A Review of OONA OUT OF ORDER by Margarita Montimore
This year has been particularly strange for my sense of time. In some ways time has been surprisingly short and in other ways it has been so incredibly, painfully, long. If you woke up on what should be January 1st of 2021 and found yourself instead in 2019 or any year previous, would you live life differently knowing what this year would bring?
This kind of “time travel” is the inciting incident of OONA OUT OF ORDER by Margarita Montimore. Oona celebrates the end of 1982, but when she wakes up Oona soon discovers that something strange has happened, and now each New Year’s Eve brings her into a new year, but out of chronological order.
Instead of adopting a thriller tone and attempting to solve what caused Oona’s mysterious condition, the book centers on Oona’s life and journey as she navigates this new relationship with time. As a result, it is a fun and focused piece of fiction that dives into the deep waters of what makes time truly meaningful.
Published in February of 2020, OONA OUT OF ORDER is — thankfully, in my opinion — not colored by the events of this year, so you will not have to relive this year in fiction form. Instead, it is the perfect piece of contemporary escapism to curl up with this holiday season.
