I wanted to love this book... it's everywhere and some of my most trusted book friends have fallen hard for it. I made it through 14 chapters and then I put it aside. I never got invested in Oona. I kept hoping to get hooked but it just never happened.

Oona Out Of Order ⌛️

Thanks to my friends over at @flatiron_books for the free book and thanks to @librofm for an advanced audio version! #partner

I absolutely lovedddd this book!
It was so original and so well done and just an absolute 5⭐️ read!
The audio was done perfectly, making each section of the book easily differentiated and it was super easy to follow along with.
I automatically ordered a finished copy because this is a must have on your book shelves! This one is definitely going to stick with me for years to come!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I have been seeing this book around the internet. I had to check it out. The concept for this book is fun. As I was reading this book, I was imagining myself in Oona's shoes. What would my life look like years in the future or what advice would I give my younger self.

Oona's life was a bit crazy, humorous, sad, and happy. I liked Oona and the humor that this story provided. Yet, it was not always the case. After a while, I actually found myself losing concentration with the book due to the fact that it was kind of the same story just different time and different Oona. The other characters did not jive with me. If they had, this would have helped. Although, I am glad I did check out this book as I would try another one by this author.

I love books about time travel when they are done right and this one was perfect!
New Year's Eve 1982 and Oona Lockhart is about to turn nineteen. She has an exciting year ahead of her, deciding if she will study economics in London with her best friend or stay in Brooklyn with her boyfriend Dale and try and make their band a success.
Just as midnight strikes, Oona is transported to 2015 where she is fifty one years old, even though she is still nineteen mentally.
She is freaking out, but luckily she has written herself a letter to help explain what happened. It seems that each year on her birthday she travels through time to a different, random year, hence Oona out of order!
This wonderful, inventive and original story teaches us, along with Oona that we need to appreciate our lives day to day and not worry so much about what the future brings.
I loved this book, I was sad to see it end. Sure to be a top book of 2020.
Thank you to Flatiron Books for the e-ARC via NetGalley.

This book failed to meet expectations. It sounds like a good baseline for a movie. The writing style was drawn out.

Though I am typically not a fan of books that aren’t rooted in things that could happen in real life, I did enjoy Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore! I just had to get my hands on this because the description really intrigued me.

Take a look:

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.

I always love some good pop culture references so I loved that part of the book! The author has a writing style that flows nicely and I connected with Oona’s struggles, not struggles of jumping through years of her life out of order, but about the things going on around her. I especially liked Oona and her mother’s relationship.

Margarita was so creative with this inventive novel! I’ve never read such a story where the main character is living life with years out of order. Imagine how hard that would be? At certain times, Oona knows what’s going to happen, other times, she is baffled.

This was a fun read and gave the reader a fresh perspective on life and living in the moment.

This is out now! Go here to grab a copy.

Two stars for a book with a wildly inventive, unique concept but an execution that fell a bit flat to me. Oona Lockhart is eighteen, celebrating New Years' Eve and the eve of her birthday at a party in her boyfriend Dale's basement. It's the eighties, and she's full of excitement about the impending European adventure that she is about to go on with hers and her boyfriend's band, Early Dawning. The midnight countdown begins, and 3...2...1.... Oona wakes up, and she's in her 50s, it's 2015, and she has no idea what just happened.

Turns out, starting on her 18th birthday and continuing for the rest of her life, Oona will "leap" from random year to random year every New Years' Eve. She will progress mentally and internally in linear time, but experience decades and parts of her life in a non-linear fashion. She's living life out of order.

This is such a fun premise for a book, but I ended up having so many questions about how this works - questions that are not fully answered in the book. Is Oona's fate pre-set? How do her decisions impact the rest of her life? How does she possibly make friends and sustain relationships? You of course see some of these struggles - Oona meeting friends who she was close to in the previous year, but has zero recollection of in the "present" year, Oona waking up and finding out she's married to someone, etc. However, I just never connected to the mechanisms of how all of this works, and it left me scratching my head more often than not. Time travel is a tough trope to do right.

I also found it difficult to connect with Oona as a character, and I found the same to be true with even many of the other side characters in the book. I'm not really sure why, but when I didn't empathize with her struggle, I didn't enjoy watching her leap from year to year and go through the same confusion or haze for the whole year. Her main character traits are a) loving Dale, her teenage boyfriend and b) loving rock music, neither of which resonated that strongly with me. It felt that the author gave too little time to each year, often passing off entire months in just a few paragraphs. I would have preferred seeing either more years treated in short snippets, or spending more time diving deeper into a few select years with Oona. The execution felt like too little of both of these strategies.

Overall, I did enjoy the experience of reading this fun romp through time, but I can't say that this will really stick with me in the end. Thank you to Flatiron for the eARC via Netgalley!

Terrific book. Absolutely loved it. Compelling characters and story line. Kept me interested the entire time.

