Summary:
It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order…
Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever-changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.
Review:
I picked up this book because Soleil from The Little Readers Corner recommended it in a video she made about time travel books (watch that video here).
The premise of this story is that it’s almost Oona’s birthday (which is New Year’s Day) and every year, at midnight, as her birthday starts, she time travels to a different age. She starts as she is celebrating her 19th birthday, except when the clock strikes midnight, she’s suddenly 30 years older and her body has just turned 51 years old. By her side is her good friend, Kenzie, trying to explain things but Oona is pretty much freaking out. The story follows from there as we get to see several years of Oona’s life, out of chronological order that most people live. She never knows what age she will be next and most times there is a letter waiting for her from the previous year’s Oona.
I really loved this book. The concept was an absolutely fascinating one and I think it was executed brilliantly. We obviously don’t get to live every year of Oona’s life, but the ones that the author did show us were beautiful, fun, heart-wrenching, and meaningful. Each year that we follow Oona in is a year filled with life lessons and mistakes, attempts to change her future (or her past?), and they were all enjoyable, even the hard ones. I absolutely loved the way this book was written. Living “out of order” alongside Oona was such an engaging way of telling this story and I really enjoyed every minute that I spent reading this book.
Oona grows so much in this story. I have to commend this author on some truly excellent character development. She’s flawed. She makes the wrong choices, sometimes in spite of the advice from the past year’s Oona, sometimes because she’s following that advice. She doesn’t always do the right thing and sometimes that ends up hurting the people that she loves (those few that do know she’s living her life out of order especially). I really liked following her as she traveled at random through the years of her life trying to find and make amends for mistakes that haven’t happened yet or have happened 20+ years in the past for the people in her life.
Overall, I will absolutely be recommending this book to everyone I know that likes science fiction. I had such a good time reading this story (and the way my jaw dropped when we find out the twist about her tattoo. I wish I’d taken a picture). This book made me smile and laugh, but also occasionally a little mad and sad. There was such a range of emotions to feel throughout this story and the author did a great job of making me feel them all. I also really loved the fact that this story left me feeling filled with hope. That sounds sort of weird considering that Oona will continue living her life in random years, turning random ages, jumping through time, but the story that is told is filled with hope and lessons about living your life and making the best out of the time you have and the people you have that time with. I just really liked this book.
Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.
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