After scouring the Internet for books that circulated around New Year's, I met Oona. Not only is her birthday on New Year's, but she is catapulted to a new year of her life at the stroke of midnight every January first. As the title suggests, she has to live her life (since the age of nineteen) out of order. Her first leap was into the body of her fifty-one year old self.

There are so many twists and turns to this book. It's not a thriller, but the plot twists are just as shocking. This is a contemporary novel with time travel elements, which I typically do not enjoy. Time travel books make me feel stupid and they give me anxiety. This book was not the exception, but I found that I enjoyed the hell out of it despite the stupidity and anxious feelings.

Some people might see these twists coming, but I was completely off base.

Spoiler

Kenzi is Oona's son. I seriously thought he was going to turn into her long-term husband or something. I honestly thought he was the love interest that withstands the other love interests. I felt extremely dirty when I came to that twist.

In addition, Oona made me cry. This is not an easy thing to do. I was sobbing for the last few chapters of this book. Okay, sobbing the last chapter of the book.

Spoiler

I love how we don't find out why this is happening to her. It's left open ended because (in my opinion) there are some things that just happen and there's no explanation for it. Even something as crazy as this... just happens.

Oona taught me a lot. This book made me think and appreciate life. Kenzi said something toward the end of the novel about how he wishes he could live his life the way Oona does, out of order. He says that she must appreciate life more and take less for granted because she never knows where she's going to end up. She also has the unique gift of spending time with loved ones after they die when she leaps back to previous years.

I would love to leap to a previous year to spend time with some loved ones that I lost. Even though Oona's life isn't easy and she's swimming upstream, fighting with trends and explanations on why she knows things she shouldn't know yet, she sees the world in a different way.

Kenzi has a point, I think.

Anyway, this is a great book and I highly recommend it. It's a lot deeper than I was expecting.