Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.
My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.
A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.
For the Reading Challenge(s):
2026 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #38: Domestic fiction)
The Reason
The hype. I’m sorry, but the hype got me! I’m seeing this book everywhere, and everything people are saying about it had gotten me so intrigued!
The Quotes
“The way some women so willingly compromised every ounce of themselves in the name of building a life for themselves that they didn’t enjoy.”
“All men wanted to become legends. It was so embarrassing.”
“The goal of an influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addicting.”
“And please give my husband a spine. I’m tired of him needing to borrow mine.”
My Thoughts
This book has gotten me so confused I don’t know if I loved it or hated it. I don’t know what to feel about the MC, Natalie, because she’s completely unrelatable for me and sort of encompasses everything in a person I dislike – she’s entitled, inconsiderate, smug, judgmental, delusional… But at the same time, I can’t help but feel a bit of compassion for her. How scared must you be inside, to be this kind of person outside.
To be fair, she’s had people fail her as well. Her mom, her husband, her in-laws, but she could’ve made a dozen different choices at different points in her life and she just kept choosing to pretend everything was all good on the outside. And at the end of it all, none of it excuses the person she chose to be.
This book was an absolutely fascinating character study. I don’t like Natalie, I don’t relate to her, I don’t understand her, I don’t want to know her, I can’t excuse any of the things she said, or did, or believe, but I do feel sorry for her and I wonder about what goes on inside her head and why. This book doesn’t give me any of those answers and I still don’t know if I liked it, but I do think it’s very well-written and well worth the read.
My Rating
4/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
