Mamma Mia is one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies (parts 1 and2!) so I had to read this adorable YA novel about a young woman named Millie, who sets out to find her mom. She’s very into Broadway and wants to be a performer. She even applied to a precollege for her senior year of HS at a school for performing arts. However, it’s in California and Millie lives in NYC. When her dad says no, she does the very teenage response of going to her other parent for a different answer, however Millie doesn’t know who she is.

She uses an old live journal blog post (remember LJ?) from her dad to narrow down three women as possible options. She also recruits her best friend Teddy, who uses geocaching to find these women. To get closer to one of them, she applies as an intern to her talent agency. To her dismay, her arch nemesis from school is also applying for the job and they are often forced together to split the intern job. This turns into a spark of romance when Millie realized that Oliver isn’t so bad.

Millie also joins a dance class to get closer to the instructor, a possible mom. And Teddy helps her find a third possibility, a mom who hosts monthly get together for theater kids. It’s fun to watch Millie and Teddy put the clues together to figure it out. Her age shows when she’s trying to talk to her dad about the school and why she wanted to find her mom.

Overall, I thought it was very good. I don’t read a lot of YA, but the one really nailed it.
Thank you so much to @wednesdaybooks, @dilemmalord, and @netgalley. This book is on sale now!

This is the best Emma Lord book to date! I am always amazed at the feelings her books bring out of me. I chuckle, I cry, and through it all I have the warmest feeling in my chest.

I adored every character in this story! Millie is brave and fun and loud and outrageous. Teddy is the best friend we all want. Millie's dad is wonderful. And Oliver is 😍😍😍

I definitely got the Mama Mia inspiration here but this book was a story entirely is own as well. I'll be shoving this at everyone I know for the foreseeable future.

A cheesy, predictable, annoying but funny YA book I'm sure many, many people will love. I am not one of those people.

Writing is fresh and lively. The characters are a little manic, but believable in their portrayal of high school life.

This was a lighthearted YA read with just the perfect touch of emotion. It wasn't too deep, yet at no point did it feel too fluffy or silly. We get to see Millie in every type of relationship: as a daughter, best friend, (potential) sister, and love interest. I think Lord did a great job at highlighting challenges in each of these relationships, without the book every feeling too heavy or hopeless. We as readers got to watch Millie grow, not only with the people in her life, but with discovering herself. The ending felt a bit too on the nose for me, but I do appreciate a happy ending where the girl gets all she's wanted.

This book had all the YA cheese, would recommend to teens who are looking for a perfect HEA!
rating: 🙂 (like)
steam: kissing only 💋
❤️ musical theatre, NYC, self discovery
📚The Unexpected Everything By Morgan Matson
🎧 ‘dancing queen’ by ABBA

This is such a sweet, charming book from Emma Lord complete with lovely friendships, complex but nuanced family dynamics, and enough musical theater references to delight any drama geek. Millie is a fantastic and compelling character, and Lord’s voice is, always, such a delight to read.

Another great read from Emma Lord! I'm really enjoying her YA novels, and her characters tend to make me laugh, cringe, cry, and more.
Millie is a passionate teenager, whose goal is to be a STAR! She is well on her way, although the adults in her life aren't always sure her timing is right. Her adventures abound as she discovers who she really is the summer of her junior year of high school. I highly enjoyed this read, and am grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for my advanced reader copy!

I've enjoyed every Emma Lord book and this one didn't disappoint. It was such a fun and heartwarming book. Millie's character reminded me of Rachel Berry (the good parts). She has spunk, drive, belief in herself, and her Broadway knowledge is immense. Also like Rachel, she doesn't know who her mom is. Because of this, Millie and her best friend Teddy dig through her dad's LiveJournal (how am I old enough to know what this is and to have used it?!) to find the possible answer. Hijinks ensue, Millie gets an internship, starts a dance class, and joins a broadway fan group all with the hopes of finding out which woman is her mom (I guessed who it was about half way through).

