Blog Tour: Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi

Item: Permanent Record
Rating: 3
Author: Wendy

Posted September 4, 2019 by Wendy in Blog Tour, Reviews / 0 Comments

Blog Tour: Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi

Permanent Record by Mary H. K. Choi
Published by Simon and Schuster on September 3, 2019
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Social Themes, Dating & Sex, Friendship, Coming of Age
Pages: 432
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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From the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, which Rainbow Rowell called “smart and funny,” comes an unforgettable new romance about how social media influences relationships every day.

On paper, college dropout Pablo Rind doesn’t have a whole lot going for him. His graveyard shift at a twenty-four-hour deli in Brooklyn is a struggle. Plus, he’s up to his eyeballs in credit card debt. Never mind the state of his student loans.

Pop juggernaut Leanna Smart has enough social media followers to populate whole continents. The brand is unstoppable. She graduated from child stardom to become an international icon and her adult life is a queasy blur of private planes, step-and-repeats, aspirational hotel rooms, and strangers screaming for her just to notice them.

When Leanna and Pablo meet at 5:00 a.m. at the bodega in the dead of winter it’s absurd to think they’d be A Thing. But as they discover who they are, who they want to be, and how to defy the deafening expectations of everyone else, Lee and Pab turn to each other. Which, of course, is when things get properly complicated.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

What really drew me to Permanent Record is the fact that it’s about someone who just has no idea what to do with their life as a twenty year old. It’s that stage after high school when everyone now views you as an “adult” and they ask you about your major and your career aspirations when really, a mere year or less earlier, you were just a kid sitting in class and getting through high school. It’s like an unspoken leap onto another level and while everyone else around Pablo seems like they’ve got it together, he has dropped out of NYU, works at a bodega and is struggling under massive student debt and has no idea how to tackle it all.

It’s just all very relevant and is a great look at what so many post high school people deal with. The fact that you are just supposed to know what you’re going to do (for the rest of your life!) and get started on those classes asap in college has always been a topic that I get passionate about because it’s sort of absurd. And while you’re trying to figure it out, you may not be taking those correct classes you need but you’re still racking up the tuition fees! So I really appreciated the close look at that aspect in Permanent Record. It’s so true to life and just a great contemporary tackling those issues and seeing how Pablo is going to navigate that.

So while Pablo is sort of floundering, he meets Leanna Smart, famous singer who is highly successful, at the bodega he works at and they have a whirlwind-esque romance as she whisks him off on private planes all over. I liked the part that this relationship played in shaping Pablo and what it did for his growth but man, I never clicked with Lee. She always felt sort of distant to me and I never really got the draw or attraction there.

While I didn’t click with certain aspects of the story, I did like seeing how Pablo ends up navigating his life. It’s a good coming of age story that’s very relevant and relatable! I think this is the epitome of that “new adult” category and I’m excited and hopeful to see more contemporaries target that age group.

Author Bio:

Mary H.K. Choi is a writer for TheNew York Times, GQ, Wired, and TheAtlantic. She has written comics for Marvel and DC, as well as a collection of essays called Oh, Never Mind. Her debut novel Emergency Contact was a New York Times bestseller. She is the host of Hey, Cool Job!, a podcast about jobs and Hey, Cool Life!, a podcast about mental health and creativity. Mary grew up in Hong Kong and Texas and now lives in New York. Follow her on Twitter @ChoitotheWorld.