Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

 

Late one evening, Jen Brotherhood witnesses her 18-year-old son, Todd, stab a stranger to death. The behaviour is completely out of character and neither Jen nor her husband, Kelly, can understand what has driven their son to such a brutal act. When Jen wakes up the following day, she discovers it's not actually the day after the stabbing but the day before. Jen has gone back in time and hopes to be able to use this to prevent her son from committing murder. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, and Jen continues to move further back through time trying to put things right.

What a fantastic premise for a story. I was completely engrossed. As we move back through time, it was like peeling the layers of an onion to reveal something new underneath. Each new revelation added more information but still left Jen, and me, totally in the dark about why everything was happening. There were times when I thought I'd figured things out, but then a few pages later gasped with a shocking new revelation.

The family unit, Jen, Kelly, and Todd, have a great relationship with one another. There's lots of banter and sayings that only they understand. They have a relaxed, easy-going life with no secrets. It is only as Jen begins to investigate that she discovers how many secrets there are.

Jen is a sympathetic character. She loves and trusts her husband and son implicitly. With every new revelation, she doubts what she discovers, always resorting to her default setting of loving her family. I really did feel her helplessness as she was trying to understand and piece together all of the clues she was unearthing. Things were especially difficult for her as no one else was moving back through time, she had nobody who could support her or whom she could confide in. Throughout, Jen is convinced that she did something wrong as a  mother, and that is why her son committed a crime; she is constantly looking for the moment in time where she went wrong so she can correct it.

It's important to remember this is a crime novel, not science fiction. Some people may read this and question why changing things in the past doesn't have major implications on the future, or wonder about different timelines and multiverses. This is about a brutal murder and all the clues leading up to why it happened.