Time travel novels have always messed with my mind. I enjoy seeing how these books contend with the conundrums of having characters skip through space and time. But inevitably, reading these works of fiction, no matter how skillfully imagined and built, makes my head hurt. So I was a little hesitant to pick up OONA OUT OF ORDER, but I’m so glad I did. Margarita Montimore sets herself an ambitious task in her latest effort, but she manages to construct a compelling character study, include more than a little suspense --- and create a time-hopping novel that didn’t give me a headache.

Oona has always had a huge party on the night of her birthday; it’s only natural when your birthday falls on New Year’s Day like hers does. On this New Year’s Eve in 1982, she feels like she’s at a turning point. She’s about to turn 19 and on the cusp of a huge decision. Should she pursue her academic interests and seize an opportunity to study in England with her best friend? Or should she follow her musical aspirations --- and her first love --- and stick with their band for their first big break?

"OONA OUT OF ORDER is a bold novel by a writer who is not afraid to take risks. I, for one, cannot wait to see what she has in store for us next."

Oona’s decision remains unresolved for a very long time --- because when she wakes up on New Year’s morning, it’s not 1983, it’s 2015. And she hasn’t just turned 19; instead, she’s 51. After Oona gets over the initial shock of seeing herself in a much older body, she’s briefed on the situation by her youthful assistant, Kenzie, and her mother, Madeleine, both of whom have seen this phenomenon many times before. After all, they’ve been living their lives chronologically, like most of us do. But every January 1st, they encounter a different version of Oona, one who’s been catapulted back or forth in time, utterly unpredictably other than that it happens every time the calendar changes.

Oona spends much of 2015 getting to know Kenzie and getting reacquainted with her mother, now that both of them are adults. She also has to familiarize herself with a staggering amount of technology, not to mention catch up on 30 years of global events, fashion trends and musical developments. And she does it all with the knowledge that on December 31st, this disorienting time-jump will happen all over again.

Over the course of Montimore’s novel, Oona takes a half-dozen or so leaps forward and backward in time. She leaves letters for her future self to find, but instructs those around her to make each new year spoiler-free. Along the way, she encounters heartbreak, love, grief and more than a handful of surprises --- and she discovers that this disjointed way of living one’s life might make it all the more precious for her as she lives it.

Any potential hiccups in the time-travel plot are addressed adeptly --- and satisfyingly --- in later sections. At times, the question of Oona’s professional and financial success does seem like a bit of an easy way out. She keeps a folder in which she records stock splits and selloffs so that her past self can benefit from future knowledge (hint: invest in Apple in the 1980s), and has become fabulously wealthy as a result. I suppose this is one realistic outcome of the kind of time-hopping existence that Montimore has created, but one imagines it could have been interesting in its own right to see how Oona would cope with shifting workplace demands of different eras if she had to work rather than just mind her stock portfolio.

That quibble aside, OONA OUT OF ORDER is a bold novel by a writer who is not afraid to take risks. I, for one, cannot wait to see what she has in store for us next.