When You Get the Chance by Tom Ryan and Robin Stevenson is a heartwarming, feel-good YA road trip novel about family, self-discovery, and chasing dreams. Cousins Mark and Talia embark on a spontaneous trip to Toronto's Pride festival, each grappling with their own personal struggles—Mark with coming out, and Talia with her parents' divorce. Along the way, they reconnect, face challenges, and embrace their identities. With a lively pace, relatable characters, and a celebration of LGBTQ+ pride, the novel offers a sweet and uplifting exploration of family, friendship, and the joy of being true to oneself.

despite it's enjoyable aspects, this book made me uncomfy. it felt more ignorant than any book with a giant pride flag on the cover should.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy of WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE. Review has been posed on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A powerhouse author duo, plus an interesting family-oriented story made this so much more than a fun and heart-filled queer book!

I ended up DNFing this book around the 20% mark. I can see some of students loving this book as they are the target audience. For me, it fell flat for me and I couldn't connect with the characters. Maybe I'll try it again sometime.

I was honestly on the fence with what to rate this book. On the one hand, I really hated the MC’s. Well, hate is a bit much, but loathe might be more accurate.

I love a good family dynamic and this one was just off… I mean, it was meant to be, but because of Mark’s unlikeable personality, it made it even worse.

After the death of their grandfather, Mark and his little sister Paige, as well as their cousin, Talia, all drive down for the funeral with their respective parents. When they arrive, we get the picture that Mark’s mother and Talia’s father are not on good terms, not having spoken in years. All they do is nit-pick each other and fight, which leads to arguing, so you know there is a back story we aren’t getting yet.

Mark has been thinking and talking about going to Toronto Pride for quite a while (the entire book up until now), even though he has a boyfriend back home (who he mentions not being into and needing to break up with… and yet still plans to meet guys in the meantime).

Talia’s partner moved away from Victoria to Toronto for a change and before leaving, mentioned wanting an open relationship. So she doesn’t know where they are… together or not.

They both have a LOT going on. Hell! The whole family does.

The grandmother tells them to go visit/stay at their old summer home to decide if they should sell it. But when they get there, the grandmother has a slip and fall back home, in which the parents immediately leave the kids alone… trusting they are going to be good. These queer teens that only want to go to Toronto. Nothing could go wrong……..

Honestly, if it wasn’t for the little sister, this wouldn’t have been that great… scratch that! This would have been worse. Paige is open and honest. She says what she’s thinking… I mean, she is 12, so that makes sense.

I am not UN-happy that read this. But I’m just a little upset at how awful those teenagers were.😂

The writing style for this book was simple and enjoyable. I felt like I was in the cart with characters going along for the ride. The unexpected and amazing surprise came in form of Paige - Mark's 10 year old sister. I don't remember ever reading a queer book where the queer character had a much younger sibling and definitely not one like Paige. Overall I really liked the book. sometimes it is a little too shallow on the topics but because there are so many important ones it is okay for me because we live in a very modern world and can read about everything online

This was a fun, quick read! I appreciated the queer representation and how the characters felt real and genuine, despite their flaws. Overall, a solid book if you're looking for something light to read.

(This review is based on an advanced review copy provided by NetGalley).

Mixed feelings about this one! I enjoyed it overall, though I wasn’t blown away. The plot has a mystery (not like a murder mystery, but a family secrets mystery) which really made me want to keep reading, but then the reveals were kind of anticlimactic. Which, fine, it’s not marketed as a mystery, it’s more about family and friendships and coming of age for queer kids who are already out, but the mystery part was still a bit disappointing.

There are two POV characters, Mark and Talia, and I found both of them kind of annoying, especially Mark. Mark seems intentionally written as annoying to start out with, and his character arc is about learning not to be a dick. Both Mark and Talia are messy teens with some bad takes, which is fair (we have all had bad opinions and we all continue to learn and grow throughout our lives!), but, for example, Mark calls Talia a “social justice warrior,” and Talia basically tells Mark that he shouldn’t be out because the ability to be out is a privilege. If nothing else, it certainly felt like a true-to-life depiction of intra-community infighting/discourse! Not sure that’s really what I want to read, but it did feel realistic and recognizable.

