I loved Emma Lord's first book, Tweet Cute. Unfortunately, her last couple of books haven't made as much of an impact. In this book, Millie is involved in musical theater and just got into something called "pre-college" and after she tells her dad, he is against her moving from NY to LA. Millie is determined to go and decides to look for her birth mom in the hopes that she will let her go.

I guess I just had too many issues with this book. I hate musicals, I had no idea was "pre-college" was, I didn't understand why Millie never saw her birth certificate with her mom's name, and how do all these potential candidates for her 'mom' not know her full name, especially the one where she got a job. These things all distracted from the story for me and I couldn't fully enjoy it. Millie was annoying and her dad should have a had a bigger role in this book since I felt like their relationship was what drove Millie to do the things she did.

Emma Lord is a favorite coming-of-age author of mine. I adored this book so much. The romance, the competition, the plot twists... this book has everything!

This was such a fun, lighthearted read. I loved the sassy, b*tchy Millie and her relationships with her bestie and her biggest foe and how they developed over the entire storyline. It was, in my opinion, 100% predictable and I knew who her mom was going to end up being early on, but it didn't take away from the journey!

Another great and adorable book from Emma Lord. If you love her previous books you'll love this one as well.

This review is scheduled to be posted on The Wellesley News on October 28!

My high school days were spent only tangentially involved with the theater program as the secretary of the costume department, but in those few years, I must have learned more about Broadway than I thought. When you open up Emma Lord’s “When You Get the Chance,” you’re inundated with show references, and somehow, most of them didn’t go completely over my head. But it works; it’s about a theater kid, after all.
And what a fitting storyline for the theater kid in question. Millie Price is a high schooler known by the internet for a viral video of her playing young Jo March, but all she wants to do is make a name for herself and show that she’s more than Little Jo. Enter a scholarship to a pre-college theater program — that her single father won’t let her go to.
So Millie decides to do what any overly ambitious teen would do: find her absent mother to sign off on the program for her. A poke through her dad’s old LiveJournal reveals three women who might possibly be her mom, and soon enough, Millie is off to meet each one of them. Needless to say, consequences follow, particularly when she decides to intern one of her possible moms and her stage manager nemesis Oliver wants the internship as well.
Now, I’m a sucker for a good Emma Lord book. She has a way of coming up with the most intriguing concepts and then executing them tremendously. But Lord took it to the next level with “When You Get the Chance,” packing the book full of drama and plot twists and the most wonderful endings for all the characters involved. She kept me on my toes while also leaving enough clues that a clever reader could figure a few things out.
I will say — I don’t read Emma Lord books to encounter a realistic storyline. Most parts of this book are not realistic at all, and that’s the fun of it! In real life, no, relationships do not intertwine between people the way they do in YA contemporary fiction, and that’s okay because that’s not the point of this book. It’s entertaining, it’s fun and it’s just exciting to follow along with.
“When You Get the Chance” is a book full of heart. It’s dramatic, it’s joyful, it’s everything you could possibly want in a very overt homage to “Mamma Mia.” The romance, though not the main plotline of the book, totally made me swoon and squeal, to my roommate’s chagrin. It truly drives it in that family is more than blood, and it is unapologetically nerdy in so many ways. I cannot wait for this book to hit store shelves. Also, I want to watch “Mamma Mia” now.
“When You Get the Chance” is set to release on Jan. 4, 2022. I owe my life to the publisher, Wednesday Books, for sending me an early copy in exchange for a review. (Titles from Wednesday Books always hit.)

When You Get The Chance was my favorite book by Emma Lord so far! It was a cute and easy read, and it was full of mystery and romance. Millie loves musical theater and was accepted into a pre-college program for it. Her father does not want her to go, so she decides she is going to search for her mother that she has never met to get back at him. She finds a list of women that her father was with when he was younger, and sets out to meet them all. Millies falls into an internship when she is searching for one of the perspective mothers, and has to compete with Oliver, a rival from her high school, for the title. As she works with Oliver on the internship, she starts to really like him.

I loved the romance in this book, as I’m always a fan of enemies-to-lovers. The mystery of Millie trying to figure out who her mom was made this a very exciting book. I can’t wait to see what Emma Lord writes next!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!

As someone who is a huge musical theatre fan, but has always avoided Mamma Mia, I don’t think I expected all that much out of this book. But I am so glad that I read it because this book is a masterpiece. It drew me in and held me close until the very last word and I will forever be invested in the Millie Mia.

First and foremost, the characters. As someone who’s always been more stage manager than actor, Oliver is literally one of my favourite characters in the entire book. His character arc is also fascinating in part because we see him change not only personally, but in Millie’s eyes as well. Millie, it took me a little longer to love, but I loved her all the same. I think her character arc is important, as important as it is to remember that she’s only 16. She acts like a 16 year old who’s had a lot of things thrown at her, and though she seems like a drama queen at first, you can tell that she has the most important thing for an actor: heart. As for all the other supporting characters, you also can’t help but love them, and I think Emma Lord did a fantastic job of fleshing them out, even in a first person limited book.

