Wow what an unbelievably fantastic book. I was gripped, the beginning was startling and it never relented, I was absorbed and enthralled. I am hoping for a series, I want to see all dimensions of the characters. Thank you x

Thank you to the publishers and Net Galley for my advanced copy in exchange for a review. Really enjoyed the stories of the individual characters. This is possibly my favourite book of 2024

I really like the premise of this book and found the beginning compelling. It lost it a little in the middle for me where it got a bit slow and repetitive. I almost felt there were too many characters to follow so it was difficult to really get into each of their stories as well as you could. However, I did really enjoy this book and found myself reaching to pick it up to find out what was going to happen.

If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?
On a flight from Hobart to Sydney an older lady walks the aisle of the plane while stating age of death, cause of death to multiple passengers. When the passengers start dying the way she predicted they believe she is a clairvoyant and worry that their prediction will come true next, so of course they start to live their lives as differently as possible to avoid their prediction from coming true.
A great read that I found so hard to put down.

Imagine you are on a delayed flight. Imagine that this delay already is causing you a world of pain. Imagine then that there's a strange woman walking up the aisle, informing people as she goes of their age and manner of death. Some from old age, but others, well, let's just say it'll be sooner rather than later and, not always from disease or natural causes...
Imagine how you'd feel about that. And imagine also how this feeling changes when some of her predictions start to come true... Three people dying as she predicted...
Well... imagine no more, this is exactly what happens in this book. And we follow the passengers, the recipients of the predictions as they start to learn to live with what happened. At the same time we also go back and meet the woman, first as a child, follow her growing up, her relationship with her mother, and the path she herself followed to get to where she found herself on that fateful flight...
We have both ends of the spectrum to consider here. Those whose predictions come in the next year and what they can, if anything, do to change their fate, or that of their children. But we also have those whose longevity was predicted and who now are in danger of living too fast and loose!
It's a book that can be read on many levels. There are messages of "live life to the fullest whilst you can" alongside what is also a cracking story.
And then there's Cherry and her own story which is, well, let's just say complex. And I'll leave you to meet her properly as the author intends.
For a character driven book, which this definitely is, the characters have to be well crafted and these are just that. I connected to each and every one as they were introduced to me and that connection only grew as I got to know them better. I sure did invest in them emotionally along the way. But as well as that, the story is fascinating and like nothing I have read before, which considering the sheer volume of books I read, is no mean feat!
All in all, a cracking read that I am sure will remain in my top ten come the end of the year. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I love Liane Moriarty but this story did not appeal to me and I found it quite slow paced. I gave up after a few chapters. I would however read more of hers.

I liked this ,I have loved liane moriarty for many years bar the past couple of recent novels . This is better than her recent efforts but still not quite where we were in terms of being gripped
This is still worth a look but isn’t all that gripping
I did enjoy the initial intrigue and concept and I preferred it to the one about the retreat think called twelve strangers of something and also apples never fall far from the tree but no where near where the husbands secret was in terms of page turning events
I cdnt recall here which death went with which character and lost site of who had passed and didn’t seem that many to what initially the women predicted
If I sound muddled i am
It’s a better effort and lianne is truly talented and this shows promise we getting bk to her epic writing days but we not there yet
Ty though so v much for advanced copy though . A treat to see in my inbox

From my past experience with this author, I knew I’d get a mix of mystery, human interest, humour, and pathos. She’s normally pretty good at getting the balance right, but not always. Which way would this one go?

We are introduced to quite a large group of characters who’ve boarded a flight between Tasmania and Sydney. A woman – Cherry – starts wondering down the aisle announcing to passengers on either side both age she expects them to die and also what the means of their death will be. Its impact is either that it's simply an amusing side-show or alternatively that it's a truly alarming experience. Certainly, a number of the passengers and crew are severely spooked by the experience.

Eventually, Cherry is persuaded to sit back down. But the damage has already been done for a number receiving Cherry’s prophesy, particularly those whose end is predicted to be sooner rather than later. From this point we’ll follow the plight of a number of these people. We’ll also learn a good deal more about Cherry and just how it came to be that she’d behave in this way on this particular day.