There were some things I really liked about this book! It discusses evolving queer identities - characters who first came out as one LGBTQ+ identity and later come out as a different one - which is an experience rarely portrayed in fiction. For example, Talia’s ex, Erin, used to identify as a lesbian but now identifies as pansexual and nonbinary. Talia also used to identify as a lesbian but now identifies as queer because she’s attracted to Erin and Erin isn’t a woman.

I also really liked that Talia’s relationship problems aren’t because of a contrived misunderstanding, but because she and her partner just want different things and don’t want to accept the implications of that. I LOVED that Talia is out and proud but feels no need to be out to her mom, not because she’s ashamed, but because she’s just like “I don’t need to deal with her homophobic bullshit.”

There’s some really nice interaction between the teenaged main characters and older-generation queer people that warmed my heart. There’s a lovely sense of queer community and celebration and joy, and of being young and feeling like you’ve finally made it to the place you always wanted to go, and everything is new, and you go out with new friends on a summer night and dance and kiss, and you feel like your life is just beginning and you’re excited for it to happen. I think teenaged me would have really liked reading this book and fantasizing about sneaking off on a secret roadtrip to Pride, like the characters do.

Rep: POV characters are 1) a gay boy and 2) a girl who explicitly uses the label “queer” and who likes women and nonbinary people but not men. A major side character is pansexual, polyamorous, and nonbinary, and uses they/them pronouns. IIRC all the major characters are white, and all the major characters besides the nonbinary one are cis.

As a queer girl from Toronto I was very excited for this book and it was one of my most anticipated releases. I unfortunately was just expecting a bit more from it (maybe my expectations were just a bit too high) but I did enjoy it and found it a quick and fun read.

Road trip! Tom Ryan and Robin Stevenson combine family drama and PRIDE in When You Get The Chance!

Ryan and Stevenson give us two very different types of main characters with gay Mark and lesbian Talia. Mark, to me, is a very unlikeable character. He is selfish, self-absorbed, lazy, and just an all around asshole. (laugh) Talia is feisty, world aware, hard-working, and filled with teenage angst.

Mark and Talia, cousins, showcase the extremes of the teenage attitude regarding life and being a rainbow. Mark’s actions prod the story along, but it is Talia’s emotions that display the story’s heart.

Ryan and Stevenson tackle a wide range of issues from elder care, death, homophobia, LGBTQ+ history, gender and sexual identity, and the “rules' ' of the rainbow. This sounds like a lot of baggage, but Ryan and Stevenson blend it seamlessly.

Do not let the cover fool you, When You Get A Chance is a story with depth and written with both main characters voices. We get Mark’s drive to experience the rainbow rully and Talia’s search for self amidst heartbreak. Both stories are about change. Change of oneself and the evolving history of the rainbow through the secondary characters that Mark and Talia meet on their journey to self-awareness.

I really detest Mark (laugh). I think it is because I see so much of myself in Talia. I know people like Mark and Talia. Ryan and Stevenson give us realistic fiction with no easy answers. Just like life.

What makes this story worthwhile to read is all of the characters combined. Flaws, humor, pain, history, and the best moments appear under the rainbow.

I received an ARC of this book and I am writing a review without prejudice and voluntarily.

we're going to pretend like I actually remember more than three things about this book, because I read it literally a year ago and then forgot to review it because the release date got delayed

Honestly, even after having . . . a lot of time . . . to process this one, I still don't really know how to feel about it? So this review might be a little short, but let's try to sum up my feelings:

First of all, Mark. He's one of the two POV characters in this book, and I couldn't stand him. His character was very clearly written to be insufferable, and he did grow and change over the course of the book, but that didn't make reading his chapters any less miserable. I generally speaking love reading about unlikeable characters, at least when it's clearly an intentional thing, but Mark . . . ugh. He's so self-absorbed, selfish, privileged and completely unaware of it, and just generally speaking needs to get his priorities in order. I just . . . hated every second of his chapters whoops.

