Here One Moment
By Liane Moriarty
Crown, 9780593798607, September 2024, 512pp.

The Short of It:

If someone told you the age you die along with the cause of death, would you want to know?

The Rest of It:

Their flight is delayed and the plane is packed with anxious. impatient people. Delay, after delay. All of them needing to be somewhere by a certain time. What is the hold up?

They bide their time talking to the people around them and certainly observing and noticing how everyone else is dealing with this delay. I mean, people watching can be quite entertaining. Especially when you have absolutely nowhere to go and you have people packed like sardines all around you.

Cue the baby crying. What a mess!

In the midst of all of this, a woman slowly rises and walks down the aisle stopping at each row to  provide each passenger with the following information: their cause of death, age of death. The passengers don’t immediately get what she is doing but after talking amongst themselves they suddenly realize that she is predicting their deaths.

Some of the passengers are disturbed by it. Especially when she tells a young boy’s mother that her son will die from drowning at seven years of age. Others find it amusing, oh, I am going to pass from old age at the ripe age of 90? Great! Another, a workplace accident? As this strange woman makes her way down the aisle, everyone on board begins to get very anxious. Even the flight attendant is told that she will die from self harm. Self harm? Her?

The opening of the book is pretty intense as we spend hours with these folks on their delayed flight. I really enjoyed the lead-up. Once they arrive at their destination, all of these people return back to their daily lives, but with the knowledge of those predictions. They can’t help but be different.

The woman with the young son immediately signs him up for three different swimming lessons a week. He can’t drown if he is an excellent swimmer. Another explores her mental health and whether or not she is truly depressed, self harm? Seems unlikely. As you can imagine, all of these folks, even if the initially blew these prediction off, can’t help but think of what the lady said so those thoughts bleed into how they live their lives.

Then, there’s the woman herself. We learn that her name is Cherry. We learn that her mother was a famous psychic. We learn of her background, her marriages and the like. This part is very interesting because it’s not immediately clear why she chose to deliver this info to anyone.

Once these people left the plane, I lost interest in the story because there are many characters and they all kind of spiraled out. Through alternating chapters you learn about them, and the woman. But then as things begin to happen, I was riveted again. I really wasn’t sure how the story would end. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

Audio note, I read this in print but also listened to it on audio here and there. It’s fun to listen to. Made my morning commute quite pleasant.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
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