Here One Moment

I've loved every book Liane Moriarty has written--and now this one has topped my list. Why? She kept me guessing, involved, and loving the characters while challenging me in the best ways.

She wove together disparate characters in a braid that, in the end, made sense in ways I'd never predicted but found I wanted. Each night, when I opened it, I wondered where it would go next, and every night, I was proved wrong. Thanks, Liane, for another wonderful read.

If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.

My Thoughts:

From the very beginning of Here One Moment, we are catapulted into a string of predictions, happenings, and memories of the past with intriguing characters including those very moments with our narrator who is central to the stories of many who are on a plane as she makes predictions.

How will our narrator change the lives of those who are unexpectedly drawn into what might happen to them?

As it turns out, our main character is an actuary who has just gone through a major loss, which turns her into someone she is not and who will come to affect the lives of many.

I couldn’t stop turning the pages as everything comes together in strange ways. 5 stars.

Leane Moriarty Is an author I follow because she tells a story with characters that are well developed and a story line that is easy to follow. It begins with an extended delay and wait for a flight. If you're like me, don't be. Although this book appears to be a long read. It is 500 pages, I am a slow reader and will finish it within the week. Yesterday I took it to an appointment, and waiting a half hour was a breeze.

some of Ms. Moriartys recent work has left me disappointed, which is why I've been cautious about reading them. However, I truly enjoyed Apples Never Fall, seeing as it was a return to her usual, so I bought this book as soon as it was published, and I'm glad that I did.

Won't go into the plot, as it is nicely summarized in other reviews, but just know that it was suspenseful and well paced, so everything comes together gradually, in typical Liane Moriarty fashion.

Happy to see she's back!

The “idea” of this book was great and the reviews pulled me in. I liked the book. I didn’t love it. And yet I gave it five stars. Why? I was so impressed with Liane Moriarty’s development of the characters, and how many important life lessons she managed to spell out. The main character, Cherry, was delightful, ordinary, and yet not at all ordinary, as none of us are ordinary. We each have a story, quirks, talents, and we live out our life in an ordinary way that in the end may seem extraordinary. That’s kind of how all of her characters seemed in the end, the sum total of this book was perhaps extraordinary. Thank you Liane Moriarty.

HERE ONE MOMENT is written by Liane Moriarty. I could not put this book down. It resonated so much with me. It was so interesting, so brilliant, so thought-provoking, so ‘philosophical’, so emotional, so caring. The whole premise is “If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?” “If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently?” “Would you try to dodge your destiny?” So very much to ponder. *****