Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Gillian McAllister
Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Sci-fi
Pub. Date: May 2022

This was my book club’s pick for February. We picked some duds in 2022, so we needed something fast paced to start off the new year! Wrong Place, Wrong Time is a mystery/thriller with a sci-fi element, and it certainly starts off with a bang! 

Our protagonist, Jen, is sitting at home when the clocks go back, waiting for her son to come home. When she witnesses him kill a man on the street, she falls into her worst nightmare. But when she wakes up the next day, it’s actually the day before and the murder hasn’t happened yet. Every day after, Jen wakes up further back in time, with the opportunity to solve the murder. But maybe there are more secrets in Jen’s past than she realized.

It’s a pretty explosive start and I was quickly pulled into the narrative. It’s a lot to take in at first and you hope there are simple answers, but the more Jen learns, the more confused she becomes about what actually happened and how her son was triggered to murder someone. It’s pretty gripping, but it does get a bit repetitive the further back in time you go. It’s frustrating, but the general feeling helps you to empathize with what Jen is going through. It’s a convoluted story and I thought it took a bit too long to get to the point. It drags in the middle, but eventually the narrative starts to shift and I was gripped again at the end of the story.

I don’t want to say too much about the story itself or give anything away, but I did like the way things progressed. I do think the murder that the book starts with is a bit of a stretch based on what we learn later, but I like how focus of the story changes over time as the pieces start to fit together. It was good storytelling, I just would have liked to see things tightened up a bit. There are a lot of secondary and minor characters, and I found it hard to keep track of everyone. That said, I read it as an audiobook and I don’t think that was the best way to go. If it was a bit shorter with a tighter plot, I think this would be a really great read.

Either way, I still had fun with it. I didn’t care for the epilogue, but again, mostly because I didn’t remember the connection between these particular characters, so I’m hoping my book club can explain this one to me in a couple of weeks. But overall, a fun and fast-paced read!