Today, Feathered Quill reviewer Katie Specht is talking with Goldie Williamson, author of Five Million Moments.

FQ: Tell us a little about your book – a brief synopsis and what makes your book unique.

WILLIAMSON: Five Million Moments is the story of three women whose decade-long friendship begins in a college sorority in the early 1990s, and the betrayal that nearly destroys it.

Told through multiple points of view, the novel follows Shannon, Amy, and Melissa from their college years in upstate New York into adulthood. It explores what it meant to come of age at a moment when young women were first told they could have it all—and what happens when life delivers something far more complicated.

What makes the book unique is the blue notebook that the friends keep together. Before social media documented our lives, we documented them in notebooks. These young women record their dreams as they move through their twenties: careers, love, and the lives they imagine for themselves.

In addition, the 1990s are having a cultural moment again — from streaming series to fashion runways — and readers are hungry for that era. At its core, Five Million Moments is a novel about female friendship set in the 1990s, which is resonating strongly with Gen X readers but also with younger readers who are curious about that time. (And they can’t believe how much we smoked.)

It's the kind of friendship many readers recognize immediately, because they've lived some version of it themselves.

FQ: What was the impetus for writing your book?

WILLIAMSON: After a marketing career that took me from FedEx to AOL to Booz Allen, I started seriously writing Five Million Moments in 2022. The loss of a good friend reminded me how fragile and essential friendships are, and it pushed me to finally tell this story.

This story is drawn from a world I actually lived in: Greek life, female friendship, the specific experience of being a young woman in the early 1990s who was told she could have everything. It was also a world living in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, which shaped the cultural atmosphere of the time and appears in the background of the story.

More than anything, I wanted to write the kind of women’s fiction I love to read: stories that feel emotionally honest about how friendships actually work: messy, loyal, sometimes devastating, but ultimately worth everything.

FQ: Who are your favorite authors?

WILLIAMSON: Elin Hilderbrand: Nobody writes female friendship and summer vibes with more warmth and specificity. Her books taught me that place can be a character. The right setting makes every emotional moment land harder.

Maeve Binchy: She taught me that ordinary lives contain extraordinary drama. Her characters feel like people you actually know, and her understanding of how women support and sometimes wound each other is unmatched.

Kristin Hannah: She writes the kind of female friendship that breaks your heart and puts it back together. Firefly Lane in particular showed me that a story spanning decades could feel as intimate as a single conversation.

Taylor Jenkins Reid: Structure is everything. The way she uses time and perspective to build emotional tension is something I think about constantly as a writer.

Liane Moriarty: Her ability to balance dark subject matter with warmth and even humor is something I deeply admire. Big Little Lies is a story about female friendship and betrayal that is both literary and completely unputdownable.

Each of these authors taught me something about how to write friendship with honesty, complexity, and heart—qualities I hope readers feel in Five Million Moments.

FQ: Is this the first book, the second, etc. in the series and how many books do you anticipate writing in this series?

WILLIAMSON: Yes! I'm currently writing a prequel that explores how Shannon, Amy, and Melissa first became friends in the sorority and the events that ultimately bind them together and set their lives in motion.

After that comes the sequel, which follows the women into their thirties and the triumphs and tragedies in that part of life.

FQ: Tell us a bit about the series. Do you know where the series will take the characters or are you working that out as you go along with each book? What has been the reader response to your series?

WILLIAMSON: What I can say is that the world these women inhabit changes dramatically after 9/11, and the friendship that held them together in their twenties will be tested in entirely new ways in their thirties. The heart of the series will always remain the same, though: the complicated, enduring bond between these three women and the way their friendship both challenges and sustains them.

FQ: Have you been contacted by fans anxiously awaiting the next book in the series?

WILLIAMSON: One of the most rewarding parts of publishing Five Million Moments has been hearing from readers who connect with the friendship between Shannon, Amy, and Melissa.

One reader recently shared with me that she had finished the book and that she was going to “miss those girls tonight.”

There’s no better feeling for a writer than knowing readers don’t want to say goodbye to the characters!

FQ: Was the plot worked out completely before you started or did it evolve as your wrote?

WILLIAMSON: I had a clear sense of the emotional arc of the story before I began writing, particularly the central themes of friendship, ambition, and betrayal.

But the actual plot evolved quite a bit during the writing process. As the characters developed, they began to make choices that surprised me, and those choices often led the story in new directions.

For me, the most interesting moments in fiction happen when characters feel real enough that they begin to guide the story themselves.

FQ: Tell us about the fans' favorite character. Were you surprised at the response to this character? Why do you think readers respond to this character?

WILLIAMSON: One of the things I love most is hearing which character readers connect with, because the answers are rarely the same.

Many readers are drawn to Shannon because she’s ambitious, complicated, and sometimes makes difficult choices. Others feel deeply connected to Melissa’s faith and romantic optimism or Amy’s determination to build a life that balances career and family.

I’m not surprised by the range of responses. Each of the three women represents a different way of navigating adulthood, and readers often see pieces of themselves in one, or sometimes all, of them.

What I find most interesting is that readers' choices often reflect where they are in their own lives when they pick up the book.

FQ: What was the most difficult scene to write and why?

WILLIAMSON: The betrayal between friends that sits at the heart of the novel. Writing that scene was emotionally intense. When I wrote the first draft, my heart was racing and there were tears in my eyes. I hated doing it to these three girls, but moments like those are also what make stories powerful.

Female friendship betrayals cut deeply because they break the trust those relationships depend on. But they also reflect something real about how women navigate strength and forgiveness simultaneously.

For more information about Five Million Moments, please visit the author's website at: goldiewilliamson.com/