I bought Mary H.K. Choi’s Permanent Record on a whim from the Books-A-Million website with an e-gift card. It sounded cute enough.  Boy meets girl in a grocery store. Girl turns out to be a pop star. She sweeps him off his feet and they have a whirlwind romance. But this definitely isn’t a Cinderella story. Let me explain.

This novel follows Pablo, a nineteen year old college dropout working in a health food store in New York. He doesn’t really know what he wants in life. He’s idling by while also stressing out about his massive amounts of debt. But then Leanna enters the picture.

She is basically the fictional version of all those child stars from Disney Channel and Nickelodeon who are still musicians and actors as adults. She’s trying to make that transition. But she seems pretty exhausted with her fame which is probably why she views Pablo as breath of fresh air.

However this novel is more about Pablo than Leanna. I will admit when I first started reading Permanent Record, I wanted it to alternate between Pablo and Leanna’s viewpoints like Choi’s first novel , Emergency Contact. But I came to appreciate Pablo as the sole narrator. I thought his voice could be a little cheesy, because he used “drip” and other slang throughout. But I accepted it because it adds to the character.

He definitely was not a perfect character, which really showed when he became so dependent on Leanna. Not so much financially but emotionally. He would practically disappear and not tell anyone while he jetted off to some faraway land with Leanna. I thought it was weird when she asked him to go to these places knowing he had a job and thinking he went to school (something Pablo lied to her about).

But I did like that this book took a very close look at money and how it controls our lives, especially when you’re in debt. Pablo is legally an adult, but when you’re nineteen, you sometimes still have the mindset of a kid, which Pablo does acknowledge. I think that’s how you see him grow up is when he decides to tackle his debt instead of running away from it.

Overall, Permanent Record is a nice summer read, but I might not remember it in two months. While this book did not make a lasting impact on me, it did take me on a bit of mental vacation, with a healthy dose of reality (the whole debt thing was slightly stressful because I have debt myself).  If you just want something to get through really quickly and not think too much, then you may want to give this book a shot.