The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: McAllister, Deanna. Wrong Place Wrong Time. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY 10007. 2022. AZW file.

Jen Brotherhood believes she has a great life with her husband Kelly and her son Todd. She is waiting up for Todd when Daylight Saving Time kicks the clock back an hour. She looks outside to see Todd coming toward the house. When a man approaches, Jen sees Todd stab the man. She rushes outside with Kelly. Her law training kicks in as she urges Todd not to speak. Unable to do anything that night, Jen wakes the next morning determined to find the best lawyer available. The problem is that Todd is at home and claims to have no idea what she is talking about. Jen soon discovers that she is moving backwards in time. She eventually discovers she is caught in a time loop – apparently created by a moment of “hysterical strength” as she sought to save her son. As Jen continues to live her days backwards, she is determined to find the inciting incident that led Todd to murder the man names Joseph Jones. Jen will not be surprised to find she failed as a mother, leading Todd to this terrible crime.

Jen soon begins to realize that she missed a lot of details when she lived these days for the first time. Some of these are about the amount of time and attention she pays to her clients at her law office. Some are about her feelings of inadequacy when faced with Todd's highly scientific mind. Some are about the constant banter she shares with Kelly which Jen eventually sees as his effort to deflect any deeper conversations.

While the author is presenting Jen's story backward, a young police officer named Ryan is living his life forward. He is tapped for a special assignment investigating a criminal enterprise. When a stolen car has a baby inside, police ramp up their investigation and Ryan goes undercover. He is soon introduced to the boss – Joseph Jones – and sent to the office of a lawyer who is helping identify houses that are likely vacant. There, Ryan meets Jen. He introduces himself with his undercover identity – Kelly Brotherhood. Ryan quickly falls in love with Jen and comes to fear Joseph. Ryan does not want to tell Jen that he is investigating her father as part of this theft ring. Instead, he quits he police and commits to his undercover identity.

As Jen travels back in time, she learns Kelly's true identity and realizes that his early association with Joseph is what really led Todd to kill Joseph. When Jen lands on the day the baby is kidnapped, she goes to the police station where she tells Ryan she has information about some people who are stealing a car that night. The police intercept the thieves, eliminating the kidnapping in the process. Jen then spends some time with Ryan, ensuring that they begin their relationship as Jen and Ryan before Ryan has a chance to go undercover as Kelly. She immediately knows she has stopped Todd's crime, saving him from prison. When she arrives back in 2022, she learns that nothing she did made changes to the present other than what happened on that final day – her husband Ryan is a police officer, the baby named Eve was never kidnapped, and Joseph Jones was never arrested. Meanwhile, Jen's friend Pauline learns that her son Connor has been arrested because of his involvement with a criminal named Joseph Jones. Pauline wakes the next morning to discover that she has gone back in time a day.