Moriarty is good at describing people through the conversations they have with family, friends, and others. After a series of exchanges, I normally feel that I know these people. Here, the characters now worry to a greater or lesser extent (mainly greater!) about how their futures might now play out and what they might do to mitigate against their predicted fate. Of course, some had received what might be considered good news, but it wouldn’t be any fun to focus on them, would it?

It’s actually pretty good fun to start with, but in my eyes, it did take a little too long to play out. That said, as the story moved towards its end, I found that I was increasingly feeling anxious about what would become of some of the people I feel I'd got to know and like. I was also increasingly sucked in by Cherry’s story – she being the most interesting character of them all. In the final reckoning, there are surprises – one big one, in particular – and I have to admit that as the final scene played out, I realised that I had a tear in my eye. Yes, despite a number of debatable co-incidences being revealed, the story really did have more potency than I'd expected.

I just could not get into this book. There were too many characters which made it really hard to follow and I quite honestly find the whole prophecy scenario absurd. I gave up about 25% of the way in.

There were aspects of this story that I enjoyed. Cherry was an interesting character with a lot of heartache to her story. The opening scenes on the plane are a little confusing, due to the multiple POV but once I got used to it I could appreciate the different characters. I did find this one a little slow though and was glad that I listened to the audio. In my opinion it was perhaps a little too long. Thought provoking and interesting, it would make a good book club pick for the discussion alone.

On a flight from Tasmania to Sydney a woman suddenly stands up and starts to compulsively tell the other passengers their expected cause and age of death, among them a young man coming back from the funeral of his best friend, a newly married couple, a workaholic father, a mother with two young children and an older couple looking forward to their retirement.  It is through these people, and the so called ‘death lady’ that the story is told.
 
This was such a gripping read and as time went by I became more emotionally invested in the outcomes for the characters, making the story even more tense!  It was also unexpectedly humorous in places considering the ‘final destination’ style premise of the book, I especially enjoyed Cherry’s appreciation of certain young celebrities!  But what I really loved about the book was all the questions it raised … would you want to know when and how you were going to die, and what would you do with that information?!
 
I have loved many of this author’s books but I think this might be my favourite!

3.5 - This review contains spoilers.

I do think I went into this book with the wrong expectations and that is partially on me, partially on it being semi marketed as a thriller (nothing thrilling happens and I do believe Liane Moriarty herself said that).

I started off really enjoying the premise and was excited to see where it was going, nearly every chapter ends on a suspenseful note that implies this might be the moment a death happens and, at first, that was a good way to keep me engaged with the story. However once I started to realise that none of the main characters were actually going to suspiciously die I started to lose interest and those chapter cliffhangers started to feel more annoying - don’t tease me with a good time only to not do it at all!

I didn’t know I was reading a book about how you had to live your life to the fullest no matter what but one I realised I did roll my eyes just a little and lose interest personally. I also felt this message could have been done better if the characters had spiralled more but it felt, for most of them, it was a minor anxiety at best.

While I didn’t end up loving the book, I did enjoy the writing style and I would be willing to read more of the authors work. If I had gone in with the right expectations I might have preferred this book more.

It’s good to read a book with a more unusual narrative. There soon became too many characters to keep track of. The ending disappointed me in that it suddenly plunged into the life of Cherry – almost a separate storyline.
I found the sudden switching into different points of view very confusing. I’m not sure if it was copy or the actual edit but switching mid-paragraph was difficult.

