Book Review - Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Title: Wrong Place Wrong Time
Series: -
Author: Gillian McAllister
 
Description: Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He’s late. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed.

You can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody. His future shattered.

That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake... and it is yesterday. And then you wake again... and it is the day before yesterday.

Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime—and you don’t have a choice but to find it...
You can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody. His future shattered.
That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake... and it is yesterday. And then you wake again... and it is the day before yesterday.
Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime—and you don’t have a choice but to find it...
 
Review: “Wrong Place Wrong Time” is a title that can go either way. Gillian McAllister has chosen to address the moment. She does so in a very original way.
 
The story starts with a mother, Jen, waiting for her teenage son Todd to come home. She sees him approaching and worse, she sees him kill someone right in front of their house. Jen doesn’t know who this man is, why Todd has done such a horrible thing and she won’t get those answer when her son is arrested and taken to the police station. Jen and her husband Kelly aren’t allowed to speak to him until the morning, so they go home. When Jen wakes up, Todd is home. She realizes that it’s the day before the murder. And every day, she wakes up a day earlier.
 
Jen believes that it’s happening for a reason. The days she returns to aren’t random. Each day teaches her something about the murder and Jen believes she has been stuck in a time loop to prevent her son from committing the crime.
 
Reading a story that goes back in time, requires a few things from the reader. It’s easy to become over-explanatory, trying to explain the given of a time loop or time travel. Luckily McAllister doesn’t do that. There are some moments where this phenomenon is explored, but it’s not the main focus. And even though you’re technically going back in time and Jen is the only person experience it, it’s not that hard to follow. The story somehow goes backwards, but each chapters explains exactly where we are in time, as the day of the murder being day 0. These chapters of Jen trying to figure out this mystery, we also meet a cop called Ryan. It takes a long time before we know how he fits into the story and where in the timeline he is. This just adds to the mystery.
 
“Wrong Place Wrong Place” is a very cleverly written thriller, that would have been very ordinary if it weren’t for the element of the time loop. This makes the story unique and more interesting. The story did have some moments that were less interesting and could have been left out. And the eventual ending wasn’t all that special. But overall, I highly enjoyed this book. Exciting, original and challenging.
 
Rating: 4/ 5