Pages: 371
Published: 12th May 2022
Genre: Paranormal Thriller
Content warnings: Drug references, sexual references, missing baby storyline
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…
This is an absolute blockbuster of a book which takes an extraordinary premise and turns it into something epic, expertly manipulating the concept of time in a unique and unforgettable way. With an remarkably well thought out plot that unravels in such tantalising fashion with numerous twists and turns, it is a paranormal thriller that has just about everything within its many fine and fiendishly fascinating layers.
There are some thrillers that attempt to succeed with an outlandish storyline and come up short, yet this one succeeds with flying colours as the concept is not only immensely clever and brilliantly realised, but also accompanied by so many other standout elements. The well developed, nuanced characters and the immaculate pacing also combine to make it the gripping read that it is, as well as a few moments that genuinely tug at your emotions.
On the night before Halloween, Jen witnesses a disturbance outside her house. When she and her husband Kelly go outside, their son Todd is involved in an altercation and much to their horror, stabs a man to death. The police are called and Todd, for whom this incident is totally out of character, immediately confesses to the crime and is arrested.
After a stressful night at the police station, Jen wakes up the following morning to find that Todd is somehow at home and Kelly is his usual nonchalant self, and when she raises the events of the previous night they have no idea what she is talking about. She soon realises that she has actually gone back in time, to the day before Todd commits murder.
Certain that she has been sent back in time in order to prevent the murder from taking place, she tries to find out about all the things he is hiding from her, and his connection to the victim, a middle-aged man called Joseph Jones. However, she is gradually taken further and further back, reliving days from long ago in her past as she uncovers a series of shocking truths which all have a connection to the events of that October evening in her present.
It is hard to emphasise just how intelligently plotted this story is. The murder at the beginning sets everything up well and when the time travel aspect is introduced shortly after, it becomes royally intriguing. You realise quite early on with the addition of a curious dual narrative and some surprising revelations, that there is so much more going on here than a murder and the events leading up to it, and as a result there is never a point at which you want to put the book down.
To see each little piece of what is a very intricate jigsaw slot seamlessly into place at the end was extremely satisfying, as no question is left unanswered and it all makes total sense, even the parts of the plot that seem intangible at first such as the missing baby. There are some great moments along the way where a twist occurs or you work something out, and you just have to marvel at what is at times, breathtaking storytelling.
As Jen ventures further back in time, scattered throughout are conversations and clues which end up having huge significance, but not always in the way you would expect. The interactions she has with Andy about the science of time travel are just inspired, while the character development also plays a major role in the plot as there are things to be discovered about all of them, in what is a magnificently constructed web of secrets and conspiracy.
The whole story is told in the third person, mostly from Jen’s perspective as each chapter signals a new day that she is experiencing all over again. However, at various intervals we get chapters told from the point of view of Ryan, a new police recruit who is soon drafted in as an undercover officer. This new dimension to the plot provided a massive curveball along with a complete shift in tone, but it made the mystery so much more fascinating to try and untangle.
Jen was predominantly a very good protagonist, whose reaction to going back in time was about as genuine as you might expect. She is also very introspective and the way she reacts to Todd as she shares certain moments with him again are fairly moving. On the other hand, to have not had the presence of mind to notice what her closest family members were hiding did make her seem rather naïve.
Speaking of which, Kelly turns out to be arguably the most complex character of them all, and there are many times over the course of the book where he raises suspicions, suggesting that he is not the quiet shunner of society that we are led to believe. Then we have Jen’s father, who is dead in the present, but as Jen spends time with him in the past he becomes a surprisingly important part of the overarching plot.
This may seem really odd, but for a teenage boy who goes on to commit murder, Todd is actually rather likeable. His love of science and generally light-hearted demeanour often brought a smile to my face and I loved how his relationship with Jen was brought into focus. As for Ryan, we find out little about him until close to the end apart from having a steely determination to impress in the police force, but the undercover world he enters is both murky and dangerous.
The most acute sense of place we find in this book comes when Jen starts to travel to years in the past, to a time where she has to readjust to what the world was like without some of the advances in technology and societal changes we have seen in the past decade. The courtroom scenes towards the end were also compelling and was perhaps where the tension reached its peak.
For so much of it the writing is spot on and does a great job of conveying the plot – each scene plays out to splendid effect and the pacing simply could not be any better. It is clear to see why this story has received so much praise. The only problem I had with the writing is the unsubtle way the author likes to use emphasis, a habit that has crept in during her past three books.
Overall, it is one thing to come up with an original and awe-inspiring concept, but quite another to turn it into a truly fantastic novel. Without question, Gillian McAllister pulls it off here and the result is one of the best thrillers you will read in a long time, with an amazing plot embellished by top-notch character development and good twists. An excellent achievement as well as a great read.
As the plot unravelled, this book which already had a brilliant premise, got better and better with each turn of the page. I have read all of Gillian McAllister’s books to date, and this is probably her best yet.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stephen Reads Books 