I’m delighted to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for clever and fascinating book The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore. Thank you to Tracy Fenton and Gollancz for giving me the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book.
About the book:
What if you lived every year of your life in the wrong order?
Brooklyn, 1982. Oona Lockhart is about to celebrate her 19th birthday and ring in the New Year. But at the stroke of midnight, she is torn from her friends and boyfriend, finding herself in her fifty-one-year-old body, thirty-two years into the future.
Greeted by a friendly stranger, Oona learns that on every birthday she will enter a different year of her adult life at random. Still a young woman on the inside, but ever changing on the outside, who will she be next year? Wealthy philanthropist? Nineties Club Kid? World traveller? Wife to a man she’s never met?
As she struggles between fighting her fate and accepting it, Oona must learn to navigate a life that’s out of order – but is it broken?
Margarita Montimore’s whip-smart debut is an uplifting joyride through an ever-changing world that shows us the endurance of love, the timelessness of family and what it means to truly live in the moment.
About the author:
After receiving a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, Margarita Montimore worked for over a decade in publishing and social media before deciding to focus on the writing dream full-time. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and dog.
My Review:
As someone who has loved time travel fiction since I first read Time and Again (one of the best time travel novel ever written) by the incomparable Jack Finney at the age of ten years old, as soon as I heard about The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart I knew this was a book I had to read. And wow, it did not disappoint! I loved everything about this clever, complex and superbly plotted story and did not want it to end.
The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore is a witty, sharp and thought provoking read with a refreshingly different take on time travel that works incredibly well. A bit like the TV show Quantum Leap, which had the main character leap into the bodies of people throughout history, this story has Oona leaping into her own life, beginning on her nineteenth birthday. At the stroke of midnight, Oona finds herself torn away from everything (and everyone) she knows and transported thirty two years into the future, where she wakes up in the body of her fifty one year old self. There she meets a friendly stranger, who tells her that every year on her birthday she will enter a different year of her adult life at random.
What follows is a fascinating tale that sees Oona learning to navigate her new life, trying to remain as ‘spoiler free’ as possible, so she doesn’t disrupt her own timeline more than she needs to. With pop culture references throughout, The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart is a fun but poignant read that highlights the importance of family and what it truly means to live in an ever changing world. As the story progresses Oona must learn to accept her fate, going through the ups and downs of life we all have to face – only in the wrong order. Her relationship with her mother, one of the only people to know the truth about her life, is a tempestuous one to say the least, but is an aspect of the book I found the most intriguing.
Can Oona come to terms with her fate? And will she be able to live a meaningful life in the topsy turvy world she’s been catapulted into?
Margarita Montimore has written a book that is a worthy addition to the time travel genre and one that I know I will go back to time and time again.
Highly recommended.
The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart is available to buy now: Amazon UK
Check out what these other fabulous bloggers have to say about this book:
Cal Turner Reviews 