As I mentioned in my last Fiction Friday, I'm taking part in an all day conference this October related entirely to YA books. As a result, I have six books to read before that conference and am finally getting started on that. Here are my thoughts on the first one, a book that after the first 50 pages, I was sure I was going to hate, but ended up really enjoying.
Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi
(S&S 2018)
Alternating between two main characters, this novel is essentially a story about how two people can fall in love. It is as much about the way they fall in love as it is about being in love.
Penny is an Asian American girl starting her freshman year at University of Texas when she meets her new roommate's "uncle", twenty-one year old Sam who is an Austin native from a time before Austin was hipster central. The two quickly become secret texting buddies, sharing deeply personal thoughts, opinions, and feelings that neither is really adept at sharing in real life. Over the course of Penny's first semester, this friendship evolves into a romantic relationship.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is the way it develops a relationship through a series of text conversations. When there is so much focus on the negative aspects of texting and social media, and basically any form of "virtual" relationships, this book shows the other side. It examines that core power of these type of relationships, that it can be far easier to be honest in the virtual world, which can be a bad thing, but can also be a beautiful thing.
I found this book to be a little bit of a slow starter, and admit to not really liking either character all that much in the beginning. However, as they got to know each other, the reader gets to know them better and discovers there are real reasons for some of their unlikable characteristics. Very entertaining, and a nice change of pace from all the negative conversations about this aspect of the world we live in.
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