Millie Price has it all figured out. As she finishes her junior year of high school, she’s already planned ahead for next year, and that plan is a prestigious precollege program where she can finish her senior year of high school while starting college and getting to study musical theater to boot. That will put her one year ahead of her contemporaries, and she can take Broadway by storm one year sooner. Because she knows that she will. It’s just a matter of time.
But then her dad finds out about her plan. He’s not so excited about her idea of moving to California for school, even if just getting accepted to the program is an impressive achievement.
Millie doesn’t know her mother. She had left Millie with her father wen she was an infant, and it’s been the two of them and her aunt Heather ever since. But Millie knows some things about her mother, like that she is in show business. Millie thinks that maybe if she can find her mother, then Millie can get her on her side and convince her father to let her go to program in California. Her best friend Teddy finds a blog site with her father’s college blog on it, and they get some ideas of who her mother could be. More internet searching leads Millie to three women, and she sets out to find them and meet them.
First is Steph, who works for a star-making talent manager, Georgia Check. When Millie goes to the office to try to talk to her, under the guise of a high schooler wanting to write for her school paper, she bumps into Oliver in the waiting room. For the past 3 years, Oliver has been her archnemesis. While she’s been a force in the theater department of her high school, Oliver has been too, just behind the scenes. Generally, when Millie would come up with what she thought was a great idea, Oliver would counter with his stage-manager scowl.
Before Millie can even say something to the receptionist Steph, Oliver assumes that she’s there for the summer internship he’s applying for and is not very happy about that. Millie pivots from her interview idea to this internship, fueled by that stage manger scowl she knows so well, and she readies herself to interview for a summer internship, especially since it’s paid. The manager admires Oliver’s resume and Millie’s energy and gives them both a chance at the internship. They’ll have two weeks to complete tasks, and then Georgia will decide who gets the job for the rest of the summer. Since it gives Millie a chance to get to know Steph better, and to make Oliver’s life more difficult, she’s in.
Meanwhile, her friend has found the other two women that may be Millie’s mom. One, Beth, has a monthly get-together for other theater nerds, so Teddy signs them both up for the next one, a Newsies night. And the third woman, Farrah, has a Broadway Boot Camp dance class, and as Millie needs to work on her dancing, she signs up.
Over the next couple of weeks, Millie spends her days running errands through her Broadway community, from picking up a star’s dog from daycare to delivering a giant sheet cake, and she spends her nights meeting potential candidates for her mother, learning to dance, and making friends with Beth’s daughter and fellow theater nerd Chloe. But Millie also finds that suddenly diving in to a search for her long-lost mother may be bringing up more emotions than she was expecting, and she starts hurting those who are already family in search of someone who gave her up. Will her summer of Millie Mia help her find answers, or will it just ruin everything else in her life?
When You Get the Chance is a love letter to all the kids who fell in love with the theater back in school and drove their parents crazy with soundtrack albums on a constant loop. Author Emma Lord writes from her own time in the drama club, and her love of New York and its theater community is clear on every page. These characters sing, literally but also with an energy and grace that keep you rooting for them, and the story is filled with action and emotion. Lord’s books (Tweet Cute, You Have a Match) are dense with storylines that keep every page turning, without a moment of boredom to slip in.
I really enjoyed When You Get the Chance. It’s a great story, layered with friends and family, surprises and sweetness. There are a lot of theater references, especially Mamma Mia, so be prepared. But if that sounds like heaven to you, then take a dive into this fun book and be prepared for the laughs, the tears, and the desire to give Lord a standing ovation when it’s over. Packed with pure emotion and personal vulnerabilities, When You Get the Chance is a tour-de-force that will put a smile on the face of theater kids and rom com lovers alike.
Egalleys for When You Get the Chance were provided by Wednesday Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
