Here One Moment begins with a great setup. An elderly woman arises from her seat in a plane and calmly tells everyone in her section their age and manner of death. Who is the woman and why did she do such an extraordinary thing? How will the predictions impact the other passengers? Will the deaths occur as predicted?
And then we hear each passenger’s story as well as the elderly lady’s. With lots and lots of irrelevant side stories included. Did I really need to know the history of Australia’s Big Banana tourist attraction? Or how the Monte Carlo fallacy was discovered? Or tons of other tidbits? No, I did not. They just were distractions that I had to wade through that slowed the pacing, and my interest, considerably. They are the reason why this book is over 500 pages long, which is two hours of extra reading time I will never get back. I realize that Ms. Moriarty is a famous author, and rightfully so, but the editors needed to put aside their idolization and cut the irritating asides. Because you know the streaming limited series, which is probably already being written, will cut them out as its first order of business.
The book does meander eventually back to answer the questions I posed above. But it could have been so much better with tighter pacing. For this reason, Here One Moment receives a disappointed 3 stars from me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Crown Books for providing me with an advanced review copy.