Book Review: Oona Out of Order
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: February 25, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
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.
Oona Lockhart will turn nineteen at the stroke of midnight, New Year’s Eve 1982. Much to her surprise, she faints as the clock strikes twelve and wakes up in 2015 in her fifty-one-year-old body! Luckily, someone is there to tell her what’s going on. Every year on New Year’s Eve, Oona leaps in time, sometimes forward, sometimes backward. She’s living her life one year at a time, completely out of order.
Oona Out of Order is a creative spin on time travel. The way Oona is living her life, her chronological age never matches her physical age. It’s hard for a nineteen-year-old to act like a middle-aged woman! It does wrestle with one of the same themes that most time-travel stories do – is it possible to change your fate and if so, is it a good idea? Oona usually leaves herself a note to find on New Year’s Day after she’s leaped into a different year. Some notes are more specific than others. Oona’s mother knows about her leaping but since she’s living her life in the correct order, sometimes Oona knows things about her mother that her mother hasn’t actually lived through yet. This is where my head started to hurt a little bit – trying to keep straight who knows what for whatever year Oona is in! I don’t think that’s the book’s fault though. As my son would say, “That sounds like a you problem.”
Randomly leaping through time presents some issues for Oona. How can she sustain a romantic relationship with someone or have a family of her own? She can’t openly tell everyone about her condition. The book deals with these questions in creative ways. Oona was one of my book club’s recent picks and it made for a great discussion, especially about what we would do if we had Oona’s condition. Recommended.