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty is a story about whether you would want to know your future? Passengers on a normal domestic flight aren’t given a choice, when an elderly woman gets up and walks down the aircraft giving passengers predictions on when they will die. For some passengers the date of their date is when they are 103. For six passengers though they are given shorter time spans.
The storyline looks at their lives and whether the predictions come true. The story also looks at the life of the woman who gave the predictions and what could have caused her to act so out of character.
An interesting and unusual storyline.
Recommended

I have read all of Liane Moriarty’s books and enjoyed them, except for Apple Never Falls, which I couldn’t even finish, so I was hoping this new novel would bring me back to her - and it did.
I just want to care about the people in the books I read and be entertained by their lives and their journeys, and that is exactly what was missing (for me) in Apples but entirely present here.
The mysterious woman on the plane when the novel begins was enough to get me hooked and it was surprising how quickly I started worrying about the characters whose deaths she predicted!
There is a lot going on here, sometimes too much. Also a lot of characters, some of whom are unnecessary. However, ultimately it was an enjoyable read and since I judge books on how much I look forward to going to bed to read, this one certainly achieved an early bedtime.

This is a hard review to write because Liane Moriarty is one of my favourite authors so I don’t like to offer any criticism. However I must give an honest review and admit it felt a bit of a chore at times. There are always lots of characters in. Moriarty’s books but for the first time ever I struggled to sort them out and had to really think about who they were each time they made an appearance. I do wish I had gone for an audible version because the ARC format made for a lot of confusing when there was a sudden change of POV.
I stuck with it and overall I’m glad I did. There is always lots to like in a Moriarty tale and this was no exception plus it has come into my mind lots of times since I finished it so that must mean it had a message worth reading.

A plane is delayed on a flight from Hobart to Sydney. There are a mixed bunch of passengers each reacting to the inconvenience in different ways. Eventually they are airborne. An unremarkable woman in her sixties stands up & moves down the aisle. She points to various people stating the age at which they will die & what will be the cause of death. Needless to say this really upsets the receivers of her 'prophesies'. They try to shake it off with the thought that she is obviously a disturbed woman- that is until people die as she predicted!

No-one knows who the 'Death Lady' is, but needless to say Social Media has a field day speculating about her identity. The reader knows who she is because a large part of the story is the story of her life. The rest is taken up with the passengers & what happens to them.

This book had a rather confusing start & was unlike most of Liane Moriarty's books where you get to know the characters very early on. I struggled to keep reading but I'm glad I did because it turned out to be a fascinating exploration about destiny & self determination. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

"Later, not a single person will recall seeing the lady board the flight...Nothing about her appearance or demeanour raises a red flag or even an eyebrow."

That's how the story begins, as a random group of citizens boards a routine flight between Hobart and Sydney.

But on that flight everything changes when the seemingly innocuous woman stands, trance-like and makes her way through the aircraft, informing everyone of her unsettling predictions.

"Age of death. Cause of death."

What would you do if you'd been told when you were going to die? When your children were going to die? The cast of characters try to brush it off as a fit of insanity or old age, but when a sudden, young death occurs soon after the flight, it hits a little too close to home.

What unfolds after the flight is a fascinating exploration of human nature. Empathy, grief, love and more are all deftly dealt with in this established author's hands. Some characters make lifestyle changes in order to escape their fate, while others become determined to track down the 'death lady' and ask for a new prediction. But, can fate be fought?

There's a large cast of characters in this story, from all walks of life. From a newlywed couple to a tired, overworked father and a young flight attendant, the narrative switches between them at a swift pace. But despite the breadth and ambition of this novel, I never found the characters difficult to keep track of. Whilst I preferred some to others, they all felt engaging and authentic.

Meanwhile, the 'death lady' has her own first person narrative weaved through the story. The seemingly harmless elderly woman has an incredible story to tell, and she's perhaps the most compelling character out of the entire cast. It'll keep you hooked, questioning whether she's a clever con-artist or a misunderstood victim of circumstance and, as she unravels her complex life story for the reader, I was rooting for her along with the rest of the bold, eccentric cast. A thought-provoking book full of drama and intrigue - highly recommended.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This has taken me such a long time to read - unfortunately the story, whilst and intriguing concept, just didn't grab me. I think this was largely down to the formatting of the arc which didn't separate the chapters properly so you didn't know which character you were reading about as the paragraphs just suddenly jumped from one to the next.

Not my favourite by this author - may try again with the paperback release.

Such a fabulous read! Very intriguing. A lady on a plane starts telling everyone when they will die! Read it to find out more!