Books about time travel always fascinate and frustrate me at the same time. I love how different authors explain time travel in their books, but at the same the characters in all the books somehow always end up in trouble. 'Oona Out of Order' handles both the aspects of time travel really well.

'Oona Out of Order' is about Oona (obviously) and how after every birthday after she turns 18, she ends up in a different year of her life physically but mentally her life is chronological. This creates a lot of confusion and trouble, as you can imagine, because when she ends up in the future she knows how her life has progressed but doesn't necessarily have the proper explanations for it.

I loved the concept and the complexity of this book, even though it gets a little muddled keeping track of Oona's life and the characters. Also, I loved how they showed some characters taking advantage of Oona's 'condition' and how its not always hunky-dory. I liked that the author also maintained the mystery of Oona's condition. The only thing that I can possibly complain about is how the book ended, because I wanted to read more of Oona's life and was expecting more years to be shown. But, you know it is a good book when you didn't want it to end and wanted it to keep on going.

I enjoyed reading Oona Out of Order. While I'm not normally a fan of time travel elements in books I found this one to be quite unique and engaging. It was interesting finding out where Oona ends up each year and the author put so many elements of the time period she was in and wove them into the story so well. Every New Year's Oona is transported to another phase of her life - for instance she jumps in time from an 18 year old to her 50 year old self overnight. She may end of up in the future around people she doesn't know at that point - even a husband - Complicated - I know right? That is the concept of Oona - she's living her life out of order. There were parts of this story I actually found heartbreaking - don't let the cover fool you into thinking this is just a funny contemporary story. Imagine your in the future and know that a loved one is no longer there and then you go back in time and they are - would you try to change things? There are some very thought provoking elements of the story that I am left thinking about and I actually will miss reading about Oona.

"I'll see them all again. Eventually. And lose them all. Again."

New Year's Eve 1982, Oona Lockhart is second's away from turning 19 years old. Surrounded by her boyfriend and friends at a party. On the stroke of midnight, Oona passes out and wakes up in 2015 in her 51 year old body.

"Oona stopped trusting the mirror years ago. After all, it told only a sliver of the story."

So many emotional moments in this novel. I think I was crying after first chapter. And the end. I was so not ready for it to end. I hope we hear more of Oona!!
Definitely going to be one of my most favorite books of 2020. Reminds me that even though my life may not be what I want sometimes, that I have choices and can begin anew.

Thank you to publisher and NetGalley for the eARC

Wow what a book! The perfect blend of angst, romance, pop-culture, and time travel. When I read the blurb for this book I was intrigued, sounded like such a fun concept. And while this book was a lot of fun it was SO much more! Thought-provoking and emotional. The book really gave you lots to think about, what would you do if you were in Oona’s shoes? Are there parts of your past you would change, even if it altered your future? There was also much more emotional depth to this story than I was anticipating. I might have shed a few tears. There were also lots of fun pop culture references that really gave you the perfect sense of time with each time shift.

Oona is a typical 18-year-old celebrating New Year’s Eve. Trying to figure life out. Is she going to move to London and pursue her much desired finance career? Or stay home with her boyfriend and follow her musical dreams? But on New Year’s Eve while at 11:59 Oona is 18 at midnight..... she is 51. Oona soon finds out that every year on New Year’s Eve she will jump forward or backwards in time, never knowing what age she will be next. There is so much I want to say, but I don’t want to ruin this for anybody. Oona was such a likable character and I really did feel for her. However she did frustrate me at times, I had to remind myself that her actual age was not the age that she was living. Imagine navigating your 40s as a teenager? Some of the time travel concepts may not have been plausible, but I didn’t care I was completely caught up in Oona’s life. This was a story I did not want to end, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that there is a follow up.

🎧🎧🎧 The audiobook was narrated by Brittany Pressley Who is one of the best and did a marvelous job. You might think a story that bounces around like this one would be hard to follow on audio, but I can assure you it definitely was not.

This book in emojis ⏳ ✉️ 💵 🍹 🎸 📓

*** Big thank you to Flatiron, Macmillan Audio, libro.fm for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***

I requested Oona Out of Order months and months before it was to be released and forced myself to hold off reading it until six weeks ago, so my expectations going into this one were very high. The premise of Oona is fantastic. Each year on her birthday, Oona wakes up in a different year in her life. On the outside she’s whatever age she would be in the year in which she awoke, but on the inside she’s still her chronological age. Confusing? A little, but you catch on pretty quickly. Just visualize a 19-year old in fifty-something body and you can imagine Oona’s horror the first time she shifted!

"For Oona, the pendulum could swing either way; next year, the face in the glass could be older or younger. It was the closest thing she could imagine to immortality, a game of existential roulette, even though the wheel would eventually stop spinning.”

