D-
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Yesteryear was one of my most anticipated reads of 2026 so it’s such a bummer that it fell apart for me. I think this book had the opportunity to be a really interesting commentary on the Trad Wife movement and on White Christian womanhood, but it took a turn that felt frankly kind of lazy.
Natalie Heller Mills is a very successful trad wife influencer. She lives on a farm with her husband and six children, and every day people log on to watch her bake healthy meals from scratch, dress her children in matching beige linen clothes, and collect eggs from her “Ladies” (the chickens).
This image is a lie, though. Natalie has nannies, farm hands, and a producer who never show up on screen. Her kids are not perfect; in fact her oldest daughter is refusing to participate in her posts. Her husband is unfaithful. Natalie is determined that none of this becomes public.
Then one day Natalie wakes up in the 1800s. Her husband is older and more grizzled. She has two children she doesn’t recognize and might be pregnant with a third. She’s on an isolated farm with no water or electricity.
The book goes back and forth between Before Natalie (the influencer) and After Natalie (waking up on the 1800s farm). We see how she becomes an influencer, which honestly was the better, more compelling part of the book.
Natalie was raised by a single mother (her dad abandoned the family) who was religious and her idea of success is really tied to White Christian womanhood. She went to college to find a husband, married a man with similar values who comes from a wealthy family, and immediately dropped out of school to have and raise children. The reality of her life is very different than what she imagined, though.
Natalie’s husband is not motivated to be successful and essentially refuses to work (this is possible due to family money), but even though they are financially secure this is not a choice Natalie considers acceptable. Due to the way she understands gender roles, her husband needs to be a provider for her to have the “perfect” life she feels compelled to live.
This is where the book is interesting.
- Natalie has no real power to create a successful life because her religious faith tells her she can only act as a support system to her husband, and if he refuses or is unable to meet her expectations she cannot act directly as it would be outside the sphere of her gender role.
- Natalie eventually figures out a way to achieve that success by monetizing her acting out her “traditional” gender role on social media, but it’s a lie, in part because it’s not sustainable (she needs outside help) and in part because her husband and oldest child really have zero interest in participating.
When Natalie wakes up in the past, she has no audience to perform for and so then the question becomes, “Without that audience seeing her perfection, is it worth sustaining it?” She doesn’t just want a traditional rural, Christian life where she submits to her husband; she needs someone else to observe it and validate her in order for it to be “authentic” in her mind.
The problem is the book promptly drops this exploration and it feels like a cop out. I can’t explain without spoiling the rest of the book, so please continue with the understanding that I’m revealing a lot here.
Seriously, spoilers from this point on. There’s no turning back.
“After” Natalie is actually just ten to fifteen years in the future. She’s been canceled online, which leads her to having some kind of psychotic break where she has amnesia. Her husband is still her husband, her two children are her two youngest, and they’ve gone completely off grid. When her husband leaves to “farm” everyday he’s really going to hang out with their oldest son who lives nearby. This son also provides the food she thinks her husband is harvesting. I felt like this book could have done a lot more with the idea of needing an audience to perform aspirational living in order for it to be valid, and instead it was like “Natalie was manipulative, too fragile to handle cancellation, and then got amnesia.” Like, what? It felt like the author spent all this time setting Natalie up as a compelling character and got bored with her. I’m also not sure about what the message is supposed to be because it sure felt like, “Natalie is a bad person and we’re not supposed to like her so I punished her by giving her amnesia and making her live in the shitty past without antibiotics and running water.”
It’s very much a book about how the women who carry water for the patriarchy are the first to be discarded by it, but the main character was so flat and unlikable that I didn’t care at all what happened to her. I was more interested in the deconstruction of her influencer identity and how it was embedded within her understanding of White Christian womanhood.
It’s a bummer that the set up for the book was so good and then it fell apart. It’s actually more of a bummer than if the book was just meh to begin with.
Yesteryear had so much potential and was such a let down I just can’t recommend it.
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Oh man, I was really looking forward to this book. Thank you so much for the thoughtful review Elyse. One book off the TBR.
Saw a woman sitting on a bench on the High Line in NYC a few weeks ago reading it. Asked if she liked it and she said so far, so good. It’s on hold at the library and I’ll try to read it when it comes in. Avoided the spoiler but am now warned. I like that the plot is a bit different, but I’ll see if this is one of those YMMV books or if I totally concur with Elyse’s judgment.
