Description:  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.

Review: Unlike her flirtatious and gregarious mother, Penny Lee is much reserved but she hopes that things will change when she goes off to college in Austin, Tex., in hopes of becoming a writer. She soon meets Sam, her roommate's 21-year-old uncle, a college dropout and talented baker who works (and lives) at a local coffee house. They barely know each other, but, after Penny catches Sam in a vulnerable moment they agree to be each other's emergency contacts. Soon, they are exchanging texts and sharing secrets they've never divulged.
  Emergency Contact is very much a slice of life story that has great potential, but unfortunately the author does not take full advantage of her characters and their issues. Penny is a smart and funny but hides under a quiet and at times abrasive manner. Sam plays the role of a tortured artist quite well, he is still trying to get over a serious relationship and become sober. In alternating chapters we see Penny and Sam slowly come out of their shells and act like real people. The book does discuss some serious issues such as abandonment, addiction, and identity which I liked but wished it explored more in the story. This book read like an episode of "Girls" and was at times long winded. I would not consider this book to be a meet-cute romantic comedy as its description implies. 

Rating: 3 stars


Words of Caution: There is strong language, underage drinking and drug use mentioned, allusions to sex and sexual assault. Recommended for Grades 10 and up.

If you like this book try: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell