Gillian McAllister

This book was suggested for our book club by one of the members. We just met today to discuss it. Our members either rated it 3.5 or 4.5 with about half for each rating. It did provoke a good discussion.

Jen is waiting up for her 18 year old son to come home. It's the 30th of October and the clocks are going back an hour for the end of daylight savings time. As she looks out the living room window, she see her son, Todd, coming down the street. Then he stops, looking at something down the street and Jen sees that it is an older man. She senses something is wrong and she calls her husband, Kelly, and goes out the door with him. Before they get to the pair Jen sees a knife and then sees it plunge into the body. At first it is not clear which person is the victim but then we realize that Todd stabbed the older man. All Todd will say is that he had to do it but won't explain why. Jen goes to bed that night after waiting at the police station trying and failing to see Todd. The next morning she wakes up and is astonished to find out that Todd is back home and that there are no signs that anything is amiss. Eventually she realizes that it is the morning of the day before the attack. Somehow she has gone back in time. And she thinks that maybe she has a chance to change the outcome. She finds the knife in Todd's backpack and takes it out, hoping that without the knife Todd won't be able to attack the stranger. Then she goes to sleep and when she wakes up next it is Day Minus Two. She reasons that she didn't change the outcome and has to do something else. And so it goes; every time she falls asleep she goes futher back in time, trying to right whatever went wrong. Every once in a while throughout the book we get a segment about Ryan Hiles, a young police recruit who is asked to go undercover to infiltrate a crime syndicate that is stealing cars and shipping them overseas. It takes a while to understand what this has to do with Jen and Todd but eventually all becomes clear. I can't really say anything more without spoiling the ending but suffice it to say that the man that Todd stabbed is not a good guy.

Almost all of us in the book club said that we would like the opportunity to go back in our lives. It's almost axiomatic that people wish they had done something different or talked to someone they loved more or maybe just see ourselves at certain fateful times. It would be great if it were possible (maybe).… (altro)

Gillian McAllister, where have you been all my life?! This was a fantastic book, with a unique plot and very well written.

Jen, an attorney in her dad's firm, has been married to Kelly for twenty years; they have one child, Todd, and a pretty average life, until Todd kills a man in front of his parents.

Following Todd's arrest, Jen wakes up the next day, but instead of being tomorrow, it is the day before the murder. As Jen wrestles with her sanity, she grapples with how to keep Todd from killing the stranger. When Jen wakes up the next day, it is now two days before the murders, and so on.

Jen begins to realize she is the only person experiencing this backward time travel and uses it to her advantage to find clues and figure out why her son is a killer. As she goes back in time, Jen begins to question everything she ever knew about her life: Is her husband really who she thought he was? What about her Dad? And herself?

At the end of the book, Jen and Kelly meet for the first time, twenty years earlier, and Jen is finally able to piece the puzzle together.

If you are looking for a unique read - this one is it!… (altro)

This time-travel novel started off with a lot of promise, but went on a bit too long for me, as the main protagonist went many years back in time. Jen watches through the window as her son, coming home late one evening, stabs and kills a man. But the next day, it hasn’t yet happened, as it is the previous day. And each day she wakes, further back in time, until she is many years in the past. Luckily, she had a friend who could give her advice on this time traveling, and she knows she is going back to fix something; she just doesn’t know what. It’s an intriguing concept, if somewhat confusing. The characters are interesting and likable for the most part, but the plot is somewhat disjointed in the telling, a necessity in time travel. There are twists along the way, so pay attention to what is said, as well as what has happened, what may happen, and what has been stopped from happening, and it will all make sense. Maybe.… (altro)