11/26/2019

permanent record / mary h.k. choi

published: 2019
pages: 417
read: 10/23-29/2019
book: 61 in 2019

to this day i have no inkling as to what i care about the most. i care about everything equally until i care about so many things that i get overwhelmed and i care about nothing at all. when it comes to the single thing i want to focus the rest of my life on, its a muscle i dont know how to flex. - Pab (pg. 20) 

After a year of college, Pablo is working at his local twenty-four-hour deli, selling overpriced snacks to brownstone yuppies. He’s dodging calls from the student loan office and he has no idea what his next move is.

Leanna Smart’s life so far has been nothing but success. Age eight: Disney Mouseketeer; Age fifteen: first #1 single on the US pop chart; Age seventeen, *tenth* #1 single; and now, at Age nineteen…life is a queasy blur of private planes, weird hotel rooms, and strangers asking for selfies on the street.

When Leanna and Pab randomly meet at 4:00 a.m. in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn, they both know they can’t be together forever. So, they keep things on the down-low and off Instagram for as long as they can. But it takes about three seconds before the world finds out…

Honestly, it scares me the way I end up living the aftermath of decisions I don't remember making.                              -Pab (pg 17)

MY THOUGHTS
first and foremost, that synopsis is lyin'.
3 seconds it does NOT take for ANYONE to find out they're dating. 
no one knows for a good while and even beyond his circle friends and her chief of whatever the fuck, no one ever finds out. so that's a lie. 

second, do they know that they can't be together forever? well, i mean, we all know that but i can definitely say that maybe she knew and Pab would have done anything to stay with her prior to getting his shit together. 

thiiiiird, off instagram? well, it could never be IG official...so, i mean...its a bit misleading. the world can't know they're together so why would it ever make it onto IG?
she does "accidentally" follow him and of course her fans notice like a second later and blow him up but he has a "sneakers with snacks" account so there wasn't really anything about him on there to identify him anyway. it could have been any account Leena was following. it wasn't obvious AT ALL that it was the account of a dude she was "dating". if anything, this little slip up just sets him up for how the story ends....

this one was weird. 
i did like this book.
B U T 
well, i don't know. i feel like even though it took me several days to read, there were still some parts where i feel like i just breezed over and i did find myself re-reading the same paragraph several times over and over that i even think i still don't get what i was reading. 
...and i while I'm not 1000 years old, it does have some lingo in there that i was like wtf does this mean? 

i liked it because just like Pablo, i still don't know what the fuck i want to go to school for....and I'm about to be 32.
his goal was just to get into NYU and he did and then he has no idea where to go from there. he legit did not know what he wanted to do once he was admitted in. 

i like it because he gets all in his feels and i think a lot of people can relate to him being in his feels. i think more people feel a bit lost more than there are those that don't. 
BUT i also feel like this is something that happened to him because his mother was good at laying down the ABC's of life and what she expected of him but not good at discussing with him the repercussions of his actions and the whole not thinking them through. how do you let your son go to NYU and not question how he was going to pay for it? especially knowing YOU couldn't afford it and that he didn't have any type of grants? you make doctor money and you cant afford it!!!!!!!!!
i feel like she knew what was going to happen but didn't care to discuss it with him. maybe 'not care' is the wrong way to phrase it but....you know what i mean? she didn't know how to explain to him why it was a bad idea. i feel like maybe she got mad that shit didn't go her way that she shut down about it. 

pab's personal life is complete shit basically. he's in debt for school and with credit cards and behind on rent and stuck at what his mother calls a first generation job. 
its not until he meets Leena and starts dating her that he becomes "happy". 
happy however is a relative term however because when he is with her or talking to her he is happy but when she is gone, he's not. 

overall, to me, she just adds to the sadness and depression that is his life. 
she does let him in and they do get to know each other but as much as Leena praises open honesty, she wasn't even about that. not in a bad way but i feel like she was being open in a way that benefited her and gave him enough to go off on without him questioning her about any more of it. 
also, how did Pab NOT THINK that they wouldn't background check his ass? 
i mean come on. she's a big ass star. did he really think they were just going to let some rando hang out with her without seeing if he was a stable person? 
i feel like he was smart in some moves but then completely blind in others. 