In her quest to find her mom her awesome aunt finds new love, her dad finds old love, and Millie finds love, herself, and a sister. The secondary characters were all spectacular and added so much to the story. It almost felt like Delaware (where I'm from) in the sense that everyone knows someone by 2 degrees or less. I think that aspect also added so much to the interactions between the characters.

I highly recommend this and every Emma Lord book.

Unfortunately, this fell flat for me, and I was not even able to finish. I read a lot of YA, but this felt even "too young" for me. Millie felt more like a middle grader, based on the way she spoke and acted.

I tried putting the book down and starting again. Sadly, it still didn't work. I found myself losing interest and just wishing something exciting would happen.

From the musical theatre references to an authentic look at New York, this is THE book for musical theatre fans!

When You Get the Chance is joyful, fun, and very hilarious. While I didn’t understand many of the theatre references made, I did enjoy the main plot! The book follows a teen named Millie, as she travels across New York to search for her long-lost mother. At times, it was difficult to keep track of all the potential moms she was meeting. However, I quickly found myself itching to see who would end up being her mother.

The characters in When You Get the Chance were a delight! Millie is such a bold person, but in the best way possible. In many books, bold characters are usually rude. This wasn’t the case here though. Millie is kind and eccentric, I adored her! Her family and friends were also very off-beat, and I loved that!

Furthermore, the banter between Millie and her ‘enemy’ Oliver was really funny! They got under each other’s skin without flat-out insulting one another. This made for some very interesting dialogue.

Much like the dialogue, the writing was hilarious! There weren’t many pop culture references. However, the writing contained a lot of Gen-Z slang and quotes. Thankfully, it wasn’t cringy and was done very well!

Overall, I enjoyed When You Get the Chance. While I found the plot to be slightly overwhelming, I’m sure that theatre fans would love this one!

Age Rating: 13 and up
Overall Rating; 3.5 out of 5 stars, or 7/10

This was a super fun quick read. I really enjoyed Millie as a character, which is impressive because she is very extra. I would normally have found that annoying but with Millie it didn't bug me. She was an endearing character that you can't help but root for. Throughout the journey to find her mom Millie really ends up finding out more and more about herself and I really loved going with her on the journey. Overall I really enjoyed it and definitely recommend it.

Millie was left on her dad’s doorstep and he’s always denied her from knowing anything about her mom. She comes across a journal from 2003 and decides that she’s going to find her mom based on his entries.

Her and her best friend Teddy narrow it down to three women. Steph is an aspiring stage actress working at a talent agency. Farrah is a dance teacher. Beth is a stage enthusiast with a 15 year old daughter with the same dreams of performing on Broadway that Millie has. She inserts herself into each of their lives to see if she can figure out who her mother is. And to make matters worse, she has to work with her nemesis all summer.

This was a super fun take on Mama Mia. The characters were fun. It was a light quirky read with heartwarming moments as well.

I received this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Do you love New York or musical theater?

Our main character Millie loves both. This is a story of a highschool junior who has BIG DREAMS to become a name on Broadway. We find out early in the story that Millie was dropped off at her dad's doorstep after she was born by her birth mother and has no contact with her birth mother. Millie has never really wondered about her birth mother because she has had all she needs in her dad and aunt Heather; until she gets into a prestigious precollege across the country and Millie's dad says no.
With the help of her best friend Teddy from across the hall she finds a LiveJournal of her dad's when he was in college and finds three potential women who could be her mom. While trying to get more information on one of her potential moms she ends up in an interview for an internship against her rival Oliver from school.
This story was such a fun experience. As someone who loves the Mama Mia movie I loved all the references to the musical. I loved seeing the dynamic of a girl who grew up with a single father and was thriving. I also loved that her aunt Heather really stepped up and helped take care of her with Millie's dad.
The atmosphere of New York felt raw while reading. The urgency throughout the internship sections really helped me to get into the story.
The writing was solid. I haven't read anything else from this author but I can definitely see me picking up other works from this author.
I felt like the logic of the plot was a little over the top but as we are reading from the perspective of a sixteen year old musical theater fanatic I feel like those elements still lent themselves to the overall enjoyment of this book.
I want to give a big thank you to #netgalley and #wednesdaybooks for granting me this eARC!