Ugh, I hated this book. I agree with you about the cop out plot twist. Also, it was so angry and disturbing that I had a hard time shaking it when I was done. I wanted to read a dozen cozy fantasy books afterwards to get rid of the lingering dark feelings it left me with.
Wow, that spoiler really made me LOL. Thanks for sharing this review!
I am on the list for this at the library, so I won’t be out $ for it, but wow that’s a weird direction.
The ending sounds massively stupid (and a likely end game for several off-the-grid influencers that exist in the real world, pft).
I really hate how books/shows treat that spoiler thing. I realize most conditions aren’t treated super accurately in fiction, but for some reason, this one is used so much and so badly. It’s used to erase/handwave away everything that just happened, treated for laughs, another MC uses it to prey on and manipulate the other person (and that’s often treated as either charming or justified), etc.
Anne Hathaway bought the rights and is doing a movie as producer and star. I had it on hold at library, but will cancel. What a waste for everyone.
I began listening to the audiobook (the reader is perfect) but switched when my libraary copy became available. It was a disturbing read. You have articulated my disappointments beautifully.
I won’t say I enjoyed it, but it kept moving me forward. Also, YMMV definitely. Without trying, I visualized Natalie as a rather unpleasant in-law, who, if she was 30 years younger, definitely would have tried her hand at being an influencer. Her house has been “instagram-ready” for years before there was an instagram, and she rewrites unpleasant things constantly. Like ignoring the fact my late f-i-l was an abuser (arrested for DV at one point), and kept sending us photos of him at family gatherings and talking about “happy memories.”
So there was a bit of spiteful schadenfreude in my reading, which I don’t think there will be for everyone.
Yikes. Thank you for the thoughtful review–definitely not the book for me…
Early on the library list and I agree that the book approaches many interesting questions and drops them without exploration. The book was disturbing without saying anything worth hearing.
If it is made into a movie I won’t be seeing it.
Thank you for the spoiler! This book was outside my usual tastes, but I was so intrigued by the premise and the buzz that I thought about picking it up. But that spoiler is not the direction I want, or would enjoy, so you saved me a library hold.
Well guess what. Good or bad, I just heard that Anne Hathaway is producing this and it will be a movie starring Hathaway as well. I haven’t read it yet but I am looking forward to the movie!
Ha ha ha ha! I actually wasn’t interested in reading this book. I think the Trad Wife thing is overblown. The phenomenon cannot be found in economic statistics or voting patterns. Yes, there has always been a conservative traditional values subculture in the US but it’s not suddenly more popular. It’s just a new name for the same thing that has always existed. But something about this book rubbed me the wrong way. So a whole book about an Instagram influencer who is actually lying about her lifestyle (just like in real life IMO) doesn’t sound that interesting to me. But the spoiler?? Oh my, that’s so dumb!!
My library says it’s ready for me, but even before this review, I hesitated to borrow it. The spoiler? Jesus take the wheel. The potential for authentic and deep soul-searching was right there. Swing and a huge miss.
I commented earlier, but today I read the transcript of an Atlantic podcast with the writer. I don’t feel as harshly toward the book afterwards. It was interesting to hear her process and her reasons for the plotting. I still found the ending unsatisfactory, but I would recommend the book with caveats.
I cannot keep reading this book. The main character is so viscerally annoying and unlikable that I have to put it down. She’s full of herself, small minded, and cruel. I truly don’t care what happens to her in the book. Might be aliens? Might be a mental breakdown? Doesn’t matter because she’s so flat and awful to read. Giant bummer of a book and I’m sad I wasted money on it.
It’s so interesting how books affect different readers. I loved this book. I devoured this book. I was on Natalie’s side then questioned her thought process then was angry at her then angry at some of the other adults around her the thought, what is going on? Where is she? Is it real? Has she lost her mind? Is it a trick? The story raised so many questions about the modern world and the treatment and expectations of women and, to a lesser dgree, men and my mind could not stop whirring. I love a book like that and I didn’t have to like her to be compelled by it but I can see why other readers couldn’t get on with it at all. I will be recommending this read to my friends but maybe not all of them.
She actually has 4 children in the 1800’s timeline – Mary, Maeve, Noah and Abel, and there are potential hints of other pregnancies and/or births.