When You Get the Chance is about cousins, Mark and Talia who after the passing of their grandfather are left to clean out their grandparent’s holiday cottage. Mark wants to avoid all responsibility and sneak off to Toronto for Pride weekend. Talia is in the awkward stages of a breakup with her high school partner, who happens to be in Toronto for the summer. They both decide that the risk of disobeying their bickering parents is worth getting what they want. Along for the ride is Mark’s younger sister Paige.
It took me a while to get into this book, I think I was nearly 70% through this book when I cared what was happening in this story. I think this is due to the book feeling very slow for the first half. I thought going in that this book would mostly be road trip and Pride in Toronto. Whereas a big portion at the start was given to the cottage and the rift between Talia’s dad and Mark’s mom. While this sub-plot was supposed to be important to the story it felt forced and I found that I really didn’t care why the adults were arguing. It didn’t help that Mark’s character was irresponsible and selfish during the whole time up until Pride and I never got the feeling that he faced any consequences for his actions. I identified a lot more with Talia, so maybe my resentment for Mark is through her character.
Once the characters make it to Toronto is when this book becomes a lot of fun to read. I wish they had gotten to Toronto sooner. Talia resolves things with her partner. Mark meets a group of people who make him realise that they way he’s been treating his boyfriend back home isn’t right and he breaks up with him so he can be with someone he cares about. I wish more time could have been spent to flesh out Mark’s change of heart.
The book ends with the reveal of why the adults don’t get along anymore and the family decide what to do with the cottage when their grandma eventually passes. This feels like an epilogue and something that I wouldn’t miss if it hadn’t been there. I wanted to like the family sub-plot but I would have liked to see the teens interact with their grandma more, instead of them trying to find out why their parents fight.
I love the discussions surrounding gender and sexuality that happens in this book. I think its important to realise that gender nonconformity and being a queer woman can often go hand in hand and to have it explained in this book was nice to see.
There was nothing wrong with this book. It was well written, the story was heart-warming but, in my opinion, there was something missing that would have made this book more enjoyable. The ARC of this books was provided by the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Let’s focus on the narrators first. This book is narrated by two people – cousins. One’s Mark, and the other Talia (whose name I forgot for a few seconds. I only remembered Mark’s because his is on a Note on my Kindle as my Notes are currently pulled up). And I felt both narrators were pretty boring. I liked Talia a tiny bit more, but that was it.

I mean, Mark, to me, felt so self-centered and boring and privileged and just, sorry, but boring again. Like instead of helping around the house he decides to have fun. He should’ve paid more attention to Paige, seriously. He tries to act funny but it just fails. Talia, while the (slight) better of the two narrator, tries to act like she’s awkward and cool at the same time and it only makes her look more awkward and not in that cool type of way. While she is very proud of her identity, and she can most certainly be, it just felt like she was pushing all her ideas and opinions onto other people and trying to make them think like her. And people don’t feel the same way and that’s okay!

I love this cover so much. The font’s super cool, the rainbow road and the car, all so great. But… that’s about it. The third star is solely for the cover. Paige is mostly the reason why I didn’t star it lower – she was at least funny, adorable, and she reads Magnus Chase so ☝