Living Her Life Out of Order

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

Youth is wasted on the young, or so they say.

For Oona, that is not the case.

It all started on what should have been her nineteenth birthday. It was New Year’s Eve and she was ready to kick in the new year and the official start to adulthood when something inexplicable happened. She blacked out and woke up thirty-two years in the future. She wasn’t 19 either, she was 51. And she was destined to live her life out of order from that point forward.

Every New Year’s Eve, she finds herself thrown into a different year. She is biologically the age she jumps into. That means at 51, she found herself to be heavier, slower, and with wrinkles. Inside she was 19, but to everyone else, she wasn’t a teenager, she was a grown woman. Fortunately, she was able to use her knowledge of the future (from jumps she had yet to experience) to build up some wealth. She owned a nice house and didn’t have to worry about going to work every day in a job she knew nothing about.

Oona manages to build a nice life for herself despite not being able to live it in chronological order. She gets to live out her young days as an old woman and then gets to return to 19 with her wisdom and experience. That sounds like it wouldn’t be too bad.

I enjoyed the story, but it kind of bothered me that the reason for her yearly time travel is never explained. She doesn’t try to find a way to stop jumping. She also seems to have no control over where her time jumps take her. She just goes for the ride and accepts her fate. I guess most of us live that way. We can’t control time no matter how much we want to.

But imagine coming back to age 19 with years of experience and growth, years that no one knew you had. Imagine the possibilities.

My List of 2020 Reads – my annual reading (b)log