Today we’re diving into Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty — an author I’ve loved for years. So loved, in fact, that when I saw she had released a new book, I bought it instantly without reading a single word of the description. I just clicked purchase, confident I was in for another hit.
Spoiler alert: I did not love it… which is exactly why I’m excited to talk about it.
📘 First Impressions
As soon as I downloaded Here One Moment, I noticed the page count: 512 pages.
Listen… I adore Moriarty, and yes, her books often lean long, but this was a big commitment. I trusted her enough to dive in anyway, knowing her writing is usually light, fast-moving, and addictive.
But even from the start, I felt that this book could have easily been trimmed by 100–150 pages. Moriarty is so beloved that editors often step back — and I fully admit that readers like me (who buy her books automatically) are part of the reason why. 😅
✈️ The Premise
The story opens on a short domestic flight from Tasmania to Sydney. Mid-flight, an elderly woman gets up and calmly walks the aisle, pointing to each passenger as she tells them: the age they will die + cause of death.
Some brush her off as an eccentric fraud. Others take her very seriously — especially those whose predictions are soon approaching. The book then follows a large cast of these passengers over the next six months, each chapter hopping to a different point of view. In between, we get chapters from the Death Lady herself.
🤔 What Didn’t Work
Here’s where the book lost me:
Too many characters.
Not confusing, but distracting — there were so many threads that none of them went very deep. One of Moriarty’s greatest strengths is her ability to craft layered, fully realized characters, and this book felt like the opposite: quick sketches rather than portraits.
The Death Lady was… rough.
I think she was meant to be quirky and endearing. She was not. Her chapters were slow, rambly, and often felt irrelevant to the plot. I skimmed more than I’d like to admit.
The prediction twist fizzles.
Eventually, her predictions do come true — briefly adding intrigue — but even that didn’t land. It echoed the concept behind The Measure (remember that one? Erica something…), where people receive a string that reveals the length of their life. Except The Measure ultimately wrapped its idea more cleanly.
This one? For me, it fell flat.
⭐️ My Rating
At the time I recorded the episode (January 2025), the book held:
- 4.07 stars
- 121,000+ reviews
So clearly readers are enjoying it!
My personal rating? 3 stars.
It was quick, and I always find Moriarty’s writing engaging… but overall, it left me underwhelmed.
❤️ Final Thoughts
If you’re a Moriarty fan, I wouldn’t discourage you from picking it up — she’s still one of my favorite authors, and her backlist is full of gems I’d recommend any day. But Here One Moment simply wasn’t her strongest work.
If you do read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts — especially if you disagree!