Blog Tour: Glimpsed by G.F. Miller (Interview, Review + INTL. Giveaway!)

Thank you so much to Turn the Page Tours as well as the author and publisher for giving me a copy of ‘Glimpsed’ in exchange for an unbiased, and honest review!! This is my stop for the tour, and you can click the banner below to view the full schedule, and explore other posts!!

Title: Glimpsed
Author: G.F. Miller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: YA Fiction, Contemporary, Fantasy, Rom-Com
Series: Nope!!
Publication Date: January 5, 2021
Final Rating: 5 stars!! (out of 5)

Synopsis (via Goodreads):

Perfect for fans of Geekerella and Jenn Bennett, this charming, sparkly rom-com follows a wish-granting teen forced to question if she’s really doing good—and if she has the power to make her own dreams come true.

Charity is a fairy godmother. She doesn’t wear a poofy dress or go around waving a wand, but she does make sure the deepest desires of the student population at Jack London High School come true. And she knows what they want even better than they do because she can glimpse their perfect futures.

But when Charity fulfills a glimpse that gets Vibha crowned homecoming queen, it ends in disaster. Suddenly, every wish Charity has ever granted is called into question. Has she really been helping people? Where do these glimpses come from, anyway? What if she’s not getting the whole picture?

Making this existential crisis way worse is Noah—the adorkable and (in Charity’s opinion) diabolical ex of one of her past clients—who blames her for sabotaging his prom plans and claims her interventions are doing more harm than good. He demands that she stop granting wishes and help him get his girl back. At first, Charity has no choice but to play along. But soon, Noah becomes an unexpected ally in getting to the bottom of the glimpses. Before long, Charity dares to call him her friend… and even starts to wish he were something more. But can the fairy godmother ever get the happily ever after?

BUY // SHELVE NOW: Goodreads | Amazon (US) | Barnes & Noble

Mini Review on Glimpsed by G.F. Miller

Charity’s journey of self-exploration, and discovering who she was made Glimpsed such a heartwarming read, and the fact that things like found family, banter, fake dating, enemies to friends to lovers, and strong family relationships were also incorporated in the plot, is what makes it a perfect comfort read, and the perfect alternative to a tight hug.

I loved this book with all of my heart. It’s cute, fluffy, and the PERFECT comfort read!! I can definitely agree with the comparisons made with Geekerella, because I read that too, a while ago, and OH. MY. GOD. Both of these books are just perfection!! All the characters are so lovable and quirky, and even though I only read about them for 384 pages, *wails cries for a second book* each and everyone in this book, from the main characters, to the ones simply added to enhance the background now hold a special place in my heart. The family relationships between Noah’s family were so heartwarming to read about – and the fact that everyone in is family was a hardcore star-trek fan, and did tons of activities together made it all the more moving 🥺💛 Although Charity’s relationship with her mom (and sometimes her sister) were a bit rocky, it was really interesting to see how they progressed, and to be honest, the way that they interacted towards the end, and sort of just patched things up made me emotional 😭 Glimpsed also featured an enemies to friends to fake dating to lovers trope which was executed SO. WELL. and captured my entire heart. Even though I loved all of these aspects, my favourite part would have to be the ending!! I couldn’t predict what was going to happen and Noah is the ultimate book boyfriend!! The last chapter made me ugly cry and is definitely the SWEETEST thing to ever grace this world!!

Favourite quotes from Glimpsed that will hopefully convince you to buy it soon!! (you don’t know what you’re missing out on omg)

The way he says our names, he might as well have been introducing Loki to Thanos.

– G.F. Miller, Glimpsed

If you spend your life trying to protect yourself from getting hurt, you’ll end up missing the best parts. Some people are worth breaking your heart over.

– G.F. Miller, Glimpsed

One of my favourite character dialogues (this book is FULL of humour, so it was super hard to pick just one!!)

Noah: I’m a seventeen-year-old guy. I spent every waking moment eating and thinking about sex.

Charity: And they say guys can’t multitask.

Noah: Yeah. That’s a myth.

Interview with G.F. Miller, author of Glimpsed!

Ahaana: Tell us something about Glimpsed and the whole concept behind it!

Glimpsed is the story of Charity and Noah. Charity is a high school senior who is really busy with classes and extra-curriculars and is also a fairy godmother, secretly granting wishes for her classmates. Noah is a science nerd and a diehard Trekkie who happens to get jilted when Charity ‘Cinderellas’ his prom date into the arms of the school football star. The story has geeky fandom, enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, and wish fulfilment.  You don’t need to know anything about Star Trek to get into the book, but you just might be shopping for Star Trek t-shirts by the end of it!  

Ahaana: What was your favourite part of the writing process for Glimpsed?

I love the free-fall creativity of drafting. I love getting to know these new characters and falling in love with them. I get a little giddy to find out what’s going to happen to them and how they’ll react. And I’ll be real honest—I’m drunk on power at that drafting stage. I can do whatever I want! If it doesn’t work out, who cares? I can cut it later! But then I really enjoy revising, too. I love shaping that first draft and polishing it until it’s as close to perfect as it can get. That’s the stage when you find the little gems and perfect word choices and realize where you messed up. I even love getting feedback. In real life you never get that do-over; that’s why editing is so magical.

Ahaana: What advice would you give to other aspiring authors?

