Book #72 of 2020:
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
I really adore this high-concept book about a woman who travels to a different year of her life every birthday at midnight. (When she turns nineteen, she finds herself in her fifty-one-year-old body, and so on.) The inherent drama of interacting with loved ones who haven’t shared the exact same history recalls earlier stories like 13 Going On 30, The Time-Traveler’s Wife, or The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but author Margarita Montimore spins out a wholly original tale that I found utterly enchanting and engrossing.
The only thing holding me back from awarding this novel a full five stars is that it ends without exhaustively traversing Oona’s life, resulting in a few truncated plot threads that I was expecting to be revisited. For instance, the protagonist spends one year with friends she’s never met before, but we never do get around to seeing her meet them in the first place. The storyline still finishes with a satisfying degree of resolution, and it’s possible that a sequel will eventually pick back up and show some of those moments that are merely hinted at here, but I wanted this volume to keep going far beyond its final pages. I know that’s hardly a terrible flaw, yet the incompleteness doesn’t quite feel like a finished statement to me.
[Content warning for transphobia and heavy drug use.]
★★★★☆
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