User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Oh boy, WTH I just finished! My head should stop spinning! What’s that smell? Did I burn the dinner again? Oh, no I haven’t cooked anything for 2 years. There is an alarm sensing my footsteps as I take only one step in the kitchen. So it can’t be!
What a minute! This is coming from my brain cells! They’re burning! I overused them. What a mind bending, innovative, unconventional, complex reading I had! Wow! After reading this, I got a NewYearsEvephobia!
Imagine yourself as nineteen years old (I probably punched that version of myself because she was too know-it-all, pretentious prick!) celebrating your birthday and New Year’s Eve, feeling dizzy and passing out and when you open your eyes, finding yourself trapped in 51 years old version of yourself! Yes, the story starts like different version of Jen Garner’s “13 going on 30” but this is absolutely another kind of brain cells destroying story to catch what’s gonna happen next!
This is about Oona who is waking up different phase of her life at every New Year’s Eve. Yes, complicated right! Imagine finding yourself in an old body, living in a mansion (yes so loaded, uber rich, that is only best part of your condition) and as you look for the love of your life, he is nowhere to be seen.
So we catch different phases of Oona’s life and her self-discovery story! At some levels she was so mature for the body she’s trapped or vice versa.
How the system works: 1) Her mother knows her secret and she meets different versions of her daughter at every year. Madeleine is a hippy, down to earth, entertaining, nuts, sarcastic, vivid , so much lovable character (at some parts I loved her more than Oona) so she doesn’t question too much this paranormally awkward situation. She just adapts and prepares her daughter for her new year.
2) Oona’s future self always leaves her a letter to warn her what she’s getting through that year( giving a chance to a nice guy, making things up for her mother, being kind to her new husband etc.)
3) She never thinks about money because time travelling helps her to invest for the perfect stock portfolio and bet for the right teams.
What I liked about this book:
The author’s intelligence to play with our minds and usage of the details effectively. You gotta give your full concentration because any small detail serves you as an important revelation about the next year of Oona’s life.
What I didn’t like about it:
We don’t know the exact reason why this is happening to Oona. And without working or discovering her own passion to achieve something in the world, she does drugs, travels around the world, has heartbreaks and suffers from loneliness but sometimes her lack of holding something passionately (instead of taking guitar lesson but she resumes it to flirt with the teacher so it doesn’t count) made me think she is just acting like an aimless, dull vessel.
But later I thought that she was only 19 when she started her own journey so it is understandable that she got lost after bombardment of too much new information about her future life. The author just decided to give us some part of her journey but don’t worry, at those parts she learned so much life lessons and got so many experiences for her own age.
OVERALL: It’s fresh, complex, definitely grey cell killer, Unique, original, provocative, mind blowing kind of great story earned my 4 time travel, experiencing you new age, forming wonderful relationship with your mother stars!
Special thanks to Netgalley and Flatiron Books to share this mind spinning ARC COPY with me in exchange my honest review.
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Rating: really liked it
Definitely in the minority in this one. Oona drove me crazy.
Well, I saw enough like minded reviews not to feel *too* absurd in giving this only 3 stars. I have to admit I am really disappointed. It started out very strong, my interest was held and then it just fizzled right out. You've all seen the plot summary - an 18 year old leaps into the future or past every year on New Year's Day (which also happens to be her birthday). I thought this was incredibly unique and couldn't wait to begin. However, with each leap I grew increasingly frustrated with Oona and didn't care for many of the other characters either. The reason Oona really annoyed me was because I was real fed up with her terrible decision making skills. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt because she was in her early to mid 20s through most of the book (despite whatever age she leapt to was), but she was just a whiny brat through almost everything. There was only one real instance where I felt bad for her (Edward), but the whole Kenzie situation was completely over the top. I just couldn't understand that one. That's when the book really lost me.