Just as important as the characters is the plot! Seriously, this one is so much better than its source material. The pacing, the flow, everything felt right. And maybe it’s because I’m not a Mamma Mia connoisseur, but the plot twist at the end genuinely shocked me, but admittedly worked really well! There were a few points where it felt like a little too much time or too little time was spent on certain aspects of the plot (which honestly probably should have made me realise what the plot twist would be a lot sooner), but overall I still thought it was really good.

And while the characters and plot were great, they weren’t my favourite part. Not because they’re bad, but because the romance subplot in this book had me in a chokehold. I don’t know what made it possible for Emma Lord to write one of the best if not the best rivals to lovers romance that I have ever read before, but she did not hesitate. It was the perfect amount of slowburn, realization, and denial. I couldn’t wait for the romance to finally come to fruition, but it didn’t feel unnecessarily drawn out. Needless to say, the “Simmering Romantic Tension” is one of the most accurate descriptions of this book that could be given. Also if Emma Lord would like to write a short story with these two, then can I just say “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme”?

Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic at heart who loves Happily Ever After’s, but I did seriously love this book. So if you’re a musical theatre fan, or a romance fan, or just love a book with a big heart, seize the day and pick this book up.

Emma Lord does it again! I adored Tweet Cute, so I was all in when I saw that she was putting out a new book with a gender-flipped take on one of my favorite musicals, Mamma Mia. And let me just say that this book has made all of my Broadway fangirl dreams come true. Every show reference had me grinning, right from the dedication page ("THANK YOU, PLACES!").

The star of this show is Millie, a high school theatre nerd with big Broadway dreams and an even bigger presence. I loved seeing a YA protagonist who is not shy or anxiety-ridden but who is vibrant and ambitious and full of life. I was cheering for her along every step of her journey to find her mother, and wanted to wrap her up in a big hug when things started falling apart for her. Add in a rivals-to-friends-to-more love story and a great cast of supporting characters like best friend and geocaching nerd Teddy, and an aunt who is serious about her ice cream, and this book is a winner.

If I'm getting nit-picky, I did find some of the plot to be a little predictable, but I can forgive that because the rest of this story is so dang sweet. I also would have loved to see more of the relationship between Millie and her father, because I'm a sucker for a girl-and-her-single-dad story. And I think some great bonus content could be made by showing us ALL of Cooper's early-2000s LiveJournal entries. I'm betting everyone my age has an old LJ account that we would never want anyone to find! 🤣

Emma Lord does not dissapoint! I loved her last release and was so excited to receive an early release for a review copy! Go and pick up an Emma Lord book today!

It makes me so sad to write this but I did not like this book. I tried to pick it up four separate times and I wasn’t interested each time. Finally I just skimmed the entire thing, but even that I did in parts. I just didn’t connect with anything in it, I left it for days at a time. I’ve absolutely loved Lord’s other two books so this was a true disappointment. Millie was just such a child, so naive and immature and just too young I felt like I was reading a children’s book. I found her character to be annoying. I appreciate Lord’s diversity in characters but this just didn’t work. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the free preview in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 Stars

Before I start this review, I would like to thank St. Martins Press and Net Galley for an ARC of one my most anticipated reads of 2022 in exchange for an honest review!

This book is described as a gender-bent Mamma Mia and I would have to agree!

When You Get the Chance is about main character Millie Price and she is Broadway bound...ok...not yet but it's a big dream of hers and she will stop at nothing to achieve it. Which is why she applied to a pre-college for musical theatre behind her dad's back and she was accepted! All she needs to be honed into the next Patti LuPone is parental permission. It's her dream so that should be easy enough, right?! WRONG. Her dad said no! But Millie still wants this and she is not giving up so she decides to go out and find her mother who left her as a child! She's narrowed down her choices to three women:

"There’s Steph, a still-aspiring stage actress and receptionist at a talent agency. There’s Farrah, ethereal dance teacher who clearly doesn’t have the two left feet Millie has. And Beth, the chipper and sweet stage enthusiast with an equally exuberant fifteen-year-old daughter (A possible sister?! This is getting out of hand)."

Along the way, she gets closer to her drama club rival Oliver Yang who has aspirations of his own.

As the search for her mother starts coming to an end and her dream closer to a reality, she starts to realise that maybe what she thought she wanted then may not fit what she wants now.

When You Get the Chance is an ode to Broadway/musical lovers! There are plenty of references to musicals such as Dear Evan Hansen, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia, Newsies, Hamilton, etc!

