What I Loved:

I LOVED everything about this book! The time travel was fabulous, Oona was a wonderful character, and the story unfolded with surprises big and small.

My Synopsis:

It’s New Year’s Eve, and the Eve of Oona’s birthday. She is partying with her friends and boyfriend to count down to the new year (and turning 19). The clock strikes midnight, and she awakes…in a new house and a significantly older birthday.

This is the beginning of Oona’s new life. As she turns a year older, she bounces to a new year in her body, sometimes older, sometimes younger. There’s no explanation as to why, it’s just the life she must now live.

As Oona travels from year to year, she finds struggles in the knowledge of things to come, and the unknown of what happened in years she hasn’t lived. This story takes the reader on Oona’s life as she experiences her life, out of order.

How I Felt:

I love time travel. I talk about my love of it all the time, so sorry, but here’s another FABULOUS time travel book! Holy moly, I enjoyed this book! The time travel was such an interesting twist. She can’t control it, and it’s not a one-time jump. She jumps at each birthday into another year in her life.

The characters were wonderful. Oona is obviously our main character, and the constant in the book. As she jumps, some years she has her mother to welcome her into the next year, other times she is alone, and sometimes there is a surprise guest with her. Her character struggled with emotional challenges that I think any person would face in this crazy situation. She has no control over her jumping, and while her previous year’s self usually leaves her a note to give her some advice for this next year, it’s never enough to tell her what to truly avoid doing or not doing.

I thought that this book had some great, thought-provoking ideas about the ability to see what is coming in our lives. Can we change it, should we? It was interesting to see how Oona’s choices impacted the rest of her year.

The plot was really just the story of Oona’s early jumps in her new life’s timeline as she adjusts to the people that come in and out of it, and the surprises that await each year. It was a book that just took me out of this world, and into hers. Oona Out of Order was definitely one of those books that people could talk to me, and I did not hear them. I was in the story!

Overall, this book is one of my top 2020 reads. I loved every single page of this story. It had captivating characters, a wonderful storyline, and writing that drew me in.

To Read or Not To Read:

I would recommend Oona Out of Order to readers that enjoy a wonderful character arc and time travel.

Where to Find This Book:

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore is available at these sites.

Bookshop.org | Amazon Kindle | Amazon | Goodreads

A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.

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.

Just the Facts:

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Genre: Science Fiction / Time Travel
Page Count: 352 pages
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Pub Date: February 25, 2020

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