Summer Reading Review: One Moment - Kristina McBride

Goodreads summary:


"This was supposed to be the best summer of Maggie's life. Now it's the one she'd do anything to forget." Maggie remembers hanging out at the gorge with her closest friends after a blowout party. She remembers climbing the trail with her perfect boyfriend, Joey. She remembers that last kiss, soft, lingering, and meant to reassure her. So why can't she remember what happened in the moment before they were supposed to dive? Why was she left cowering at the top of the cliff, while Joey floated in the water below-dead? 
As Maggie's memories return in snatches, nothing seems to make sense. Why was Joey acting so strangely at the party? Where did he go after taking her home? And if Joey was keeping these secrets, what else was he hiding?
The latest novel from the author of "The Tension of Opposites," "One Moment" is a mysterious, searing look at how an instant can change everything you believe about the world around you.

Pages: 272 (Hardcover)
Release Date: June 26th 1012
Publisher: Egmont USA


LONG STORY SHORT:
This book was a joyful read. It was not outstanding and if it was a bit longer than it actually is I don't know if I had read it till the end. The characters were likable, but even now I feel like I don't really know any of them very well. The story idea itself is not that new or original which is why I missed a unique twist from the author - be it through plot, language, ending, whatever. All in all I would say this book is okay, but not very special.

REVIEW:

I got One Moment from Netgalley and was quite excited to start reading it. I'd seen a few positive remarks and reviews from other people about it and as I usually like mystery novels I felt like this one might be the one for me.

As I can't really decide if this book gets a negative or a positive review (it's kind of in between) I'm going to start with what I liked best about One Moment: the language and dialogue. I think it means a lot if an author has that ability to make a protagonist's thoughts and the dialogue in the whole book - from beginning to end (duh!) - so real you feel like he or she just transports it from reality to the pages. Kristina McBride is such an author and I think she earns applause for that aspect of her book.

Some things, though, made this a rather boring, slow read for me.
The main problem I had with One Moment was how predictable everything was. In a mystery I usually expect a little bit of creepyness, I want to keep guessing what happened or what will happen. I definitely missed the surprise in this book. Whenever Maggie got back a piece of her memory I was like: "Who cares? Wasn't that what you assumed had happened??" To cut it short, if One Moment is a mystery, the mystery is pretty much nonexistent in this novel.

If it is a contemporary novel, I think the character development was not as good as it could have been. It took me ages to remember who is who in this book because everyone was just quickly introduced and I didn't have a clear picture of the personality that person had. Then, in the end of the book I felt like all those pretty flat characters didn't change at all, they didn't learn, they didn't grow. Even the main character, Maggie seemed pretty flat to me.

I said above that One Moment was predictable. It was, I guess, because the story was missing some kind of unique element. Michele Jaffe's Rosebush - for example - had a great message and strong characters and a very surprising twist at the end. The Deadly Cool Series is completely unrealistic, but a hilarious feel - good novel that I could reread over and over again. One Moment was the story of a girl who lost her boyfriend. Period. All in all, I wished there was more to the story.

I want to thank EgmontUSA for giving me the chance to read the e-galley for One Moment. This review states my honest opinion on the book.