Book Blurb:
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.
My Review: 4.5 stars
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke was nothing but a complete fever dream of a book that had me completely invested while being utterly lost at the same time. If there was ever a book that book clubs should dive into, it’d be this one.
First let me say, the audio was done perfectly. I read the book and listened to the audio and both Natalie and Caleb came fully formed to life. No notes. Whether you enjoyed the book or you didn’t, the writing was sublime.
Natalie was so entirely unlikable, however I really began to like her sharp tongue, especially when she thought she was talking in her head. She was living a life for someone else, but definitely not herself. I got educated into the life of an influencer and her antics to make everything look pristine. She may be one of the most deranged narrators I’ve ever come across, and I was here for it.
After being catapulted into the early 1800s, I was jarred, yet I carried on, because who couldn’t stop reading this train wreck. I felt entirely saddened by the lives of her six children. They did not choose this life and I couldn’t stop thinking about their agency and abuse. As I was reading/listening, I kept pondering how this could possibly end. Fortunately, for all the readers who read this, the ending is worth the wait. It was plausible and realistic. Well done!
Quotes I liked:
A lesson it had taken me much longer to learn: sometimes the love of strangers is much more terrifying than the hate.”
“America hates women. What a comfort to remember.”
“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.”
“On one of our early dates, Caleb had said he wasn’t “book smart,” but that wasn’t the full truth, was it? The full truth was that he wasn’t anything smart.”
