Review: One Moment by Kristina McBride

As far as contemporaries go, One Moment was pretty solid. I didn’t connect quite as much as I wanted to, which is mostly what kept it from being 5 stars. I can’t pinpoint what exactly caused the disconnect – One Moment was a beautifully written story about letting go and moving on. But because it was so tragic, I feel like there should have been a little more emotion on my part. I didn’t cry once, and the only time I felt anything along the lines of sadness was at the mention of “Far Away” by Nickelback – for different reasons entirely.

Maggie was a pretty good lead. She annoyed me a bit at first, though, because of the way she dealt with the accident. I understand it’s traumatic, and the brain has certain ways of coping…but I felt like she handled it like a child would. A young adult knows what death means, and for her to say “What if he’s still alive?” when his head was clearly smashed in was a bit naive, like she couldn’t comprehend the meaning of death.

The pacing was very fast and I flew through the book. The mystery of the underlying secrets kept me wondering what the hell happened. I had a pretty good hunch about what it was, but I still enjoyed the journey in finding out all facets of the truth. It put relationships under the microscope, bringing to light all of the ugly that hides under the good. Everything was pretty twisted, and brought up the question – Can you ever really know someone?

The characters were very realistic and had plenty of depth. I really liked Tanna, and downright hated Shannon and Adam at times. Even though I didn’t feel sad during the story like I should have, I certainly felt anger. There were a few times I wanted to jump through the pages and beat Shannon senseless. Yet, even after all that anger, there was still catharsis at the end. While some of the characters might have royally screwed up, they made up for it at the end and were able to make amends.