Secondly, we have our other POV character, Talia. I absolutely loved Talia's character—she was messy, unquestionably, but she felt messy in an authentic way that was really refreshing to read. Yes, I occasionally wanted to scream at her to get her shit together, but I also saw lots of little bits of myself in her. Additionally, I really liked the ways she challenged Mark (and others) on takes that were less than good. I feel like her POV brought a lot of important things to light, and I appreciated that.

I think generally speaking, what I appreciated about this book was how real it felt (even if that's what brought us Mark ://). It was a bit messy, but while there were a few little things I wish could have been handled differently, generally speaking it showed very authentic family dynamics, and a view of the queer community that felt very grounded in reality.

This book was also so unapologetically queer, and I really loved that about it. There was so much queer joy and love and it was big and messy and beautiful.

All in all? I'm not sure how I feel about this entirely. It had a lot of good elements, and I think they mostly outweighed the bad, but that doesn't change the fact that I only really enjoyed about half the book—hopefully y'all will like it more than I did

As kids, cousins Mark and Talia spent many summers together at the family cottage in Ontario, but a fight between their parents put an end to that tradition seven years ago. When their grandfather dies unexpectedly, Mark and Talia find themselves cleaning out the cottage while the family decides what to do with it. The only things they have in common are that they're both queer and that they would rather be in Toronto. When a series of complications throw everything up in the air, Mark, Talia, and Mark's sister Paige decide to hit the road for Toronto Pride. They may just find what they're looking for, that is, if they can start seeing things through each others eyes.

I really wanted to love this book but it did not meet my expectations. I thought the road trip would be a bigger part of the story than it was, which is disappointing because this was marketed as a road trip book. While the book takes place during pride month, I don't think the LGBTQ+ representation was handled very well and I felt uncomfortable reading certain parts. My biggest dislike was Mark and Talia themselves, as they were both privileged queer people and would not consider any experiences outside of their own. I think the book was trying to do too many things in a short amount of time and ultimately suffered from this.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC, which I received in exchange for an honest review.

A heartwarming coming of age story about pride and acceptance 😍. The start of the book is pretty slow but once it gets going it’s so fun!

I don't know about this one. the story was kinda cute and wholesome but I had a real problem with one of the main characters, mark. he was just so self absorbed en selfish. everything he did was for himself, he didn't think about anyone else or thought about the consequences of his actions. But I did really like talia. I enjoyed her chapters a whole lot more. i'm just really conflicted about this book I guess. I loved the pride aspect of it, it was amazing to read about someone's first pride. and normally I tend to really enjoy stories about family and summer cottages, but the storyline around this family and the cottage was just weird and meh. the vibe was off because it felt like no one in the story actually wanted to be there.

overall, I think I liked it but there were just a lot of factors which took the enjoyment away.

Two cousins who live on opposite coasts are reunited for the first time in seven years at their grandfather's funeral in Toronto. The story is told from both of their POVs: Mark, a seventeen-year-old white gay boy from Halifax, and Talia, a queer eighteen-year-old from Victoria. After spending a few days at the family's lake cottage, the two teens plus Mark's younger sister Paige, abscond with a vintage Mustang for an unsupervised road trip. The destination: Toronto Pride. Mark is eager to find cute boys and parties, while Talia needs to see her (maybe ex?) partner and figure out whether they're actually broken up or not. Along the way they'll learn more about themselves, each other, the history of Pride and what it means to live as a proud queer person in the world today.

This was a light and enjoyable read, but maybe not a memorable one. The writing is pleasant but sort of shallow-- while I was interested in what was happening and liked the character perspectives, I didn't really care about what happened. The story didn't prompt any emotional reaction from me. The best part about the book is how queer it is. A lot of different topics are approached and questions raised that I think a lot of teens will relate to. Answers aren't always provided to those questions, but I kind of think that's okay. Sometimes there isn't an easy answer but the question still deserves to be explored. There were a few little things that bothered me-- like the ten-year-old sister Paige basically being praised for outing people, and an older character that flinches at the word "queer" that's never addressed. But overall I enjoyed the variety of queer representation and topics explored.