The basic story of Oona’s time travels and what she did along the way was fun and engaging, if a little slow at times. I did grow a bit frustrated with Oona as she tended to repeat the same mistakes, never quite trusting the older (or younger) versions of herself. I’d have liked for Oona to have done something more substantial with her life and Margarita Montimore did give her a sort of humanitarian side, but I never really felt it mattered to Oona. That was just part of her cover. So, did Oona Out of Order live up to all my expectations? In the end, it truly was a fun ride, but a little neat and tidy for my taste.

Reader friends, I finished this book and just clutched it to my chest because I loved it so and didn't want it to end. Oona Out of Order felt like nothing I'd ever read before and there is something so special about a reading experience like that. Every year as the clock strikes for the new year, Oona leaps to a different year of her life, in random order- so she might be 19 years old inside her 51 year old body and living that life. I can't think too hard about the time travel science or my brain breaks, but if you're willing to let go, this book is beyond worth doing it for. There were moments in this story that just broke my heart (as well as a few that just infuriated me for Oona). It is also so interesting to contemplate what living as Oona does means- does she sometimes bungle things because her internal age is so much younger than the body and what people expect when they see her? Does she appreciate some moments more because she knows the impact of them on her future? I honestly wasn't ready to stop leaping with Oona at the end- although I felt that the author ended the story absolutely perfectly. This is an absolute MUST read!

What an amazing book!! I loved the premise and found myself getting emotional throughout the book. I have no idea how Oona made it through her leaps because I would be an absolute WRECK if it were me. Leaping into different years, different bodies sounds like a nightmare. But what she went through made her stronger, smarter and gave her the ability to enjoy the now.

The author did a fantastic job of creating characters that were funny, sometimes mean, thoughtful, loving and just plain human. Oona is a control freak who can’t control what happens to her each year. Her mother Madeleine is the perfect accomplice and confidante, even when her daughter is being a brat. The other characters are wonderful and I really can’t wait for readers to meet Kenzie (a gem) and Edward (a SCOUNDREL). Read this book ASAP!!

Giving this five stars not for being a technical work of narrative perfection but because it made me feel so damn good while reading it. And also sad and sentimental. The kind of book that can snap you out of a period of depression and gently remind you to enjoy your life no matter what it throws at you.

Basically, this is about a woman who, starting in her 19th birthday at midnight, is forced to live her life out of order: every New Year’s eve (which happens to be her birthday) when midnight strikes, she is mentally transported to another year of her life. As you can imagine, hijinx ensue, but the author has chosen to keep the tone of this book right in the middle of funny and sad without tipping completely into one or the other.

I just loved reading it and would have kept living out of order with Oona for a long time. Also, the book is packed with great musical references and dropped band names from the 90s and now I’ve also fallen in a hole of musical nostalgia from which I never want to emerge. Remember the Cocteau Twins ? Garbage? PJ Harvey? 😘

Anyway, I just loved this book. Loved loved loved it.

I have definitely been reading a lot of time jumping and alternative reality books lately, but Oona Out of Order is unlike any of the others. Starting on her nineteenth birthday, Oona starts experiencing her life out of order. 🤯 Each year, she leaps to a random year. Sometimes she is young and carefree and other times she is middle-aged.

Oona Out of Order was such a fun read! I will admit, it took me a little bit to get into at first, but I sped through the last half of the book. The book is divided up into each of the years Oona leaps into, spanning from the 1980s to the 2010s. It was so fun to get a flash of the culture and trends during each of the years Oona went through.

After finishing the book, I was left wondering what happened to Oona during all of her other leaps. I would 100% be down to read a 800 page book about Oona's full life story. If Margarita is debating writing a sequel, I highly encourage her to DO IT!

This is one of my favorite reads of the year. I loved the concept of this book. All the characters were so interesting and I loved Oona so much. This was so good!

Oona Out of Order is a book like no other, and I don't say that lightly. Initially finding interest in the novel because of the unique time travel plot, I immediately knew I had to read this debut for that alone, as someone who enjoys reading anything unique. Waking up on your 19th birthday in your 53-year-old body, to learn that you time travel to a different age each year on your birthday?! Holy crap that's crazy! As she learns to adapt, Oona's use of pop culture and especially music to help soothe and understand each year she's thrown into was ingenious and one of my favorite parts, not to mention both her relationships with both Kenzie and her mom. The mother-daughter bond in this is so realistic and touching, and it really shows the strength in positive family relationships. While it was fun getting to live through different points in the 90s, 00s, and 10s through Oona's eyes.t he real appeal of this story is how main character Oona learns to deal with her circumstances, growing into herself and her life in the best possible way. Oona's story, while different, very much so draws on that old, universal truth that makes many of our beloved books and characters so beloved: no matter what life throws at us, how we deal with it and learn to survive and flourish is what makes us - and our stories - great. I'll definitely be picking up a copy of this one, and look forward to what Montimore writes in the future.

Absolutely loved this book. The closest thing I can compare it to is The Time Traveler's Wife. Like TTW, it broke my heart a few times. I only wish I had seen more of Oona's leaps in time before the book ended.