Oona Out of Order
Margarita Montimore
Flatiron Books
Fiction, General Fiction/Sci-Fi
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity, Girl Power, Time Travel, Urban Tales
***+
Description
New Year's Eve has extra meaning when you were born on New Year's Day, and 18-year-old Oona Lockhart is looking forward to both
1983 and her 19th year with great anticipation. On the one hand, she has the best boyfriend in Dale, and their band just got a
solid gig offer that could launch them to stardom, opening for a bigger act on tour. On the other, her mother Madeline and
best-friend-since-forever Pamela still think she's going to school in England and onward to a solid professional life. With two
futures before her, how can she possibly choose?
At midnight, the choice is taken away from her.
One minute, she's in Dale's basement with all their friends. The next, she's standing in a strange house, and a strange man is
telling her she's in the future: her future, in her own 51-year-old body. Somehow, Oona has not only jumped ahead a few decades in
a single night, but apparently every year from now on she'll "leap" to a new, random year of her life, her mind and memories
forever out of synch with her surroundings. Worse, aside from some stock tips and betting options guaranteed to keep her wealthy,
she can't change her life or anyone else's; whenever she tries, things go terribly wrong.
As Oona experiences her life's events out of order, she comes to understand what living is truly about.
Review
Oona Out of Order has an interesting concept and smaller scale than many genre books; aside from the time travel conceit, which is never explained, it's not even really a genre novel at all, but the story of one woman trying to figure out her life from random events in random years. Oona isn't the smartest protagonist, very much still a teenager inside until a ways into the book, who does stupid things even when she really should know better. The scope of the novel also feels oddly... limited, I suppose is the word. We only experience seven years of her out-of-order life, so mental-Oona's still rather wet behind the ears by the great moment of truth at the end; I couldn't help but wonder what an older Oona would have to say about her experiences, looking back on a shuffled life, or even how she'd handle knowing her own expiration date (which she'd probably figure out by sheer powers of deduction at some point, even if she didn't "live" through the event itself via temporal leap). Instead, the plot ends up skewing into a cul-de-sac centered around motherhood and the bonds between parents and children, which I felt squandered some serious potential. There are some great moments and some heartrending moments (and, yes, more than one "what the frell are you doing, you moron, you're the character I'm supposed to be rooting for and I just want to throttle you right now!" moment), but overall I think I just wanted more exploration of the central concept and less derailing into the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters.