I started reading Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty because of an unexpected moment of kindness. One afternoon when I was at work, a lovely woman struck up a conversation with me. We ended up talking for twenty minutes about books. She had that sparkle in her eye that all true book lovers have when they start describing a story that moved them. Before she left, she mentioned how I must read this book. I thanked her, thinking that would be the end of it and wrote the recommendation down. Twenty minutes later, she returned, she had driven all the way home and back just to bring me her own copy of Here One Moment. She handed it to me with a smile and told me to keep it. That small act of generosity reminded me how stories pass through people like light, connecting us in quiet, meaningful ways. Her gesture has let me keep this tradition going, once I finish a book I love, I’ll pass it on to someone who might need a story too. The picture added to this article is within the front cover of the book she has given me.

Book Review: Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Moriarty has a ability to put together the ordinary and the extraordinary to take everyday people and tilt their worlds just enough that we start to question everything. Here One Moment continues that tradition, but with perhaps her most unsettling premise yet, a group of passengers on a domestic flight encounters a mysterious woman who somehow knows exactly how and when each of them will die.

From that eerie premise, Moriarty constructs a plot that interconnected every bodies lives. The novel is not simply a thriller about whether these predictions will come true it’s an exploration of what it means to live when faced with the certainty of death, and will people do whatever to try to avoid their fate. Through multiple perspectives, she draws out reactions like denial, obsession, and despair. Some characters spiral into fear, while others grab life more tightly. You can feel Moriarty asking a question we all try to avoid: if you knew how much time you had left, what would change and are we predetermined?

Here One Moment is a meditation on destiny versus free will, but it’s also a mirror. It asks us whether knowing the end makes the middle more meaningful or unbearable. Moriarty captures grief not as a static emotion but as a force that reshapes the choices we make, the risks we take, and the relationships we cling to. It’s a story that lingers in your mind long after the last page, prompting quiet self-reflection about what we would do differently if we truly believed our time was finite.

Moriarty’s Here One Moment is compelling, introspective, and uplifting given its morbid premise. It strikes the delicate balance between mystery and meditation, blending plot-driven suspense with emotional honesty.

Overall Rating: 8/10

Thanks to that thoughtful lady who passed me her copy, I was able to read such book.