I was intrigued by the premise of a woman on an airplane standing up and predicting the cause of death and age at death for each of the passengers. For some, it's a date far in the future, but for others it's uncomfortably close. Some people laugh it off, some take steps to mitigate the likelihood, and others obsess about the possibility. But I felt the story got much better when the focus shifted to the various ways that people grieve,

I expected this to be a sad and much darker book and questioned why I wanted to read it - but I am so glad I did, as it is another great one from Laine Moriarty!

You get the stories/viewpoints of several passengers on the plane and follow them through the months after the initial flight. Sometimes too many storylines are frustrating but I loved all the stories here. I wasn’t as interested in Cherry’s (I have no idea why) but overall found this fantastic book engaging.

The premise is disconcerting, being told by a stranger how and when you’ll die. Even though the psychic in the book isn’t telling you, the reader, when & how you’ll go, it’s unavoidable not to think of it and if you’re using your time wisely. The first quarter of the book is claustrophobic as if you’re sitting on the plane with these characters learning about their lives and then learning about their foretold deaths and being unable to escape it.

The author, whether intentionally or not, puts into perspective the people currently in your life and reminds you of those you’ve lost. As usual she writes about a myriad of people with rich stories that immediately sucks you in. You are ingratiated into the lives of these characters hoping along with them that the psychic was wrong. The chapters are short as the books flows through each of the people touched by the predictions. While the book tries to remind you that you can always work to change the prediction and to also make the most of the life you’re given, I still found myself riddled with anxiety. So while I hope you’re living life to fullest, reading this could also send you into a spiral!!! It’s still well written with beautiful characters and stories, but the tone is rather unsettling and sad.

Thank you to Crown Publishing for this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I've loved Loans Moriarity's books and this one has jumped to the top of the list. This is a story of grief, love, life, family, losses, and unexpected gifts. There is humor also. This is a wonderful, heartbreaking and heartwarming, hard-to-put-down read. Fantastic!

Wow! I really enjoyed this book. It has to be one of my favorite Liane Moriarty books to date.

What would you do if your knew the age and cause of your death? Would it make you look at your life differently and start living it differently?
This story opens on an airline flight from Hobart to Sydney. After a delay the flight takes off and all is normal. Then, a woman of unpredictable age, and unspecified attributes stands up, counts to 3, and starts predicting the age and cause of passengers deaths. No one takes her seriously until her predictions start coming true.
I loved the different points of view in each chapter, five passengers and the elderly lady herself. We learn the backstory of the "psychic" and we learn how the other passengers start making changes in their lives to prevent the predictions from coming true.
This story will make you feel all your emotions, while also delivering a message about living life to it's fullest.
Thanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for sharing the digital ARC of this book.

Why is it so hard to write a great book that tackles the question of what people would you do if they knew in advance when they would die? Liane Moriarty's latest novel, Here One Moment, attempts to dissect the spectrum of emotions and reactions that would come with that knowledge, but this is not uncovered ground in modern literature. Chloe Benjamin's novel The Immortalists, which follows siblings who are told the date of their death by a circus fortune teller, and Nikki Erlich's The Measure, in which people received a package with a string whose length foretold the remaining duration of their life, both made an attempt at the topic. I moderately enjoyed The Immortalists; BarlinBooks' editor-in-chief Greg hated The Measure. In both cases, a really promising premise suffered from sub-par execution. I was optimistic that in Liane Morarity's skilled hands that the "knowledge of one's own death" question would be more deftly handled. It was not.

The premise follows the story of a delayed Australian flight from Hobart to Sydney. Once the flight is well underway and nearing Sydney an older woman, Cherry, the daughter of a fortune teller (and later known by the media as "The Death Lady") unbuckles her seatbelt and starts going one by one down the aisles prognosticating a cause and age of death for each of the passengers on the plane: "I expect Alzheimer's. Age eighty-nine," "I expect heart failure. Age eighty two." "I expect old age, age one hundred and one." Many people feel reassured by their rather long life spans. Others are shocked, angered, and understandably pained: "I expect assault. Age thirty." "I expect drowning. Age seven."

The first 20% of the novel covers the flight itself and jumps between a few passengers on the plane and Cherry, establishing background by giving us first-person accounts of why they are traveling, what issues they are facing in their life, and their interactions with each other on the plane. Once they disembark and are scattered across Sydney we continue to follow a select number of passengers and Cherry.

