When You Get the Chance by Emma Lord
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
High school student, Millie Price, dreams of becoming a Broadway star.
She lives in New York City with her slightly-dweeby, single-dad and fun-loving, Aunt Heather, but she has her sights set on a competitive precollege program that will take her out of state next year.
Her Dad isn’t happy when he finds out about Millie’s plan. He doesn’t understand why she can’t finish up school at home. She’s steps from Broadway, why would she need to travel across the country to help her future career prospects?
It’s clear to Millie that he just doesn’t get it and probably never will. ((Our Millie is nothing if not dramatic.))
What Millie needs is an ally to sell this precollege program to her Dad, but where to find one?
Although she knows next to nothing about her birth mother, an untouchable topic in their household, Millie does know that her Mom was a huge fan of musical theater.
Perhaps if Millie can find her, she can recruit her onto Team ‘Let Millie Go To Precollege’, thus swaying her Dad.
Going off clues found within her Dad’s embarrassingly honest LiveJournal from 2003, Millie and her best friend, Teddy, begin the hunt in earnest.
They narrow their candidates down to three women living within New York City. All Millie needs to do is get close to them and insert herself into their lives, until she can figure out which one is her Mom.
When You Get the Chance swept me off my feet from the very start. It’s a beautifully engaging love letter to musical theater, featuring one of my favorite YA Contemporary protagonists of all time.
I absolutely adored Millie. Her moods, dreams and insecurities all felt incredibly real to me. I’m basically her Aunt Heather now. I love her so darn much.
Emma Lord does a fantastic job of mixing cutesy-YA Romance, with quite serious family issues. This seems to be a trend in her work that I really appreciate.
Millie has a lot of questions surrounding her Mom that unfortunately, she doesn’t feel comfortable asking anyone. She can tell by her Dad’s reaction anytime her Mom does get brought up, that he doesn’t want to talk about.
This leaves poor Millie to struggle on her own with a lot of unanswered questions. While her Dad is super loving and supportive of her, there’s just a lot left unsaid.
I loved how this wildly fun and hilariously witty story was wrapped around this serious, dramatic core.
It’s fun, sweet and fast-paced, while also having true substance that should resonate well with a lot of Readers.
If you pick this one up, and I definitely recommend that you do, please take the time to read the Acknowledgements at the end. I think it gives great insight into Lord as a writer and her inspiration for this story.
At this point, I will pick up anything Emma Lord writes. I love her brand. I’m sold!
Thank you so much to the publisher, Wednesday Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
I look forward to adding a hard copy to my growing Emma Lord collection. Her writing absolutely fills my heart with joy and I just can’t get enough of it!