YES!
there we go. 

through out the story you can see Pablo start to get his marbles in order but for every 3 good steps he took, he went back 5. 
you can see where he's starting to do good but also where he also goes back to fucking it all up.  you see his brain working. you see him acknowledging what he needs to do. HE KNOWS IT....but then decides to do the opposite of the "right" thing. 

in the end, he does get it together and well, since we all know, they don't end up together. 
and after they break up (in the shittiest way possible) he definitely goes through a dark period but what comes after, well, I'm glad that he got it together. 
I'm glad that he was able to figure his shit out and learn his value as a person to himself and what he brings to the table with Leena. 

once Pab & Leena break up, she disappears and it's all about him. i liked the story a bit more and i even found myself being glad that she was gone. i did not miss her at all. ....and it got me wondering, could this have been a story without her at all? could it have been simply about Pab just discovering his life? his friends and own dad provided enough to idk, maybe shock him into realizing that life is more than what is causing him pain at that moment. 

OVERALL!,
this one was a good one in the sense that this book explores what it means to be a teen going into adulthood and feeling completely lost. 
it explores emotions; love and depression and the feeling of being lost and not knowing how to swim upstream into positivity. or how to get your shit together. 
it goes into all sorts of feels. and i think for that, this was great. i still feel like that sometimes. we don't all have it all together. 

i liked this one. i think part of me might love it. another part of me might be like WTF did i just read but i am glad i read this. and i do think i will eventually re-read this one laaaaaaater on in the distant future. maybe. 
it was good but it was one of those weird good ones. 

i didn't hate it, i liked it but i didn't love it but i might have some love for this one overall. 

anyway, 
jump over for basics! 

S P O I L E R S 

pab meets lee at his job at 4 am (he doesn't realize until way later that the reason she was there was because she had just left Luca's house). 

she leaves, they don't exchange info, he cant stop thinking about her, he tags one of his posts with #spelunk, she does it to, its game on. (how did she know his ig? was she just surfing the gram to see if she'd find anything with that hashtag? i dont think he tagged her in anything.) 

they meet up again, she takes him to LA, makes him sign an NDA, he's all wtf!? how can this be real when i can't even do anything", he still signs it....LA happens. 

his life is spiraling out of control at work, the loans, his mom...all of this...

ima skip a lot because....i don't know. 

anyway, they get in a fight. s
he took him out to the Gucci store to spoil him. he tells her that he cant accept anything. they leave and there are paparazzi everywhere. they take pictures of them but she calls in a favor to make sure they never leak. he's pissed AF but she's tells him she's doing it for his own good. she's basically ready to call it quits and then out of nowhere, she's all "lets go to Korea" (a dream destination of his). they go, they land, they check in and she's all sleep ill be back by 1, we'll have the whole day!
he wakes up later, starving. she's not back. hes afraid to eat because he doesn't know who's sponsoring what so he leaves to look for food. he eventually finds a sorta 7/11 but of course his card is denied. he makes it back to the hotel when he finally sees Lee. 
turns out home girl legit left him in Korea all by his damn self and flew over to China for a meeting. 
they get in a fight about that and she flies him home. 

he goes into a deep depression. 

eventually he gets his shit together. 
he goes back to a school that makes sense, has 2 jobs, is getting along with his family. 
one day he is delivered this box and when he opens it, in it is the suit and an invite to her movie premiere. (she's a mega star and basically has anything that she wants. this was the first role that she truly wanted and he believed and told her that she would get it.) 

he goes along with his friends. 
he returns the outfit. 
they hug it out. 
she tells him to drop everything and get in the jet with her. 

he finally tells her no. 

obvs there's a lot i left out. but im exhausted just even thinking of this book. 

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