Most people initially brush off the incident as charlatanism, but then over the next year reports circulate on social media about a few of the passengers that met their end exactly at the age and in the way that Cherry had foretold. In an interesting twist, Cherry has no recollection of the event, and was seemingly in a trance during the flight, but we also learn that she has had similar visions in her past. A group forms online to unite and track the passengers. Some lash out, seeking to find Cherry and demand a new fortune. Others grapple with what to do with the information they now have. They wonder what steps they can take to prevent their seemingly pre-determined death, and many change the course of their lives.

The concept pulls you in and opens up so many questions and what-ifs, and Moriarty does her usual great job of getting into the psyche of the characters and adding few interesting twists. Unfortunately for me it wound up a bit flat. I'm between a 3 and a 4 on this, but I'll round down as I definitely wouldn't read it again and it wouldn't be a book I would likely recommend if asked for reading suggestions. Skip this one (and The Measure, and The Immortalists) and reach for Moriarty's Apples Never Fall, instead which I found to be a more compelling and complete novel.

This story goes through the lives of several people after they went through a trauma together. I found this book difficult to follow and extremely slow from start to finish. The premise was intriguing but I feel that the characters fell flat, and so did the story.

The audience for this book would be someone who enjoys a slow paced read.

Thank you to Crown publishing for the opportunity to read and review an early copy of this book.

Full Disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty from Crown Publishing via NetGalley. It should be available to the public on September 10, 2024.

I've read and enjoyed a few books by Liane Moriarty, but Here One Moment is my favorite so far. The book is told from various perspectives. All the narrators were on a flight together. One of them gets up during the flight and predicts the age and cause of death of all the others. What happens after that is up to each of them. There's a little mystery and suspense as we wait to find out if the predictions will come true. More importantly, it makes you stop and think about what you might do if you were given the same information. Would you accept your fate or try to change it? Be sure to check this one out!

Wow! I have read some of this authors books and they have been hit and miss for me. However, this one is her best yet.

A woman on a plane seems to have some sort of breakdown and predicts the age and death of passengers. Then the book begins to follow all of them during their aftermath.

The premise was catchy. It gave me Alice Hoffman vibes. Perfect fall book:) it's dark enough to keep me interested and witty. Really enjoyed this authors writing style.

Liane Moriarty has done it again. She has created an ensemble of fully-developed, individual characters, and placed them in an unusual situation that not only creates high drama, but also some beautiful connections. I loved following the story of these total strangers on a delayed flight as they first heard their expected age and date of death, and then either tried to elude the possibility or find Cherry, the "prophetess", and prove her wrong. Throughout it all, I delighted in all the clues from Cherry's own backstory as they illuminated each one of her connections and prophecies to her fellow passengers. A wonderfully unique premise, and one that helps us remember that human connection--even one that seems at first banal--can change our lives.

I love the way the author is able to move between POVs effortlessly. What could be a confusing jumble of various takes, is crafted so it flows so there’s no jolting change as we hear from the few main characters. It was all pieced together in a way that surprised me.
This book was a good dive into what a person would do if they knew they would die at a certain time. Would they make changes to avoid it? Would they do all the things they dreamed of?

Made it halfway through—decided to quit. I didn’t ever connect with it or understand the point, and the chapters switched perspectives so often it made me dizzy and confused. I also felt like all the stories were depressing, and I was sick of reading it.

I really loved this author’s earlier work: What Alice Forgot was fantastic, a book I think about often, many years later. Lately she’s been writing these large cast books rather than focusing on one person or one conflict. And the large cast doesn’t work as well for me as a reader. I keep hoping I’ll get to read another book that matches my experience with Alice, but maybe not.

I adore Liane Moriarty's books, and this one is no exception!
The first 15% or so of this book felt a little aimless; there were so many characters and details and very little plot. But then things started to take direction and make sense, and I loved it! Cherry's story ended up being so endearing, and I miss it already.
It was overall so fun to read, and I found the ending to be precious.

Loved the premise of this book, but somehow expected more from it. It was a really interesting story, but the jumping around of too many characters’ situations was a bit confusing at times. It did make you think about fate and all the decisions that one makes in a day that could potentially impact your life and the lives of others. Does everything really happen for a reason? I did enjoy the storyline, just not as much as I had hoped. Thanks to NetGalley, author and publishers for this ARC.