I also was a little frustrated with the lack of explanation into the why behind most of this. I'm not someone who needs to have everything explained perfectly (and I'm capable of suspending disbelief), but it just kind of confused me as to why we wouldn't even bother a little to discuss anything having to do with this condition. My last point is that I was very emotionally disconnected from all of this. I didn't feel the highs or the lows - I was mostly just a passive observer. I'm not sure if it was because I disliked all the characters or what, but I just didn't connect the way I wanted to. I also thought some of the dialogue was really cheesy? (Wow, I guess I'm really going there in this review.)
Despite all that, I really liked the premise a lot. My wish is that it could have been executed better. I thought it was an extremely creative idea and the first two points in time that were covered I was HOOKED. I think this is really a case of right book/wrong person and I urge you to consider my review, but also take into account the many other reviewers who simply loved it. I think anytime I give a middle of the road review I try and think if I would read another book from the author again. If I would - then it's an overall positive rating. If I wouldn't, then I give it below a 3. Because I plan to give the author another chance, I give this a 3 star rating.
Thanks to Libro.fm for providing an ALC for me to listen to when I didn't have the book handy. I enjoyed the narrator and thought she did a great job. I do think a book that jumps around in time is better off being read in person so as to cut out any confusion with where you are in time (so you can flip back, etc. when picking it back up again), but not anything that ruins the experience. My last thanks goes to the Buffalo Library for providing the physical copy.
Review Date: 03/21/2020
Publication Date: 02/25/2020
Rating: really liked it
This was a great book!! ๐ค I wasn’t sure if I would like this book. Reading the premise I immediately thought of the old show Quantum Leap. ๐คจ This was so much better than expected. ๐ Oona was a great character. I was fully invested in her story and wanted to just keep reading more and more. I don’t want to give anything away.... Just know that I would absolutely recommend this as a ‘must read’ to my book pals! โค๏ธ๐ฑ
Rating: really liked it
2.5 stars. There were a lot of things I loved about this book (I'm a sucker for a well done time travel story), but unfortunately there were other things about this that I didn't like that really got under my skin and kept me from loving this the way I hoped I would. The biggest womp.
TW: drug/alcohol abuse, addiction, death of a loved one, slut shaming, fatphobia, transphobia, homophobia, cheating, terminal illness
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars.
As if life isn’t complicated enough without time travel?
“How long ‘til my soul gets it right?”
—Indigo Girls, “Galileo”
NYC, 1982. It’s New Year’s Eve. At midnight, Oona will turn 19. She’s exactly where she wants to be—at a party with her beloved boyfriend and friends, and their band is about to perform. She has a tough decision to make: should she go study economics in London or should she stay and perform with the band? But regardless of what she chooses to do, she knows it’s going to be a great year.
Then the clock strikes midnight...and when she wakes up she’s 51 years old. She’s told by a friendly stranger that she has a condition where on the cusp of the new year every year, she leaps either forward or backward in time.
This discovery is bewildering for Oona. She tries to understand all that has changed in her world and the world around her, and as she connects with the constants in her life she tries to figure out how to spend the time until she can hopefully make it back to that night in 1982.
Oona Out of Order follows Oona as she travels back and forth through her life. Guided by advice from her previous self, advice she sometimes takes and sometimes ignores, she makes some big mistakes and some shocking discoveries. Ultimately she realizes the things she can and cannot change, and is buoyed by a series of loves.
This is a poignant, moving, tremendously thought-provoking book that is so beautifully written. I love books about time travel, especially those which deal with the emotional aspects rather than the scientific. There were so many wondrous moments to be found here.
I really enjoyed this and loved the characters, including the supporting characters, so much. I felt like it dragged a bit in the middle (maybe one too many leaps through time, even though each one added more depth to her story), but I couldn’t stop reading because I needed to know how Margarita Montimore would tie things up.
This is one I won’t soon forget.
Check out my list of the best books I read in 2019 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2019.html.
Check out my list of the best books of the decade at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-favorite-books-of-decade.html.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.
