If you’re anywhere in the literary zeitgeist, you’ve seen this book mentioned somewhere, probably multiple times:

Now, while I do like to follow along with new releases from my favorite authors and publishers, I’m not specifically the kind of reader that makes it a point to seek out the latest, hottest new releases right away. I preorder things a lot, sure, but it usually takes me a while to get to them once they’re out (due to my gigantic TBR).

But I saw this book in literary circles so much recently that I couldn’t escape it. And I noticed something interesting about it: The reviews seem to be very skewed.

Either people think this was the best book of the 21st century or they thought it was a piece of garbage not worth the hype.

Well, seeing something like that made me immediately curious. And knowing the premise (something that sounded like it could be good if done well), I thought I should probably check this thing out and see where on the skewed spectrum my opinion falls.

Here’s the summary snatched from its Goodreads entry:

A traditional American woman, a “tradwife” influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855—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.

Now, this could either irritate the shit out of me or fascinate me. Before going in, I’m going to theorize now that my enjoyment will depend on how well this main character is done- I have DNF’d books centering around influencers and/or digital creators because they’re usually insufferable and/or idiots who should know better. So, we’ll see how Burke does.

A small note- I am reading the audiobook for this one, so I’ll include notes on the audio production if they’re relevant.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

I found quickly that my worries about being irritated by influencer talk were unfounded. When we see Natalie “working” on her social media, it’s more unnerving than anything. From the get-go, Natalie is just so clearly out of touch with everything- not just her family, which feels (intentionally) like cardboard cutouts, but society and social situations in general. The way her view of the world is slowly but adequately developed and built upon is really interesting, and it’s not too long before you understand that Natalie is not normal.

Here’s the big thing about this book: people are rating it so skewed because it’s being marketed way wrong.

This book really isn’t following a trad wife influencer having to navigate a pre-technology world she’s supernaturally (?) been thrust into against her will. Those sections are only a pretty small portion of the narrative. Most of what we see is Natalie’s life and her early adulthood, meeting her husband, marrying him, becoming pregnant and figuring out what they’re going to do with their lives. This is why some people leave this book dissatisfied. From the blurb, you’re primed for a period piece, fish out of water kind of story. That’s really not what this is. Again, the “yesteryear” sections are sparse and don’t really have a story to them, it’s just scenes of Natalie hating doing laundry by hand and being afraid of her “husband”.

NOW! This is not a complaint from me. I actually found the main bulk of the story, Natalie’s life before “yesteryear” and how she got herself into such a messy sham of a life, to be engaging, quality literary fiction. I actually found myself wishing to be done with the old-timey sections so I could get back to what was essentially the “real” plot of the book.

But that right there is exactly why some people don’t like the book. It’s marketed as something it just isn’t. It’s not a period piece, it’s not following a modern woman through struggles and redemption and learning a lesson about how good she actually has it compared to the women of the “traditional” era she so seeks to emulate.

I’m not going to spoil anything, but I will say that the ending really wasn’t what I expected, and I found it a really entertaining surprise that made me admire the author for thinking of it. It didn’t follow the formula one might expect, and instead, you realize things were much, much worse for Natalie than we ever thought, being inside her point of view.

I do have one negative thing to say. I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of books with a good ending that hits hard, only to be dragged along for twenty more minutes for an “epilogue” that completely takes the wind out of the sails and softens the ending. It’s the issue I had with Rachel Harrison’s Black Sheep, and this book suffers from that mistake as well. I really don’t think the epilogue (again, I’m not spoiling anything) added anything to the story, and it just took away from what would’ve been a really killer ending.

Take this as a lesson, if you’re a budding writer. Don’t overstay with a twenty-page epilogue. Let the gut-punch ending be what the reader is left with, not some boring scene that adds nothing.

Still, despite this little issue, I still gave this book a solid four stars.

SO, IS THE BOOK OVERHYPED OR A MASTERPIECE?

I mean, I wouldn’t really say either. I thoroughly enjoyed it as a literary fiction, and once I understood that the marketing was just not correct, I really enjoyed it. You will, too, if you don’t go into it expecting what the blurbs say it is. Which is kind of stupid, and I’d probably give a stern talking-to to the marketing team for this book.

If you want some well-written lit-fic about a woman who’s trying to create the best life for herself without really understanding how the world works or how she should be relating to it, you’ll really enjoy this book. If you want a story about a modern woman dropped into the days of yesteryear where she learns a valuable lesson about feminism, that’s not what this is. I’m sure there’s a book out there with that premise, but I haven’t read any, so I can’t really make a recommendation on that front.

I would now call myself a fan of Burke and will be excited and ready to purchase her next publication when the time comes.

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Monthly Writing Goals Update

12,292 / 20,000 words

Clearly, the spreadsheet I showed off last week is still doing me a ton of good.

I wrote a scene yesterday in Romantasy that really reinvigorated my love for that story. We’re well on track to finishing that project by October, per last week’s new goal!

I also wrote a short story for an anthology call and got further with my audioboook project. Good things coming, my friends!

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