Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

 

What book has Instagram or other social media convinced you to read?  I kept seeing Yesteryear everywhere, so I read it last month.

Natalie Heller Mills is an Instagram “trad wife” living a seemingly perfect life. She lives on a beautiful farm in Idaho with her cowboy husband and six kids.  Behind the scenes nannies, farmhands and a producer keep the perfect life alive for social media.  When Natalie wakes up one day in the past and must live without modern conveniences, will she make it?

My thoughts on this novel:

·       I see mixed reactions to this book online.  People seem to love it or hate it.  I liked it, it was a unique story, and I couldn’t stop reading it.

·       The characters are not likeable, but I did want to see what would happen next.

·       The twist in the story was interesting, I had suspected it, but I was not one hundred percent sure how it would work.

·       It is interesting to think about the power of social media and how it can show things to be 100% different than reality.  It seems like a lot of problems now are that people believe in “realities” that don’t really exist such as the “perfect” life you see in pictures that is not actually reality.  This book also showed how politics and social media are intertwined.

·       I find the “trad wife” trend confusing.  Do women really want to the live the life of our ancestors without having rights and modern conveniences?  I am 100% behind women that want to stay home and raise their kids, but I am not behind women who think that their lifestyle is the only way that women must live.  I didn’t think I would be living in a world that is talking about taking away women’s right to vote.

·       The book show the hypocrisy that even the women who say they want traditional roles are not really following them themselves.  It reminded me of Serena Joy from The Handmaid’s Tale.

·       Natalie’s point of view moves through time to show how her and her husband got together initially and their life leading up to the start of the book.

·       This would be a good book for a book club discussion.

·       This book is hard to classify – maybe contemporary, mystery, speculative, psychological thriller.

·       SPOILER ALERT – I did feel like Natalie is made out to be the villain when she was more the victim of her upbringing, postpartum depression, and from being drugged.

Overall, Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke was a unique and thought-provoking novel that I think would be great for a book club discussion.

Book Source:  Review copy from NetGalley.  Thank-you!