Rating: really liked it
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore (#9 in 2020)
Thank you to @libro.fm and @flatironbooks for my advanced audio version of this newbie!
If I could describe this book, it would be a combination of Thirteen Going on Thirty (yusss, Jennifer Garner) mixed with the ghost of Christmas past from A Christmas Carol... mixed with any 90s primetime sitcom accompanied by a laugh track of fake audience members. I mean that... exactly as you're thinking I mean it. Now here we go with my unpopular opinion:
This book was somewhat entertaining, but it was a lil too cheesy for me. All of the characters, including Oona, have the exact same sense of wit. There isn't much variety between the characters' personalities, which left me a little bored. Don't get it twisted-- I love a good sarcastic character, but this element only works if there's contrast between characters and if the sarcasm is reserved for select characters.
The plot had way too many holes. Time travel is obviously fictional, but authors like Blake Crouch know how to craft the concept and still make it seem believable. Montimore left a lot of questions regarding the logistics of how Oona's time travel worked or why it occurred.
I felt like the author danced around a few potential themes, but never fully took advantage of any of them. With the lack of a theme, the progression of the storyline felt almost pointless. There were also a few moments that were pivotal for Oona, but the emotions never actually came. Perhaps this book just wasn't for me, so I'll give it 2.5 stars
Have you read this one? Thoughts? What books just kind of left you with that "meh" feeling?
Rating: really liked it
I loved this book so much that my only real complaint is that I think it should have been written as a series so that we could spend more time in each of Oona's asynchronous years.
Rating: really liked it
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.
๐ง๐ง๐ง 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 โณ โ๏ธ ๐ต ๐น ๐ธ ๐
*** Big thank you to Flatiron, Macmillan Audio, & libro.fm for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***
Rating: really liked it
This was another audiobook with my wife during our evening couch time. Before Netflix or Hulu, its Overdrive or Hoopla!
This book is a thinker! A creative new look at time travel: living life non-sequentially and what that would mean to your relationships and the decisions you make. Join Oona on this journey and discover how Margarita Montimore approaches this crazy conundrum.
I imagine this book will get under the skin of some due to the potential of time travel paradoxes and how certain consequences are ignored. While it is true that I thought about these and even discussed a few with my wife along the way, I was able to suspend disbelief and just sit back and enjoy. If you think you might struggle accepting paradoxes in a story, this is not the book for you.
Overall, this was enjoyable. My only criticisms would be around the pacing and the tightness of the story: it started to drag a little at times and I could feel the plot starting to meander. But the fact that the story could basically restart every chapter with a new year refocused my attention.
I recently read The Midnight Library, which has a somewhat similar theme and I liked a bit better, but this was still a good one worth checking out if you might enjoy a less sci-fi take on time travel and a little magical realism.
Rating: really liked it
This book is one I would just call “ok”. It has been a big hype on Instagram, however I unfortunately never connected with the story nor the characters. Bummed because time travel and 80s/90s nostalgia had me SO eager to read this.
Oona’s character is what bugged me the most. She incessantly whined throughout her adventures and I ended up skimming just to get to the next year. I also yearned first more nostalgia, more heart and soul. I had high hopes for Oona, but alas this one fell flat for me.
Rating: really liked it
5 Perfect Escape Read Stars!Book friends, I LOVED this book! I devoured it in 2 days. It provided the perfect escape from our dismal reality right now.
It was innovative, fun, emotional, though-provoking and very well written. I am not a huge time travel reader but the way it was done here was so intriguing. Oona is a 19 year old on the cusp of her future. It's New Year's Eve, she's in love, had amazing friends, a huge decision to make and her whole life ahead of her. Except that at stroke of midnight she awakens to find herself in a whole different place, surrounded by different people. Oh, did I mention her 19 year old self is in her future 51 year old body. Yup! Talk about a head trip!
