A bighearted novel about falling in love, making a mess, and learning to let go, WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE is the next effervescent novel from Emma Lord, New York Times bestselling author of the Reese Witherspoon YA Book Club pick You Have a Match.
WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE
by Emma Lord
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, January 2022
Nothing will get in the way of Millie Price’s dream of becoming a Broadway star. Not her lovable but super introverted dad, who raised Millie alone since she was a baby. Not her drama club rival, Oliver, who is the very definition of Simmering Romantic Tension. And not her “Millie Moods,” the feelings of intense emotion that threaten to overwhelm. Millie needs an ally. And when an accidentally left-open browser brings Millie to her dad’s embarrassingly moody LiveJournal from 2003, Millie knows just what to do―find her mom.
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?
Emma Lord is a digital media editor and writer living in New York City, where she spends whatever time she isn’t writing either running or belting show tunes in community theater. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a major in psychology and a minor in how to tilt your computer screen so nobody will notice you updating your fan fiction from the back row. She was raised on glitter, a whole lot of love, and copious amounts of grilled cheese. Her books include Tweet Cute, You Have a Match, and When You Get the Chance.
Ellie Kobata has spent most of high school on the sidelines, keeping her art Instagram private and shying away from the world. She can’t even tell her only friend, Lia, who she really is: Ellie is part of a secret magical community, and no one outside of it can know it exists. The only person Ellie could fully relate to was Jack Yasuda – her childhood friend who mysteriously started to snub her a few years ago.
Carla Karolac is doing just fine. Having escaped the clutches of her controlling mother and founded a successful writing retreat in which participants are confined to windowless cells until they hit their daily word count, she lives a comfortable, if solitary, existence. If only her therapist, Toonie, would stop going on about Carla’s nonexistent love life and start addressing her writer’s block, she might be able to make some progress. But then Carla finds Toonie murdered, and suddenly her unfinished memoir is the least of her concerns. Without quite knowing why, she dials an old phone number.
Razia Mirza lives in a tight-knit Muslim neighborhood in Corona, Queens. She has known her best friend Saima since she was born. Broken into three sections, ROSES, IN THE MOUTH OF A LION first chronicles their friendship as city children who find misadventures among the wild grape vines and weeds growing in the parking lots of Queens. When the friendship ends, Razia’s grief and loss transform her forever. In the second section, Razia befriends Taslima, a new girl in the community. Together, they chafe at the restrictions imposed on them and embark on small rebellions: listening to scandalous American music, wearing mini-skirts, and cutting school to explore the city, as Razia begins to question some of the traditions her parents expect her to follow. Section three takes Razia further afield when she’s admitted to Stuyvesant, a specialized high school in Manhattan. There she meets Angela, who lives with her Bohemian mother in the East Village. Razia is attracted to Angela in a way that surprises her but fills her with a new joy of understanding. When their queer relationship is discovered by a Pakistani Aunty in the community, Razia is forced to choose between her family and her own future. Following Razia from girlhood to young adulthood, this novel beautifully chronicles her journey toward reconciling her heritage and Muslim traditions with her desire to be true to her life path. With humor and pathos, we delve into the emotional complexities of religious communities, female friendship and queer desire.
L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters―Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers―are blindsided and left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.