Let's start off with characters since this is probably my favourite part of this book. The side characters stole the show in this book. Chloe would have to be my favourite character out of all of them because I loved her personality and I could relate to her. She loves Broadway and anything musical theatre and while I’m not as hardcore on the Broadway stuff like she is but I loved seeing her passion for it. The only time you could get Chloe to come out of her shell of asocial introversion is when you brought up something she was passionate about. Then she got all animated!
My other favourite characters would have to be Teddy, the geocaching dorky BFF and Aunt Heather, the supportive, cool, gay aunt! The support system they have given Millie when she needed it most was *chef’s kiss*

Now to the star of the show, our very own Millie Price. I like how confident and outgoing she was. I feel like I don’t read a lot of openly confident characters which made Millie stand out, especially in contrast to Oliver Yang, a slightly less people person but Millie sort of draws him out of that shell. Something that I liked in Tweet Cute was the writing and the banter between characters and while that didn’t translate in her previous book, You Have A Match, it shone in When You Get the Chance. There were times where the writing and characters made me smile and chuckle and I love it. Emma Lord’s writing style always reflects the POV character’s personality which I love. It gives the book dimension. I also liked how she formed relationships with the three potential mothers.

If you are a theatre kid...pick this book up! The references will make your heart explode If that and gender bent Mamma Mia! With enemies to lovers don’t get you to pick it up, I don’t know what will/ What I do know is that I recommend this 100%

P.S. No Emma Lord book review is complete without me also recommending Tweet Cute so pick that book up too!!

4.5 stars

‘When You Get the Chance’ is everything I like in a YA novel. There’s character growth, an honest examination of what adolescence looks like, with a little bit of a love story thrown in for good measure. With this novel, Emma Lord continues to show readers that she came to play when it comes to writing heartfelt and beautiful stories.

Millie Price dreams of Broadway stardom, and just might have that magical combination of natural talent coupled with hard work to make her dream a reality. And nothing or no one is going to stand in her way… not even her nemesis, Oliver, or her dad’s refusal to let her move across the country to another exclusive performance arts school. When life throws her a little curveball, in the form of her dad’s old online journal, she decides that she also has another quest… to find her mom. In the process, Millie will discover a lot more about herself, her family, her friends… and her not-quite-nemesis.

At its heart, this story is about family. It’s about the family you’re born into, and the family you choose, and all of the combinations in between. Millie begins to discover her truest self as she unpacks all of the insecurities she has about her mother, who she’s never known. Readers are instantly drawn into her quest of self-discovery, and the gems of wisdom that are accumulated along the way.

I loved that there was a strong platonic friendship between Millie and Teddy, and loved the sort of shy, uncertain crush that Millie and Oliver share. All of the feelings evoked brought me right back to those formative years.

It’s a heroine’s journey, with a lot of humor, hijinks, and heart, and I was fully onboard from beginning to end. Do yourselves a favor and pre-order this delightful gem of a novel today!

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this book and I loved the main character, Millie. Her dad reminded me of Richard Spier, Mary Anne’s dad in The Babysitters Club books. Caring, but super over protective and aloof. Even though this is YA, I think a wide rage of ages would enjoy this and relate to the story. I will definitely be recommending it to our older grade home schoolers.

Adorbs!

I admittedly judged this book by its cover. This is why I chose to read it. Many thanks to St. Martin's Press/Wednesday Books and NetGalley for making it available to me. It did not disappoint!

In When You Get the Chance by Emma Lord, Millie gets the best news of her life on the final day of her junior year of high school. She's been accepted into a fancy pre-college for the performing arts. The problem is... her dad, who has raised her on his own and with the help of his sister after Millie's mother abandoned her, says no. At about the same time, her neighbor/best friend, Teddy, finds her dad's old LiveJournal from the year she would have been conceived. This leads her down the wormhole of trying to find her mother in what I would say is a New-York-based retelling of Mamma Mia to actually find her mother.. Her doing so clearly ends up having a profound, life-changing effect, as she not only finds her mom but herself.

Millie is a force of nature. Most readers will like her because she is so unapologetically herself. She's brash and loud, she has big, bouncy curls, and is the most well-rounded main character I've come across in a young-adult book in quite some time. She definitely has her flaws. She's dramatic and occasionally self-centered, as are a lot of teenagers. I certainly was at that age. She is very self-aware, however, and owns up to these characteristics.

The story is solid. I wanted to keep reading to find out who Millie's mom was, and if the tension between her and her arch nemesis, Oliver, would ever break. I was never bored with the story. Millie's unique narrator's voice and sense of humor kept me chuckling. There were 'aww' moments, and there were moments I teared up imagining what she might be feeling in this search for her mom. I really wanted things to work out for her.

My couple complaints are that the story ended up being a touch predictable. I figured out who her mother was long before she did, although I wasn't sure enough not to read for confirmation. I ended up being right. I also thought the story wrapped itself up almost too neatly to be realistic. Don't get me wrong, though. It wasn't a disappointment.