Oona finds herself traveling through her life every New Year's Day - out of order. Never knowing where she will end up next. I loved how emotional her jumps were. There were years where she was so despondent she didn't want to do anything. Years where she was so frustrated she said F it and did all the BAD things. There were years where she grabbed the bull by the horns and did all sorts of amazing cross it off your bucket list things. Through it all, she had to keep the leaps secret from everyone except her mother.
How do you fully commit to living when you know you are only in this place and time for 365 days? Oona had many emotions to deal with, so many decisions to make based on snippets of her life she was putting together like a puzzle with only a few letters from her future or past self to guide her.
She made mistakes, she learned, she loved and she lived an exceptional life - albeit out of order. If you haven't read this one yet. I highly recommend it. It's definitely going to be one of my top reads of the year!
Rating: really liked it
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
When I first heard about this book I was soooooooo stoked. I mean . . . .
Every year, on your birthday, right at midnight, you travel through time to inhabit your body at a different point of your life. For exactly one year. Then you “leap” to another random age you haven’t lived before (could be older, could be younger). You’re physically and mentally healthy, but you’re experiencing your adult life out of order. Now
THAT is some tropey yum yum that I can get on board with. I immediately started getting the warm and fuzzies remembering some old blasts from the past like . . . .
Or . . . .
I figured if I love the idea of one age hop, then a whole bunch of ‘em would be even better.
But then I read this and . . . . .
Unfortunately
Oona Out of Order was a case of an excellent premise that I was
suuuuuuuuure was going to end up scoring 4 Stars, but the execution was a complete flop *insert sadface*. Oona was not someone I ever ended up liking even a little bit so that was never going to help matters - but then the majority of the story was all she’s going to be a famous rockstar and do drugs and have random sex despite being left notes from her damn self not to and just . . . . barf. There are enough vapid people on television 24/7 – I absolutely don’t need to seek them out in my fiction. And I realize this entire thing is steeped in the oh-so-very-not-realistic-at-all, but if you “wake up” once at a different age with no recollection of WTF happened and require an assistant or your mother or someone to ‘splain things to you, you can’t then at another time “wake up” and being fully cognizant of the goings on. Or be totally woke when you’re a boomer who hasn’t even lived your life in chronological order. Also, your average 19-year old isn’t aware of the workings of stop losses and limit orders in order to build a stock portfolio large enough to live on for eternity. Just sayin’. As my friend Ron 2.0 would say, this was just a big too
ridiculous™ and one day I will get over this ceaseless case of FOMO and not check out every single book that is overshared on the ‘Gram.
Rating: really liked it
Rounded up from 3.5 stars.
The premise caught my attention: what if one woman doesn't live her life linearly, but completely out of order, one year at a time?
On the eve of her nineteenth birthday, Oona is in a good place: at a New Year's Eve party with the man she loves, counting down to both the new year and a new year in her own life. But just as the clock strikes midnight, Oona passes out—and wakes up as a 51-year-old, in an unfamiliar place, greeted by a stranger who expects this to happen, and a letter from herself explaining the wild ride she's just begun.
I appreciated the creativity of this story, which reminded me of
Back to the Future for theme and
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine for tone.
Rating: really liked it
Nope.
I hate being harsh about books, because I know authors are people too, and it's hard for them to see their books slammed. But I have very strong feelings about this book. Spoilers ahead.
Bottom line: I thought it was dreadful. The concept is really intriguing, and it's a crying shame the execution is so very poor.
First off, this book commits one of the worst cardinal sins of a story: it tells far, far more than it shows. The choice to have Oona leap around means that she is essentially starting at square one each year, but it doesn't mean the author had to structure the book the way she did. She made the choice to summarize each of the seven years this book depicts, expanding on and highlighting key plot points, and then summarizing the remainder of the year. This not only stole a lot of the book's urgency, it made parts of it a chore to read because it was basically a laundry list of what Oona does when she's not dealing with each year's big event. Yawn. These bare bones vignettes gave me precious little feel for who any of the characters were.
