Book Review: Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Here One Moment is the latest novel from best-selling Australian author Liane Moriarty. I am a fan of the other books that I have read by Moriarty which saw this book instantly added to my to-be-read list.

The story starts off on a seemingly mundane domestic flight from Hobart to Sydney. The flight is short and uneventful, that is until a female passenger gets up from her seat and proceeds to walk the rows of the plane pointing to each person onboard and predicting how they’ll die and at what age. The ages of death and causes vary dramatically – some people will die of various cancers, a workplace accident at age 43, while others are more upsetting – a young baby who will apparently drown aged seven, and a newlywed bride who will die by “intimate partner homicide” aged 25. We follow the lives of a few key passengers after the flight, whose death predictions are particularly impactful, especially when some predictions start coming true a few months later.

The chapters of the book alternate between different passengers of the plane and the “death lady” as she gets nicknamed. I enjoyed the first-person account from the “death lady” all about her life, and the events that led up to that infamous flight. We learn about her mother who was a famous fortune teller called ‘Madame Mae’ which leads us to question whether there is a chance that her predictions on the plane could be real. Her story leads us right up to the flight, and even what happens after.

As with other Moriarty novels, Here One Moment is character driven. However, a key difference is that it’s less group based (e.g. Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers) and more individual stories that sometimes intersect but are mostly told in isolation. There were certain passengers’ stories that I looked forward to more than others, so I did find myself waiting to get to their sections. But it did end up making the limited interactions they had with one another more meaningful and showed the contrast of their different experiences post-flight.

One of the key questions that the book raises as a reader is ‘would you change how you were living your life if you found out how/when you would die?’ We see this play out for the different passengers in various ways. Like the woman who was told her child would drown, enrolling him in three separate swimming lesson classes! But I think the key takeaway is to try and live a life that you are happy and fulfilled by (which looks different for everyone), and if not, it’s not too late to make changes by whatever means you are able.

A number of Moriarty’s books have been turned into limited TV series in recent years and this book certainly has the same potential. If you’re a fan of Moriarty’s writing and enjoy character-driven stories that explore the complexities of human emotions and experiences, you’ll likely enjoy this book.

Posted by Rachel Reads

7 February 2025

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