Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
By: Gillian McAllister
[Nominee for ‘Best Mystery/Thriller’ category of the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]
[Fulfilled ‘Book from Reese’s Book Club’ for Shelf Reflection’s 2023 Reading Challenge]
“How sinister it is to relive your life backward. To see things you hadn’t at the time. To realize the horrible significance of events you had no idea were playing out around you.”
So this book opens with a mom seeing her son stab a guy. And my first thought was- ‘I’m not sure if there is ever a right place or right time for that. But you know what Gillian? I’m gonna hear you out.’
And then the mom wakes up the next day… but it’s actually two days IN THE PAST and the stabbing hadn’t happened yet. And I was like- ‘Ohhhhh. Okay Gillian. I see what you did there.’
And proceeded to read and enjoy this time travel, crime solving novel.
It was a bit reminiscent of the movie Happy Death Day where the main character gets murdered and keeps reliving the day/murder over and over again until she figures out who did it.
In Wrong Place, Wrong Time the murder doesn’t keep happening. Actually, Jen doesn’t keep reliving the same day at all— so is it really a time loop? She just keeps going further and further back in time every time she wakes up.
The goal is still to figure out why her son would stab someone and see if she can stop it. Each day she relives in the past she sees through new eyes, catches new things, chases new leads, and learns more and more about her life and family and what led up to that fateful day.
“‘This isn’t time travel, or science, or maths. Isn’t it just— you have the knowledge—and the love—to stop a crime?’”
How far back does she go? Thousands of days. Each section is titled ‘Day Zero Minus (X Amount of Days)’— aka how many days before stab day. At first it’s fine, but how far back is 540 days, 3876 days? We don’t want to figure it out. It’s like saying your kid is 40 weeks old or 29 months old. IT’S NOT HELPFUL, it’s annoying.
Of course she writes her character saying it the normal way as you read on, but I’m still miffed by the chapter titles. Don’t make us do the math, Gillian, we’re busy solving a mystery.
A lot of people say they didn’t finish the book, that it dragged, or that the ending didn’t redeem the book. I disagree. I didn’t feel like it dragged. The entire concept of the book requires going back in time to various days to find out new information, that’s not dragging, that’s a book doing its job.
For those who didn’t like the ending— what?! I’m a happy ending kind of person. Perhaps it felt a little abrupt when we go back to ‘the day’ but if readers are wanting a different outcome, they must prefer darker books.
I don’t think this is a spoiler to say, but one thing I was worried about but didn’t need to be, was that the mom starts to wonder if her son ultimately made the decision to stab a guy because she was a bad mom. If she had spent more time with him, shown more interest in his interests, done things differently, would he have still stabbed?
I was worried the answer was going to be yes. And then I would have gone on a rampage. But, no, the mom relives her past and rekindles her love of being a mom. She throws off the guilt and knows that she loved her son and whatever choices he made were not because she could have been better.
Yes! Don’t let mom-guilt have a foothold. (Unless you’re blowing smoke in your kids’ faces and dealing drugs in the living room, and forcing them to cheer for the Packers, or some other things you should definitely feel guilty about.)
I thought it was interesting to think about how you could have the knowledge that your kid murdered and then wake up the day before it happened and have to interact with your child. How crazy your emotions must be to see your child in a different light. Would it changed how you saw them, how you loved them, how you treated them?
I suppose if we’re honest with ourselves, history (and the Bible) shows us we are all capable of atrocious things. It leads us to thankfulness for God’s grace in our lives and the lives of our children when he preserves our innocence in certain ways. It also reminds us of our need of a Savior, our children’s need of a Savior. Sin and temptation lurks at the door and we need God’s power to resist and fight against it.
The mom in this book shows us an unconditional love. Would we realistically be able to have that? Maybe, maybe not. But we can know that nothing we do can separate us from the love of God if we come to him. We won’t need time travel, just repentance. God’s love is not predicated on good behavior but in the fact that he’s our heavenly Father and Creator who loves us because we are his. That’s good news!
Anywho, I enjoy books with time travel. Some found it tedious and confusing or boring. I thought it was interesting and there were some surprises. Although I’m still not sure if what she was in could really be considered a time loop. I opted not to take quantum physics in college so now I’m completely in the dark on this stuff. Go figure. I did not need Algebra in life, but I guess I needed quantum physics.
There’s a lot of books and movies with time travel, so I thought it was funny when she included these “five easy tips to escape a time loop”:
Find out why
Tell a friend and get them in the loop with you
Document everything
Experiment
Try not to die
Feel free to write these down somewhere and save them for later.
I think McAllister did a great job of maintaining consistency with the way the ‘time loop’ worked in this book. A lot of time travel happens when people go to the future and so they are able to send themselves messages in the future.
But when you go to the past, nothing you send or write is there because it hasn’t happened yet. That creates a unique challenge for someone who needs to solve a crime. No one remembers anything because everytime you wake up, essentially everything gets erased. I felt like Jen’s choices and figuring things out fit the context really well.
Other than the f-words, probably my next biggest problem with the book was the scene where Jen is looking through a window and catches a glimpse of a photograph. And she sees what color eyes the person has…. Nah. That’s not how life works.
Nobody notices what color eyes people have. If someone tries to sell me something at my door and then murders my next door neighbor and the police come and ask me what they looked like, eye color will have ZERO impact on my description.
So the fact that she looked THROUGH A WINDOW at a PHOTOGRAPH (and I think it was dark) and then noticed a person’s eye color….. that’s a big no for me.
Authors like to make much of eye color. But besides the few people like Daniel Craig where their eyes literally pierce you with their brightness, let’s just stop making it significant.
I dare you to figure out someone’s eye color… or better yet, from a photograph. You will have to try awkwardly hard. And you will know that I am correct.
Last comments: this book is very British. Some books are partially British where there’s some new words that jump out at you like jumper (sweater) and boot (trunk), etc. But Gillian is full-on Brit here.
“I don’t dob. I’m not a grass.” means I don’t tattletale and inform the police
“I’m doing dogsbody stuff” means I’m doing menial tasks. Definitely had to look this one up because things could have gotten weird real fast.
“Gear” means heroin. How many slang terms for drugs are there in the world? Talking these days is so risky.
“x” at the end of texts does NOT mean kiss. And everybody in the UK ends all their texts with an ‘x’ unless it’s a formal business exchange. Apparently it’s supposed to indicate you’re being friendly rather than cold and sarcastic… Feels like a lot of work to me.
The entire police department drinks tea in the morning. So proper. That would be an interesting study- do tea-drinkers solve more crimes than coffee-drinkers? Let me know the results!
Recommendation
This is hard to know how to recommend. I enjoyed the book, but there is a lot of swearing in it. A lot of f-words. I’m not sure if it’s worth wading through that.
Even though she writes a good story, I doubt I’ll read any more of Gillian’s books because of the swearing.
Swearing aside, I can’t think of a reason not to read the book. Unless you don’t like time travel.
BUT. If you like time travel or multiverses, you may enjoy:
Infinite by Brian Freeman
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Time’s Orphan by Haley Reese Chow
[Content Advisory: like so many f-words]
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