My next biggest issue was with Oona herself. I thought she was just plain awful. I don't have to like characters to enjoy a book. In fact, I *hate* the whole "likeability" argument. But this wasn't the kind of book where Oona was an unlikable character whose story was still compelling to me. Instead, I was supposed to sympathize with this character, who, yes, is in an unfortunate situation, but who is so immature and self-centered I found it impossible to feel for her. She repeatedly makes stupid mistakes on an epic scale. I was fine with that the first go round or two, but every time she wakes up to a new year, she basically acts out like a toddler. At no point does she gain any wisdom. I get that she's young and immature, but I would think that her experiences would have led to her gaining far more wisdom than normal for a person her age. But, no. She's Oona. She's selfish, and she lacks any powers of self-reflection, and she's going to just go right ahead and rebel against herself every chance she gets because...that makes sense? If future you leaves a note for current you, shouldn't you maybe consider following its advice rather than deciding future you is a buzz kill? Oona acts like a snotty teenager from page one all the way up until the last page of the book.
As for her selfishness, it's mind-boggling. She treats her mother like crap every chance she gets, even though her mother puts up with astonishing amounts of nonsense from her. Some years Oona immediately leaps down her mother's throat, as if her time leaps are her mother's fault. I could not understand why she insisted on treating her mother like the enemy, or why her mother puts up with the abuse.
I'm about to spoil the big twist here, so read at your own peril. Of course, I saw the twist coming from miles away, so was it that big of a twist?
Her most selfish act, to me, is having a baby in the first place. She knows she jumps around in time and can't possibly raise a child, but she goes ahead and has one anyway because of her own emotional needs. This would be bad enough, but then she insists on interfering in that child's life because she's his mother and she deserves to interfere because she's sad. You see what's wrong with this? At no point does she think of him. Always, always, she is motivated by what she wants and needs.
(I also think her getting in romantic relationships is selfish, but I won't go into that. My rants about her selfishness have already overtaken this review.)
Another big issue I had with the book was Dale. Oona is straight up obsessed with the guy, even years after his death. I get that she would be dealing with grief for the first year or two, but the way she put that guy on a sky-high pedestal made me side-eye the relationship from the getgo. If you have to tell me how awesome Dale is, I'm going to think Dale is, in fact, not awesome. Yes, the book does address this to some extent, but at no point does Oona spare a moment to interrogate their relationship, despite the big warning flags. If you're with a guy who doesn't want you to play guitar in his band because he's hell-bent on playing guitar, and if you decide to ditch plans you made with your oldest friend because you're too hung up on your boyfriend, this is not a very healthy relationship--and I'm only just now realizing how terrible Oona is to her supposed best friend. I hope that poor woman went to London on her own, had the time of her life, and promptly forgot Oona existed.
Lastly, I just did not like the writing. The author shoehorns in so many lectures about music and fangirls so much over her favorite bands that I wondered why she didn't just write a novel using that as her theme. Like, why bother writing this sci-fi-esque story about a woman who experiences her life out of order if all you really want to do is talk about Kate Bush and Velvet Underground? That's not my only issue with the writing, though. The dialog is just so unbelievable pretty much all the time, and the writing itself didn't strike me as especially polished or profound. Some of the metaphors were excruciatingly awkward. I didn't find this to be straight-up bad writing, but it needed some work. I think this book has pretensions of being a profound work about life, but I just did not find it very profound. At all.
In the end, it looks like I should have listened to my bias against the twee title and skipped this book altogether, but the concept just sounded so awesome. I definitely wouldn't be opposed to seeing another, more skilled author tackle this same concept--just leave out all the preachy diatribes about music, please.
Rating: really liked it
QUICK TAKE: If Rebecca Searle's THE DINNER LIST and Blake Crouch's RECURSION had a book baby, it would be OONA OUT OF ORDER. full of heart, humor and geeky genre fun, this was for sure one of the most unique and escapist books I read this year and perfect for fans of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE and WHAT ALICE FORGOT.
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