The question on the book cover sums up this mystery beautifully: How do you stop a murder after it’s happened?

            The novel opens to a placid domestic scene, one that succinctly and deftly depicts the two main characters in the story, Jen, a lawyer, and her husband, Kelly, a painter. Kelly is heading off to bed. The clocks are about to go back that night; their eighteen-year-old is out past curfew, but Jen smiles as she realizes that her clever boy will technically not be late because the clocks are turning back. As she sits vigil by the front window, she sees her nerdy A-student approaching the house, but then spots another figure approaching from the shadows. She summons Kelly. They both rush outside just as their son son plunges a knife into the stranger.

            The next morning, Jen wakes up a day earlier than the stabbing. The following morning, she wakes up a couple of days earlier, and so on through the novel. The plot unfolds via time travel to significant moments in the past.

            The structure is brilliant. Via Jen’s ventures into her past, McAllister shows how easy it for anyone of us to miss what we don’t really want to see. She also demonstrates shows how one choice/event in life leads to a consequence that influences the next set of choices/events. Via time travel, Jen gets to re-live the times that she zipped through and more deeply appreciate them. The author includes a character, a physicist, who shows up, throughout the decades, lending his sort of science-based opinion as to what Jen is experiencing.

            McAllister’s writing is good: great tone, style, pacing, character development and spot on descriptions of setting as we travel through the decades with her. Her plot is so engaging that I read the book in two sittings, even though I had a million other things to do. She resolves the book with a little bit of an info dump, explaining what happened more than showing it. However, I needed the straightforward description, otherwise I might not have figured out how the story worked out. That’s just me. For example, the first time we watched the movie Fight Club, my husband and I had no idea what was going on. The second time we watched the film, we had our friend, Jennifer S., sit between us, remote in hand, stopping to explain each scene. So, yes, the info dump was probably necessary for me.

            If you are looking for a page turner and would enjoy a little time travel, I recommend this book.