I believe readers of young-adult fiction and chick lit will really enjoy this book. It's a cute story and would make an adorable movie or limited tv series as well.

Let me start this review by saying how much I dislike YA…unless it’s written by Emma Lord. I loved Tweet Cute and couldn’t turn down the opportunity to read her newest, especially considering it’s set in the theater, one of my favorite settings.

Millie is 17 years old, living with her single dad, Cooper, and her aunt, Heather. When Cooper was 20, Millie was dropped off at his dorm room and her mother disappeared. Seventeen years later, Millie has questions about her history and enlists her nerdy geocaching friend Teddy to find her mom.

I did find Millie annoying but I liked that she admitted as much, calling herself “a lot” and things like that. The ending was predictable (again, it’s YA) and Millie grows a lot as the story progresses. There were certainly times when I wanted to smack some sense into Millie, but her feelings and emotions were probably typical for a teenage girl. The other characters are endearing and entertaining. I’d recommend this fast paced, quick read to anyone who enjoys YA.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I *adored* this book!

With quintessential Emma Lord charm, this Mamma-Mia-inspired YA romp is equal parts fun, heartwarming, and laugh-out-loud funny.

The synopsis:

Nothing will get in the way of Millie Price’s dream to become a Broadway star. Not her lovable but super-introverted dad, who after raising Millie alone, doesn’t want to watch her leave home to pursue her dream. Not her pesky and ongoing drama club rival, Oliver, who is the very definition of Simmering Romantic Tension. And not the “Millie Moods,” the feelings of intense emotion that threaten to overwhelm, always at maddeningly inconvenient times. Millie needs an ally. And when a left-open browser brings Millie to her dad’s embarrassingly moody LiveJournal from 2003, Millie knows just what to do. She’s going to find her mom.

There’s Steph, a still-aspiring stage actress and receptionist at a talent agency. There’s Farrah, ethereal dance teacher who clearly doesn’t have the two left feet Millie has. And Beth, the chipper and sweet stage enthusiast with an equally exuberant fifteen-year-old daughter (A possible sister?! This is getting out of hand). But how can you find a new part of your life and expect it to fit into your old one, without leaving any marks? And why is it that when you go looking for the past, it somehow keeps bringing you back to what you’ve had all along?

I devoured this book in two sittings, laughing over Millie's shenanigans, swooning over the will-they/won't-they enemies-to-lovers tension with Oliver, and anxiously anticipating the discovery of the identity of Millie's mom. I adore Emma's writing, her characters and settings, and all the nods to theater contained in this story. An absolute treasure!

A huge thanks to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest, unbiased review. WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE is out January 4, 2022.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book for me to read and review!</i>

4.5 rounded up.

This was super cute!! I must admit that I requested it without seeing much about the actual plot. The thing that caught my eye was that the main character read her dad's old LiveJournal to get information about her mother (who has been absent her whole life). I was momentarily stunned that time has passed in a way that the parents of nearly-adults are the ones who had LiveJournals. I literally still have one I login to in order to read celebrity gossip, and I've had this LJ since I was in middle school. God, I am old!

Anyway, there were several times in the novel that I thought my rating was going to be a bit lower. Millie was... a lot. I was briefly in chorus in high school, but I quickly dropped out because I couldn't deal well with the theatrics, and there was that in spades in this novel. It actually worked, though. Just as soon as I thought I was getting annoyed, something sweet or funny happened and pulled me all the way back in. The ending was one of the sappiest and cutest endings I have read in a long time. I am glad that events unfolded the way they did. This was overall a slightly cringe-y but <i>very</i> cute book, so I am on board and would definitely read more by this author.

Really really really sweet and really pretty real…a tough combo well-done. Highly recommended especially for theatre or music nerds. Loved it! 💜💜💜📚

I really enjoyed Emma Lord’s other books, so I’m grateful I got to read her joyful love letter to musical theatre. As a theatre kid, Millie is as dramatic and driven as you want & expect her to be, which makes this book fun to read. Lord’s exploration of motherhood (in all of its forms) is tender and insightful, and reminicent of the themes in “You Have a Match." “When You Get the Chance” has more threads to figure out than Lord’s last two books, and at times, the amount of "worlds" Millie juggles can make the plot feel slightly convoluted, like the story is spread out too thin. I would have also appreciated more discussion of Millie’s anxiety –– I think there was room for further exploration there, especially in the last act. But overall, Lord’s talent for writing meaningful relationships between her characters with nuance is what allows this book to shine.

An enemies-to-lovers book that makes for a sweet read. I feel that some great opportunities to dig a little into the characters and into the situation that would bring deeper insights to the reader were missed, but it doesn't take much away from the read. More thorough review to be available soon at the links below.