Thank you to my friends at @crownpublishing and @prhaudio for the free #gifted copies of this book.

One way to kick my anxious nature into overdrive: a stranger giving me definitive details about something fated in my future.  Would I truly believe it?  Most likely, no.  And yet, the amount of overthinking that would churn in my brain!  

So... how did I come to ADORE a woman who goes around a plane midflight handing out predictions regarding people’s deaths? 

Moriarty’s newest novel begs the age-old question of free will versus determinism.  It’s a conundrum as fascinating as it can be uncomfortable.  Here, Moriarty unpacks the quandary with a fresh perspective and clever storytelling.  

From the start, we meet a whole host of characters who’ve received damning predictions.  Getting to know them and learning about their purported futures oftentimes felt jarring.  And yet, this methodically slow, character focused beginning allowed my mind to teem with questions regarding fate, as I suspect Moriarty preordained.  

Short snippets interspersed throughout the present-day narrative revealed the backstory of the elderly female who delivered the shocking predictions, the Death Lady.  Going unnamed for the first 20% of the book made it easy to pigeonhole her into the role of the villain.

But once named, Cherry’s life took on a fullness.  Her voice was compelling, and her life was relatable.  Long before the end of the book, Cherry definitively enamored me and became my favorite part of the story.  

Surprising connections between the characters were eventually revealed and the ending satisfied in a way I couldn’t have predicted.  For such a morbid premise, this book was unexpectedly hopeful and uplifting. I closed the last page with tears in my eyes, convinced that Moriarty’s storytelling is rooted in the truest kind of magic.  

🎧Oh, how I am smitten with an Aussie accent!  With dual narrators, one for Cherry and one for the rest of the storyline, I was fully charmed by this audiobook.  Caroline Lee and Geraldine Hakewill gave an expressive and heartwarming performance.