When I requested this book, I really was leaning into my love for Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. Unfortunately, this story just wasn't for me. There were so many characters and a slow pace. I kept with it for the first 60% or so, but eventually I had to DNF. I skimmed until the end and I did like the very end and the message it ends with. I felt this book could have been so much better if it were shorter and focused on a few of the people rather than so much on Cherry. This book was not for me, but perhaps others may stick with it and find more character development to go with the ending message that I liked!

This is an absolutely fascinating read, I really like this author and she really knocked this one out of the ballpark!. A woman of indeterminate age is on a short flight when she stands in the aisle and points at people sitting in their sits and states 'I expect' then says their cause of death and says 'At age' then the age they die at. She does this for the entire coach section of the plane, not the first class part though by that point everyone on the plane that has received this pronouncement is either happy they are going to live into their 100's or upset they are going to pass when they are 20. The passengers are all abuzz when they land comparing what the lady told them. The story also tells it from the POV of Cherry, she's the woman that had done this, we learn about her history, her family, her mom who is a fortune teller of some renown and how Cherry was engaged to a young man that won the 'lottery' and was conscripted to go to Vietnam where he was killed not long after arriving. We also hear from some of the people who's deaths were not that far in the future, a woman who's son was predicted to die at 7 from drowning, she has him in multiple swim classes to ensure that doesn't happen. Some do end up passing in the manner predicted, one young woman dies in a car crash at 20, which was being live streamed by her friend in the passenger seat. Most of the people that had predictions that were well into the future were not as worried and those that were soon tried to change their live to alter the outcome. The pace was very quick, the chapters were short and I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Crown for the ARC.

This one totally sucked me in like Liane Moriarty’s books always do! It’s her newest one, which is being released on September 10th. Thank you NetGalley and Crown Publishing for giving me early access.

Like Moriarty’s other books, this one has a relatively simple plot that spirals out of control with an eccentric and memorable cast of characters. To summarize, on a flight through Australia a mysterious woman walks through the cabin and tells each person how and when they are going to die. Some people write her off and some take her more seriously, but nobody knows what to think once her predictions start coming true. The rest of the book follows each passenger while also telling the mysterious woman’s backstory.

This book had me laughing out loud, cringing, worrying, and on the edge of my seat at times. It went beyond just entertaining though and brought up questions that really made me think, especially about free will vs. fate and living life to the fullest. I truly didn’t know how it was going to end. I really enjoy getting immersed in the worlds that Moriarty creates and will continue to read everything she writes! 4.5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Really fascinating concept, being confronted with a date you’re supposed to die and how. I thought the story did a great job following various recipients of that information and how they all dealt with it. It portrayed well the sense of control each reached for and the what-ifs - can you change the course of your life or is our course set for us. And can you figure out what’s truly important before you run out of time.

I also loved the thread of how important friendships and family are. How they are a lifeline we often don’t put enough effort, risk or thought into. Our relationships - how we connect with others - or lack thereof will make or break us.

I did think the parts with Cherry were a little slow and dragged. I didn’t feel super invested in her parts. Maybe it was because the other characters were just so much more interesting and the mystery surrounding them, I’m not sure. Hers wasn’t bad, just in contrast, I wanted to get back to the others.

Overall I enjoyed it and thought it was a really great concept.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are mine.

I’m quite disappointed. I’m not even sure what I just read? Based on others I’ve read by Liane Moriarty I was expecting more of a fast-paced attention grabber. This felt too long (500+ pages was too much for this) and too drawn out. One positive: some good character development throughout… outside of that I was slightly bored.

“Here One Moment” by Liane Moriarty is about several passengers who find out when and how they are going to die. While on board, the “Death Lady” (Cherry) forecasts the future of fellow passengers. Many take it as a warning and try preventing their predictions, ultimately leading to chaos and self fulfilling prophecies.

I really enjoyed this one! Liane has a power of throwing very different characters together. The multiple points of view and short chapters really moved the book along despite its large size. I do wish there were a few less characters since there was a lot to keep track of. I like Cherry was written in first person and the others were third person since it gave an intimate insight into her side of the story.

This book looks at the fragility of life and how having a heads up on your lifespan can change how you live your life. It was interesting how the characters took actions to prevent their deaths but they end up leading to them for some.

Liana’s other recent book, “Apples Never Fall” is a gem too! Thanks @crownpublishing for the digital ARC (out September 10)!