4.5/5 stars

Reading this book was like if someone reached into my heart and pulled out enough of me to create a dramatic, flawed, musical theater obsessed teenage main character, then reached in AGAIN and pulled out the rest to create her nerdy, awkward, late millennial single father. Is Emma Lord inside my brain?? Truly, I feel like we could be best friends. Her writing is just ridiculously fun and relatable and I saw myself in it SO much. The references, the humor, the emotion, the romance, the family dynamics… they were all just so excellent. I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve read YA because I kind of felt like I’d grown out of it, but this book has both reminded me how much I love it and made me realize I can enjoy it on an entirely different level. (And I’m very very excited about Emma’s adult debut!)

This is a sweet, silly, and wonderfully heartfelt story and I can’t recommend it enough. There is so much more I could rave about but I need to go read all the rest of Emma Lord’s books now!

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

This book was so sweet!

In the beginning, I admit that I found Millie’s character irritating. She seemed loud and bossy—especially when in one of her “Millie Moods”—and, as an introvert, I tend to gravitate in the opposite direction. However, Millie underwent a lot of valuable growth throughout the book that changed my opinion of her personality. Notably, she learned to set aside her own priorities to help her family and former theater-kid nemesis Oliver Yang, and I was pleasantly surprised by the maturity she displayed toward the whole situation at the end of the book.

These relationships were definitely the star of When You Get the Chance. Oliver grew on me as much as he grew on Millie, and I loved how naturally their feelings toward one another developed from friendship to something more. At the same time, their romance didn’t overpower the strong familial dynamics. Despite not knowing her mother, Millie’s connection to her dorkier, more introverted father was very positively depicted, as was Oliver’s affections for his four brothers. Plus, it was just fun to watch Millie run around with her best friend Teddy—he brought a lot of levity to her search for her mother, especially when the results turned out differently than Millie expected.

That said, there was one minor, probably irrelevant plot point that bothered me: Millie’s friends. She mentions her high school friends multiple times, but they never make an appearance until the end of the book. People do tend to go their separate ways during the summer, but I found it strange that they weren’t in communication with her while she was getting accepted to her dream pre-college program, interning with her archenemy, and conducting deep investigations into her possible mothers’ lives. I think they could’ve been woven into her adventures just a little more.

When You Get the Chance is a bit saccharine, but it’s a great, light-hearted option to read in between darker books!

#whenyougetthecance
#emmalord
#NetGalley published 1/4/2022
#stmartinspress
#wednesdaybooks
#YAromance
⭐⭐⭐💫 (rounding up for ratings)

Mollie Price starts one very whiny, dramatic theater kid. She lives and breaths theater. She's going to be a senior in high school next year. The book is mainly about the 2 weeks following the last day of junior year. Her competition with fellow theater kid Oliver, someone who knows her better than she thinks.

This is the youngest YA book that I have read in a while. Mollie seems very bratty/whiny in the beginning of the book. At first I thought, do I really want to read this? I hope she matures really quickly. She does. Thank goodness! That's why I took so much off the rating but then rounded up.

This is an #enemiestolovers story. Which I would think is pretty obvious once the story gets going. I think the average YA romance reader will really like it. The blurb on the book doesn't say much, so I won't either. I don't want to spoil the story. I hate spoilers!

