In the first week of July 2023, I read Wrong Place Wrong Time. Luckily I got this book in Kindle Store Daily Deals with only $2. This book seems to gain attention from every book reader I know in social media, so I definitely pick this book as the first read for this month.
The story follows Jen Brotherhood, who witnesses her son, Todd, murdering someone right in front of their house with a knife. Baffled, she tries to get the answer, but her son doesn’t want to speak. Miraculous thing happens when she slept after the event. And then she wakes up, but she finds herself exactly in the day before the event. Each morning she wakes up days before the murder, like her timeline moves backwards now. As her life goes backwards, the question arises: can she prevent the murder from happening? If she can, how many days she must go backwards in order to stop the murder?
“It’s theoretically possible for you to have somehow created such a force that you are stuck in a closed timelike curve.”
Wrong Place Wrong Time, to me, has promising premise. When picking this book to read from my Kindle library, I had no idea that this book plays with time traveling. So when I did, I expect that this would turn into Christoper-Nolan-type-of-movies, the story that will make you scratch your head so hard with complicated plots.
Thankfully, the plot is quite straight forward. Of course, there are clues or details that you better don’t miss to fully grasp the whole idea, but other than that, you don’t need to be in 100% focus to be able to catch up with this book.
Throughout the first half of the book, I could feel the frustration that Jen might feel, after finding her own life moves backwards. Every time she tries to talk to her husband or her son, that Todd will murder someone, they only stare her in disbelief, as if she is a mad woman. So, she must act alone.
But, there are some details that has not been answered until the end of the book. For example, as her going backwards in her life, she meets a professor Andy, who specializes in Physics and the time travel theories. In the book, Jen sends an email to him asking for explanation why this is happening to her. But of course, the email won’t come tomorrow as she’ll wake up yesterday tomorrow (I know this is complicated!!) But no explanation about him until the end. I mean, since he’s a professor in physics, surely he could have taken a major part in her journey going backwards?
One thing that is displeasing for me is the writing style. The writing style is too much tell not show. And in the middle of the book, the plot seems to go really slow I even easily get bored. There are unnecessary moments that is written in detail, I can’t get the idea how is this moment relevant with the whole plot.
Moreover, the story focuses more on Jen and her adventure. Little that we know about her husband and her son, as well as the man her son murder. We only know other characters by dialogues between them and Jen. So, it’s rather hard to grasp her son’s motivation, why he kills the stranger man, what relationship between him and the stranger and what the pivotal moments that is the turning point for her son to murder someone.
And this book doesn’t really meet my expectation. After knowing that this book is about time traveling, I expect a complicated multi-branches plot (like, you know, Christoper Nolan movies 😂) but this book doesn’t provide that, which, thinking about this later, is pretty reasonable since this is a story written in book. Surely giving reading complex mind-twisting plot like movie does can be really challenging.
The book ends really abruptly. I think this is intentional, to give the sensation of book hangover for the readers. I remember finishing this book in the bus, and when I read the last word, the main question remain unanswered (or if it is, it doesn’t answered clearly). And this was bothering me because lack of scientific explanation why Jen experiences time moving backwards for her, what is the consequences once she altered the past and why she keeps moving backwards until certain point in her life, and how to stop that phenomenon.
Because of this frustration, I think sci-fi is not the main genre of this book. I’d rather think this book as purely mystery and thriller with sci-fi as the “additional flavor” to the whole story.
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.
Finishing this book makes me thinking, there is so much detail in our life that we miss, and only when we are given the chance to go back will we understand our life thoroughly. Like, we think we know someone because we’ve known forever, but when we pay attention to the details, there may be things about them that we’ve discarded before, even though the details is really important in our relationship and our life in general.
“Sometimes,” he says gently, when she’s finished, “the emotions of living something the first time prevent us from seeing the true picture, don’t they?” He rubs at his beard. “If I could go back– the things in my life that I would just stand and truly, fully witness, if I knew how they were going to turn out . . .”
After all, Wrong Place Wrong Time has a really good premise and incredible story concept. But unfortunately the writing style is kind of boring (because too much tell, not show) and the plot in the middle of the book is quite slow. Overall, I like this book. I really love Jen’s adventure going back in time, revealing much detail about her life that she hadn’t put much attention to before.
Therefore, I give this book a 4/5 🌟.
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