Emergency Contact: 6 reasons this is one of the best young adult releases of 2018

Cover to Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi. Image via Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

Quirky and relevant, Mary H.K. Choi’s Emergency Contact is one of the best young adult releases hitting shelves this year.

This week marks the release date for Mary H.K. Choi’s newest novel, Emergency Contact. A young adult contemporary with a stunning cover, the story is best described by its official synopsis:

"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. (via Goodreads)"

If that summary doesn’t suck you in, the first few chapters will. With its quirky characters, awkward romance, and unapologetic commentary on social issues, Emergency Contact is set to become one of the best young adult contemporaries released in 2018. And with all of the fabulous fiction hitting shelves this year, that’s high praise.

Here are six reasons you should totally head to your local bookstore and grab a copy of Emergency Contact.