Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

512 pages

Published September 2024 by Crown Publishing

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review 

Publisher's Summary: [SKIP THIS IF YOU WANT TO BE SURPRISED BY THIS BOOK]

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?

My Thoughts: 

Oh gosh, I just told you not to read the synopsis and now I have to give you my thoughts without giving away anything! Ok, let's give it a shot: 

• First up, it's Liane Moriarty. That's all it took for me to know I wanted to read this book and I suspect many of you will be feeling the same. Even when I didn't feel like her writing was up to her best (Nine Perfect Strangers), she always gives readers interesting characters and plenty to think about. Here One Moment succeeds on both counts. 
• I was twenty pages into this one and already telling a friend NOT to read the synopsis because it's key in those first pages to go in without any preconceived notions, to be left wondering who this woman is and why she is, in fact, remarkable.

"Later, not a single person will recall seeing the lady board the flight at Hobart Airport.

Nothing about her appearance or demeanor raises a red flag or even an eyebrow.

She is not drunk or belligerent or famous.

She is not injured, like the bespectacled hipster with his arm scaffolded in white guaze so that one hand is permanently pressed to his heart, as if he's professing his love or honesty.

She is not frazzled, like the sweaty young mother trying to keep her grip on a slippery baby, a furious toddler, and far too much carry-on.

She is not frail, like the stopped elderly couple wearing multiple heavy layers as if they're off to join Captain Scott's Antarctica expedition."

• When we figure out why the woman is remarkable, we'll spend the rest of the book thinking we know what's going to happen, waiting for it to happen, and wondering how Moriarty will frame it so that it's not anticlimactic. Trust me when I tell you that she will. 
• I absolutely loved how Moriarty moves from the plane to focus on just a few characters, whose stories we'll alternate between...including that woman. In fact, she will be the person we'll get to know the best, the one we'll grow to care the most about. 

If you're a fan of Moriarty's, you wont' be disappointed by this one. If you've never read Moriarty before, you'll become a fan of the way she can help readers relate to and care about her characters. Is it her best? In my opinion, no; that honor still goes to Big Little Lies for me. But this one is right up there, if for no other reason than the way she made me care about one particular character.