Get yourself into a good critique group. Looking back, this was one of the most pivotal moments of my writing journey. Mary E. Lambert (author of “Family Game Night and Other Disasters” and “Distress Signal”) had read a short story I’d written and invited me to join her writing critique group. At the time, I didn’t think of it as pivotal. I just agreed because I like joining things and I like writing. But I honestly don’t think I would have finished a novel—leave alone gotten published—without that group. They encouraged me, teach me, inspire me, and give me constant deadlines (“Gotta get this chapter done for critique group!”). The moral of the story is: if you don’t have a great critique group, FIND ONE. Nothing is more important for your writing journey.

Ahaana: Glimpsed is such a fun read full of magic, and it gave me so much serotonin!! Do you have any favourite quotes or scenes from the book?

I really love so many scenes and lines in the book. But I have to say that Charity’s conversations with her grandmother, Memom, still consistently make me giggle. Like this  one:  

“And? Someone else flashed you already?”  

“That means something else, Memom.”  

She blows her lips out, like, Don’t bother me with trifles.  

So I say, “I’ve got nine days with this one. She’s going to be homecoming queen.” 

“Nine days?!” Memom spills tea on her polyester blouse. “You can’t be serious! Even six weeks is too fast. We’ve talked about this. We’re working with real people, not paper dolls. People need time to change. You can’t rush transformations.”  

I throw my hands up, maybe a little too dramatically. “What am I supposed to do? I glimpsed it.”  “Maybe it’s supposed to be for homecoming next year.”  

“No way. That’s forever from now.” It comes out a little whiny.  

“You young people are always in too much of a hurry.”  

“Whatever. Don’t pretend like you know any other young people.”  

Ahaana: Glimpsed was such a unique and entertaining book! What gave you inspiration for your novel?

Much like Charity, I’m a fixer. So it came pretty naturally to me to write a story about someone who genuinely believes it’s her job to fix other people’s stuff. I actually wrote  Glimpsed as a mental vacation after writing something very deep and heavy. I was exhausted from pouring myself into this difficult topic. So I said, “Okay, now I’m just  going to make myself laugh.” I had so much fun writing Glimpsed. And I loved exploring—in a really whimsical way—the question of “What does it mean to truly help others? How do we engage with people who are struggling without imposing our own  will on them or diminishing their dignity?”  

Ahaana: Did you use any resources or software to help you while writing Glimpsed?

Not really. Just good ol’ Word and some 3×5 cards. Apparently, if you don’t use Scrivener you’re a total hack and/or missing out on writing Nirvana. But I didn’t? And I think it turned out okay!  

Ahaana: How do you name your characters?

Mostly their names just come to me. Charity and Hope made sense to me for sisters born into a family of fairy godmothers. Memom is what one of my best friends and her family call their grandmother; I loved their stories of her exploits so I wanted to pay homage to her. The most difficult character to name was Kade Kassab. For various reasons, many names were generated and rejected for this character that has, like, two lines of dialogue in the book! The name needed to be fun to angrily scream, make it clear that the character is not strictly of European descent, and also give off a “cool guy” vibe. That was some heavy lifting for one name!

Ahaana: How did you first get into writing?

As a kid, my best friend Kerry and I had entire worlds in our backyards. And we spent hundreds of hours scouring the library together, reading, and writing our own stories to make each other laugh. Our friend group made superhero movies on an old school video camera. In junior high, my friend Jena and I stayed up late every weekend writing a novel on her mom’s Commodore 64 (or whatever—it was boxy)… (She’s also a published author now, by the way: Hollow by Jena Morrow). By college, I was a pretty confident writer and had gotten feedback from professors I greatly respected that I was also good at it. In my early twenties, I remember telling people that I thought I had a book inside me (now I realize I have hundreds). For about a decade that first book rattled around in my brain,  but life is busy and for whatever reason, I just never gave myself permission to sit down and write it. Finally—remember that critique group I told you about?—soon after I started meeting with them, Mary said, “Have you ever thought about writing a novel?” And that finally tipped me over. I went home and pounded out the first draft of that book (not Glimpsed) in about six weeks. 

About the Author

G.F. Miller can write 80,000-word novels, but ask her to sit down and write 250 true and meaningful words about herself and she is likely to have an existential crisis. Who am I, really? She ponders. What do I want to be known for? Does anyone even read the back flap or visit author websites? But eventually she will pull herself together and tell you that…She married her college sweetheart and is mom to three littles who routinely make her heart burst and her head explode (it’s a messy business, love). There are puppies big and small residing at her house (you’ll be seeing a lot of them if you follow her on Instagram). She’s been to a dozen countries, but not nearly as many as she would like. She loves learning all the things. She cries at all the wrong times. She makes faces at herself in the mirror. She believes in the Oxford comma. And she’s always here for a dance party.   While the stories she has brewing in her soul vary wildly from one another, there are three things they will always have in common: love, snappy dialogue, and happy endings.

AUTHOR SOCIALS:
Website | Instagram | YouTube | Goodreads

FOR THIS TOUR, WE HAVE THREE (3) SEPERATE GIVEAWAYS! UP FOR GRABS, WE HAVE ONE (1) SIGNED COPY OF GLIMPSED BY G.F. MILLER (AVAILABLE TO US ONLY), TWO (2) EXCLUSIVE CHAPTERS FROM NOAH’S POV, AND A SKYPE OR ZOOM VISIT WITH THE AUTHOR (BOTH AVAILABLE TO INTL)!
ENTER THE GIVEAWAY ➡ HERE!

Have you read Glimpsed yet? Is it on your TBR? Have you read any other books with the enemies to friends to fake dating to lovers trope? Do you have any recs for me with it?