One Moment, One Morning - Sarah Rayner

I picked this book up a while back now but, only recently managed to get around to reading it. The blurb on the back of the book really had me captured as it wasn’t your usual chick lit with the same old story of boy meets girl and they fall in love type plot so I was keen to give it a go. I have read one other book by this author and I must have enjoyed it as I kept the book and it has been sat on my shelf in the ‘read’ section for quite some time but, it was so long ago I cannot actually remember how much I enjoyed it and didn’t even realise I had actually read one of her other books until I spotted the name of the author was the same!

The author:
Sarah Rayner is an English author who has written three books with a fourth in the pipeline. She has written short stories for Women’s Own magazine and she is also an artist.

The plot:
A normal commute to work, on the 07.44 from Brighton. Three passengers who lives are about to change forever when a man collapses and the train I stopped. Lou who watching the scene before her unfold who doesn’t realise she may come to be involved with man family. Karen, who is the wife of the man whose world collapses along with her husband and Anna, best friend of Karen who, starts to realise what perspective on life really is.
It is hard for me to give much more to the plot as pretty much this is what the blurb on the back tells us but, there is so much more depth to it. However for me to go into more detail, would ruin the rest of the story.

Characters:
All three women are central people in the story. We meet Lou first who is watching the people on the train on her commute and taking in the different people around her. I found I quite liked Lou as a character as she is generally a good person who wants to care and look after others. At the same time, her story involved her coming to terms with who she is and letting her family know who she is.
Karen is the wife of the man who collapses and she is a lovely person who you really feel for and you see how she struggles to understand what has happened and how she blames herself. Also she is trying her hardest to help her children understand what has happened whilst at the same time trying to comfort them. I liked how real Karen seemed as she was written in to act how you would expect her to be and it was refreshing rather than her just being an unrealistic character.
Anna is our last main character and again she was a very real person in the sense that she had her own problems do deal with as well as helping her friend. I liked that she had more depth than just being the friend as it gave the book an interesting edge and overall she seemed such a nice person it was hard not to like her. In fact, it was hard not to like all three of the main characters and I really enjoyed reading about them and their lives as a whole.

Price:
This book was bought as part of the on-going multi buy offer in Tesco. Priced at £4.49 on its own it is reasonable for a new book but, when buying two books and then only costing £4 makes the book very good value indeed. Of course you can pick this up in many various other shops or online sites however if not on offer or as part of an offer expect to pay the full RRP of £7.99. When you think I got two books for the same price as this one retails at on its own, then it is definitely good value.

Overall opinion:
I started reading this and at first I couldn’t get into it because of never having time to read much in one go. However after I got past the first few chapters it really engaged me and before long I couldn’t wait for any opportunity to pick it up and find out what was going on. In particular I liked that it wasn’t the same old run of the mill love story or anything like that and although the basis of the book should have been quiet dismal, it was still a really enjoyable book. I liked that although there was one set event that joined all three characters together, they each had their own story to tell and these all complemented each other really well.
Another thing I really liked about the book was that the story was set only over a very short period of time. It follows the three women over the course of the week from when they are all on the train from Brighton and I liked that we could get a really good perspective on the events following the week rather than it being dragged out over a longer period of time.
Overall, this was a book that I had been keen to read and after finishing it I think it is definitely different to most but, in a good way and I would highly recommend it to everyone to give it a go.