Oona – Out of Order by Margarita Montimore (Review by Bruna Looby)

Rating: 4.0/5.0

This book is full of important topics that make us think about our lives, but presented in a very subtle and laid-back way. I loved it!

Oona Lockhart is nineteen years old and she’s having a great time at a New Year’s Eve party in 1982. At the stroke of midnight, she’ll also celebrate her birthday. She’ll be twenty, she is happy, and she has a great boyfriend. But something very unexpected happens. She faints and when she wakes up, she’s fifty-one years old! Her mind feels like she’s still twenty but she has the body of a fifty-year-old Oona. At first, of course, she thinks she’s crazy. But she finds a letter from her younger self to her older self.

She meets Kenzie, her assistant and friend. She needs to learn about technology, and she finds out what happened to her friends from 30 years ago. She also knows that next New Year’s Eve, at the stroke of midnight, this will happen again; she’ll wake up in another year, but she doesn’t know which year it’ll be. Oona always finds a note when she wakes up at midnight, that her older or younger self left her, with some clues and explanation of what happened and what will happen. But she never gives away too much, so the present Oona can experience the year by herself.

This book is all about What Ifs. What if you knew where you’ll be in thirty years? Would you change what you do today? And if you change something today, how much will it impact the future? Who will be impacted? Would you enjoy more time with people you love today? Forgive and forget?

I highly recommend this book; it’s a very quick read and different from anything I’ve read recently.