One Second Away by Rick Mofina

What happens when your worst nightmare becomes your reality?

One sunny day in California, Jessie is hugging her nine-year-old son, Dylan, goodbye at the airport. He's travelling by himself, all the way across the country, to visit his father, Jessie's soon-to-be ex-husband, and his grandparents. Her heart breaks, but she puts on a brave face and gives her son one last wave as a flight attendant leads him away.

Several hours later, Jessie gets a frantic call from Dylan's grandmother in New York. Dylan is missing.

In a second, Jessie's world turns upside down. The AirTag she'd stuck in his backpack says he's still at LAX. The airline insists that he was picked up at JFK by an elderly couple claiming to be his grandparents—but Jessie's in-laws insist they haven't seen him. Dylan has disappeared into thin air.

At the same moment, miles away, in Toronto, a train operator loses control of a subway train, and the fiery crash injures dozens of passengers.

Jessie doesn’t know it yet, but this crash is inextricably linked to Dylan's disappearance. She has to find out how—and where her son is.

Propulsive and binge-worthy, the latest from bestselling author Rick Mofina is a race-against-the-clock global thriller that will leave you breathless.

Paperback, 400 pages

Published April 28, 2026

 by Doubleday Canada

3.5/5 stars

This is my first time reading a Rick Mofina book, I impulsed purchased this because of the hype on IG and that FOMO moment took over.  Did the hype delivery, as a matter of fact it did.

This story has many layers. At its heart is the disappearance of Jessie's nine-year-old son Dylan, and as a mother, her anguish is immediately felt. But the opening prologue, set on a Toronto TTC subway train signals right away that there is much more at play here than a missing child. As a Canadian reader, that local connection was a definite grabber.

There are a number of pov's, which added to the mystery and of course characters that I kept a watch on. The story does take some time to reveal how all the threads connect and there were stretches in the middle where I had to trust the process. That patience pays off though, the final third was tense and genuinely hard to put down with everything converging in ways that kept me turning pages. An ending that was fitting with a few surprises.

Mofina has earned a spot on my radar and I'll definitely be exploring his backlist. 

This book was part of my 2026 Reading Off My Shelf Challenge, #22