Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

ISBN: 9781250783349

A precocious student spends the summer tracking down the identity of her mother while also balancing her dreams of stardom. When she gets tangled with her arch nemesis, she fights to stay on task while also battling her growing attraction to him. Emma Lord returns with another immensely relatable novel in When You Get the Chance.

There’s absolutely no doubt about the fact that Millie Price was born for the stage. She lives in New York City, has seen Broadway and off-Broadway productions of all the major shows, kills every vocal performance with her three-octave range, and goes to bat for her school’s theater department. Of course, it doesn’t help that the department also includes Oliver Yang, the fellow senior and stage manager bent on destroying her.

To be fair Oliver isn’t evil, but every time Millie makes suggestions—she’s been hinting about the school staging Mamma Mia! for ages now—Oliver pushes back. At everything. It’s like there’s a switch in his brain that flips to make him do the opposite every time Millie opens her mouth, even if he agrees with her idea.

With her acceptance to the prestigious Madison Musical Theater Precollege program in California, Millie can finally bid goodbye to Oliver. She’ll finish high school at Madison and use it as her launching pad for her career. All the biggest Broadway stars went there, and since Millie’s on her way to being a Broadway star it only makes sense to follow in their footsteps.

Except her dad isn’t on board with the idea at all, which gets her thinking about her mom who left infant Millie behind. Millie doesn’t know much about her, other than the fact that she was also really into theater. If her mom were here, Millie knows, she’d have the parental support she needs. 

Then Millie finds her dad’s old online journal from eons ago. Armed with information from the journal, Millie and her best friend, Teddy, make it their mission to track down Millie’s mother. Their search leads them, Mamma Mia!-style, into the orbits of three very different but lovely women.

When she discovers that one of the women works in the office of Georgie Check, talent manager for some of the most recognizable faces on Broadway, Millie marches to the building to meet her potential mom. She runs into Oliver who thinks she’s there to apply for the same internship he wants. Never one to let Oliver have the upper hand, Millie goes to the manager’s office and talks her way into the position. Except she has to share it with Oliver. The tension that existed before gets dialed up several notches, but as time goes on Millie starts to notice that it’s leaning toward a type of tension she didn’t expect.

Author Emma Lord’s latest YA offering offers readers a sweet respite from much of the doom and gloom of other books in the genre. The pages brim with Millie’s passion for her place in the theater world, and it’s refreshing to see a young person confident within her abilities and equally aware of her shortcomings. Millie knows she tends to overdramatize situations, but she doesn’t resort to tantrums or other antics to get her way.

As a protagonist, Millie is a great role model for young women today. Smart, funny, somewhat self-deprecating but clear on her goals, she’s also very real. While she may be mature for her age, she also still has a fair amount of growing up left to do. Lord gives her space and time on the page for that change while keeping readers engaged.

If the book can be faulted anywhere (a difficult task,) it’s in small moments like Millie’s frequent mentions that leaving New York a year before school ends means she won’t get to spend time with her theater friends. Yet other than Oliver, readers never see her interact with anyone else from that world at school. Also, the three secondary characters Millie tracks down as potential mothers each have their own stories that don’t get enough time on the page, which is a real shame because they’re all fully developed, well-rounded people.

Regardless, theater buffs will absolutely love this book, and anyone wanting an uplifting read for the YA fan in their lives will certainly want to pick this up. I recommend readers Bookmark When You Get the Chance.