The plot felt uneven to me. There's a weird amount of page-time spent on the "mystery" of the parents' childhood friend, which never really went anywhere or seemed to connect to the rest of the story. Because the last couple chapters focused on this aspect, the ending fell kind of flat. I definitely think more could have been done to give this book more depth, but as it is it was a pleasant reading experience. It's also worth noting that I read an eARC version that was distributed over a year ago (the publication was postponed due to the pandemic), so for all I know vast changes have been made to the final version!

TW: family member death, family member hospitalization, queerphobia, use of d*ke (non-derogatory), skirting the edge of infidelity

I fell in love with how simple and easy the writing style and story was to follow. I loved the characters and all their flaws front and center. I loved how they weren't already fully grown in their beliefs and seeing them understand their mistakes and learn from them was really great.

I really enjoyed this not being a love story. There's love involved, yes, but this is mostly about family and understanding what they really are and feel.

It was nice to get to know these characters, see them learn and be called out. I really liked them. Paige, Mark's 10yo sister was the mvp! So smart and adorable and she was reading Magnus Chase!

"Despite the craziness of it all, despite knowing how mad my dad is going to be, despite what happened with Erin, I feel kind of okay. The marchers - with their waves, their signs, their chants, their smiles - are lifting me up. Even standing here, watching, I am a part of it all."

As someone who grew up in Toronto myself, I have to say, it is so refreshing to to read such a distinctly Canadian story. I could see Bracebridge in my head (I went to camp there pretty much my entire childhood, after all), and I know those sweaty Toronto streets, those crowded subways, those bright blue skies.

And yet... this story just didn't do it for me. The incredibly important themes and messages got lost with the immensely unlikeable characters. And for all the talk of acceptance, forgiveness, pride, identity, their arcs felt disappointingly weak. Specifically Mark - we get the tiniest glimpse of some long-overdue self-awareness at the very end, but nothing that made me want to root for him.

Maybe this was the point, but he read like a very stereotypical cis white gay guy who wields his marginalized identity like a sword and has no mind for any intersectionality. Which is fine. But he was crafted in such a way that it made Talia - the character who ACTUALLY cared about intersectionality and social issues - seem like a buzzkill. She probably only came across as unlikeable here because she was a foil to Mark's character. I was frustrated that everything magically would work out for him. There were never any consequences. Maybe this is because I didn't feel there were any stakes, either.

Paige was the highlight of the book, and I wish we'd seen more of her. I wish our MCs hadn't dropped her off before going out.

This is probably a really great story for some people. Just not for me. It didn't keep me engaged. I would have enjoyed it more if it had focused more on the family dynamics, the queer identity, Canada's history with LGBTQ+ rights, how Mark and Talia's experiences were different growing up on opposite sides of the country. WHY Toronto Pride was such a big deal for them. Truthfully, I'm not even sure what the book is trying to say.

2.5 stars rounded up.

I am unfortunately unable to read this book, as it is not available through the Netgalley app - however, as a queer Canadian I absolutely love the premise of the story and would love to support the release however possible. Please feel free to email me at clairelundin@gmail.com with anything I can do to promote the book (I have already mentioned it in a BookTube video!)

this book follows cousins Mark and Talia after their granddad died, so they have to go to a cottage on their own because their grandma is sick. so, they both want to head to Toronto for Pride, but the question is, how will they get there?

as for the characters, I found Mark insufferable, I know that was kind of the point, and he changed, but still. I loved Erin though. I saw myself in her so much.

the road trip and Pride only take like 50 pages, but that didn’t make the book any less enjoyable.

overall, this was an amazing queer read with gay, nonbinary, polyamorous, and lesbian representation.