Rican half-Japanese half-Black womanchild [I know that’s one too many halves but if I have to deal with it so do you]). But reading about Pablo’s ride on the struggle bus was deeply moving. I hesitate to call this a romance even though there is one at the heart of it (sorry can’t help myself) because the romance is only a catalyst. I loved Pablo’s family and his friends and how beautifully captured his sometimes fraught but always deeply loving relationships with them all were. Also, this got the spirit of New York like, 100% correct.

3.8 stars

i enjoyed the humor. a pretty solid young adult contemporary, even though i won't be reading this again.

2022 pandemic read. Not sure who recommended this to me, but it had some interesting elements, and a lot about trust. Great cover.

4.50

I adored this. Yes, it is a slow paced slife of life, and it doesn't have a satisfactory ending. Neither of those things bother me if the writing is good-of it draws you in. Choi's writing definitely did.

I related to the dynamic between the sisters, to Jaynes disordered eating, especially her disordered life. This was a great read.

it was ok. glad I borrowed it from a buddy instead of buying it. The main story was "eh". I was more interested in the main character's story she was writing for her writing class. I wanted to read that story.

DNF

Two stars because I think this book suggested the author is capable of more.
In my mind, this book was the result of a capable author jotting down every cliche she could think of across a few genres, framing it in a YA context, and when she realized she could toy with the formatting, she decided to leave huge chunks of space between text messages so the book would seem twice as long. Was--was the author going to miss a deadline or something?
I set this book down over a dozen times, seething. Everyone was insufferable. Cliche situations fired themselves incessantly from an Overdone Plot canon. I rolled my eyes so often before the first hundred pages, but told myself hey, maybe the real story has not begun yet and the author's trying something out. The novel ended on what I would consider an odd note considering the rest of the book. Don't get me wrong, it was boring and predictable, and I felt somewhat cheated. The last paragraph simply felt different from the rest of the entire book.
Like others have noted, the -way- this book was marketed was so different than the actual product. That's part of why I felt cheated and kept setting it down. I mean, what a fascinating concept! Only to have the reality be dozens of tropes I cannot -stand-. Novel Within A Novel, Undergrad Writing Course in A Novel, My Mom Sucks But Only I Can Save Her (this on Penny's side, not Sam's), Other People Have To Tell Me How I Feel, Evil Rich (Ex)Girlfriend, Poor Brown People Always Speak Spanish--okay, I'm going to address those last two as they relate to Sam.

I got and appreciate what the author was -going for- by making her book what she probably thought was diverse and well-rounded. What she -wrote- what so offensive and out of nowhere that I actually laughed. And then I got angry. What does Bastian add to the story? Nothing. Why is he there? Diversity points. And his mom is an undocumented immigrant? I just--whhhyyyy??? It was all thrown in completely for no reason and so underdeveloped!!! I am pulling out the multiples of question marks and exclamation points, even. And I give hamsahs being described as basically children's drawings (RRRRGHHHH) a hard pass. What the fuck was up with Sam baking his mom -hamentaschen- in freakin' November, too? Seriously what. And -prune-? Dude, we eat raspberry ones. And sticking them in a Christmas tin--I was not amused. Sam's alcoholism and codependency made me really grit my teeth. I know men just like him. I -was- him until I went to good meetings. I wanted so much to hand him meeting pamphlets and help him, but I wanted to do this so he would shut up. In real life, when I meet people like him, I am not unhappy at all--I am concerned. I listen. But no, a fictional book character made me angry. Those aren't even the main reasons he infuriated me. The main ones, I don't want to get into, they make me so angry.

I hope with future works, the author takes more time to flesh out her characters. I would have liked to hear more about Sam's views on Judaism, whether he was observant or not, and Sephardic (I think he was), and why. I wanted to know more about the roommates. I seriously wondered why Penny hated her mom so much and highly doubted her perception was the real thing. There's another YA character out there who hated her mom and got to go live with her dad, that I saw some similarities to. That made me sad, because I hate that series more than I could bear, and I -definitely- don't think the author was going for that.

this was the most boring book i think i've ever tried to read.

The FEELS!! The perfect description of debt and anxiety and what it feels like to be a brand new adult trying to make it on your own and what it feels like when you fuck it up!! Pablo is one of my fav characters ever, and it was so, so great getting to see him learn and grow. I could relate to him on so many levels. For being such a whirlwind wtf-how-is-this-even-really-happening romance, it seemed pretty realistic and totally believable. I just want to hug everyone involved in this book: the characters, Mary H.K. Choi, the cover illustrator...

The Austin setting, the imperfections in the characters appearances and personalities, the quietness of the plot mixed with super talkative relationships, and just the overall slightly less glossy style of story than is often found in contemporary YA had this one reminding me of some of the independent movies I love, kind of Richard Linklater vibes.

I really liked Penny and Sam’s chemistry romantically and better still the friendship underneath the sparks, but I also appreciated that the book took the time to fill out their lives apart from each other, their individual artistic pursuits, as well as their complicated family lives and other tentative friendships.

As an added bonus there were a couple secondary characters that I absolutely fell in love with, Jude, Penny’s roommate/Sam’s niece, and Celeste, Penny’s Mom, both brought this big loving (verging on smothering) and vulnerable energy that I found mostly adorable and their personalities beautifully played off of Penny and Sam’s somewhat pricklier natures.

I wanted to read this one because I thought it was about a texting friendship (and possibly romance?) between two people having a hard time.

This was a cringy story, where Sam and Penny text each other self-consciously clever drivel, while hating everyone else in their lives and working on freshman creative projects. Ugh.

The characters are what drew me into this story. The two sisters are relatable because they are so imperfect and human. At times I despised them both and at times I loved them so much. It's not very often that a book will touch my heart, but I admit that my eyes were misty as I neared the ending of this one. Life is messy sometimes and this novel is messy in all the right ways.

U

3.5
First half did not really had me, second half resonated a bit with me.