Emergency Contact

Overview

Mary H. K. Choi's Emergency Contact follows Penny Lee, newly arrived at college and eager to reinvent herself, and Sam Becker, a twentysomething barista stuck between a bad breakup and an uncertain future. Their first encounter is clumsy rather than charming, but an exchanged phone number turns into a running text thread that neither of them expects to matter.

As the messages pile up, Penny and Sam begin trusting each other with things they'd never say face to face: family resentments, creative ambitions, fears about who they're becoming. The novel tracks how that correspondence deepens even as both characters keep their distance in person, each wary of letting the relationship become something more complicated.

Told from alternating perspectives, the book is as much about the ordinary friction of starting adult life as it is about romance, following its two leads through family strain, financial worry, and the slow, uneven work of figuring out who they want to be.

Intimacy at a Remove

Choi's novel is frequently discussed as an early, attentive portrait of how smartphones reshape courtship: two people can know each other's inner lives in detail long before they know how to act around one another in person. The texting format isn't a gimmick so much as the book's central idea, letting honesty and avoidance coexist in the same relationship.

That structure also lets the story sit with themes of anxiety and self-worth without resolving them tidily. Penny and Sam are each managing forms of family dysfunction and personal doubt, and the novel treats their digital closeness as both a refuge and a way of postponing harder conversations. Within Choi's body of work, which frequently examines identity and belonging among young Asian American and mixed-heritage characters navigating unfamiliar settings, Emergency Contact is often read as a turning point toward more interior, voice-driven storytelling.

Why Emergency Contact Has Been Challenged

Much of the disagreement over this title concerns where it belongs on a shelf: whether its themes and frankness suit a young adult audience or are better reserved for older teens and adults. Critics pushing for restriction point to specific content rather than the book's premise as a whole.

Recurring objections include depictions of sexual activity and discussion among teen and young-adult characters, scenes involving drug and alcohol use, and language some reviewers consider inappropriate for school libraries or classrooms. The novel's unflinching treatment of panic attacks and family trauma has also drawn scrutiny from those who feel such material requires more guidance than a library setting provides. In total, the catalog tracks challenges to this title in 4 states and 6 districts, reflecting disputes that center less on the book's emotional themes than on its explicitness in portraying them.