#bookstagram #booknerds #bookworm #booklover #bookdragon #readalot #ilovereading #inkdrinker #bookrecommendation #bookreview #booknerdigan #bookish #booknerdbookreviews #bookaddict #bookaholic

I was very excited about this book. I mean Emma Lord doing a Mama Mia twist. COUNT ME IN. Millie is a lot, she is serving Rachel Berry vibes for sure. Even with all of her quirks, you cannot help but love her. The enemies twist with Oliver is SWOON, one of my favorite tropes for sure. Teddy is giving me bestie boy wonder and I LOVE HIM he is adorable. I love the father daughter relationship in this but also the found family vibes. The twist of who her mother is a saw coming though. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It is a great coming of age. If you love YA and Broadway, this is for you!

Even though I’m a huge fan of Emma Lord, I wasn’t a huge fan of her last book. It made me iffy to start this one. And although this one doesn’t have the light-hearted enemies to lovers vibes that was her first book, I shouldn’t have worried. It was super cute!

Millie has wanted to be on Broadway her entire life. But her dad doesn’t want her to go to the school of her dreams that will help her meet her goal. And then there’s Oliver, the guy who annoys her to no end. And let’s not forget her Millie Moods that are ever-changing and surprising, even to her. So when her dad’s LiveJournal from back in the day surfaces, she decides to figure out who her mom was, to see if she can get her to help convince her dad that she is ready to get to this new school. But all the things that happen along the way? Yeah, she definitely wasn’t ready for that.

The thing that bothered me the most about this was how it just seemed like there was so much going on. I felt like there were so many storylines to follow, but it was cut off because they wanted to look at a different one. Like we got to know one of them, and then we met another, and then there was the school thing that was left behind, but also her trying to figure out the play they were going to do at her “old” high school. It was a lot happening. BUT I think most people would say it worked since it was just a contemporary book and not complex, like say a fantasy with a lot of different rules. But for me, I felt like I was going back and forth and it got whiplash.

The characters were ok. I did like Oliver, but I didn’t care much for Millie. I didn’t like how she was acting towards everyone. And then she got to blame it on the Millie Moods. And I thought Lord would go into more detail about this, and explain if she had depression or if she was bipolar, but it made her seem just angsty and mean. Maybe now I’m just finally now getting too old for YA lol

As for the romance, I did love Oliver. I knew from the start that they hated each other, but they would help cancel each other out. And sure enough, the opposites attract in this one was real. I LOVED it. The arguing between them and the playing against each other during the internship was so cute! I can definitely see that I am more of an enemies to lovers romance when its light hearted and funny.

The diversity in this book though was pretty cool. There’s not a lot of Family Diversity in books that I’ve read, so it’s always nice to come across one without knowing. This one features Millie being abandoned as a baby by her mom. She was left on her dad’s doorstep. That’s why she wanted to find her mom. Her dad raised her along with her aunt. But this is why her actions to him made me a bit upset. She was mad at him, and did this huge thing to him without a second thought. But wasn’t mad at the person who’s fault it was.

This wasn’t my favorite from her, but it was still a kind of fun ride. Whether or not you’re a theater nerd, you will definitely like this. Give it a read and let me know which Emma Lord book is your favorite!

When You Get The Chance
BY Emma Lord

This book is amazing and so much fun to read. WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE is one of the most charming and heart felt books I have read recently that is set in the world of musical theater. This story is also about achieving your dreams no matter the cost, and a story about family and Millie's quest to find out more about her mother - and narrowing it down to three women - just like Mamma Mia!

This was such a great book full of wonderful happy vibes and yet also addressing issues on family and life passions. The characters are also so special and the side story was wonderful too.

Truly entertaining and fun read.

When you get a chance started a little rough for me because Millie is a bit too whiny for me and I don’t like that in characters. But thankfully I stayed with it because I really ended up enjoying When You Get a Chance.

It’s a good story about how people aren’t always what they seemed to be. And that if you give them a chance they’ll surprise you.

Definitely recommend if you’re into enemy to lover YA books.

Thanks to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for the chance to read this book in return for an honest review