Book Review - Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Title: Yesteryear
Author: Caro Claire Burke
Genre: Fiction/ Historical Fiction
Published: 2026
 
Description: My name was Natalie heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.
 
Nathalie 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 heir to a political dynasty? 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 snow she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless 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.
 
Review: “Yesteryear” is without a doubt one of the most talked-about books and most fascinating debuts of the year so far. The book takes the popular social media trend of tradwives and brilliantly takes it to the extreme. What begins as sharp social commentary quickly turns into a gripping psychological thriller with elements of social horror.
 
We meet Natalie Heller Mills, a highly successful influencer who, at her Yesteryear Ranch, puts on the perfect Christian pioneer life for her millions of followers. Behind the scenes, however, her reality is a fabrication of nannies, exorbitantly paid producers, a lazy husband, and pure pretense.
 
But then the unthinkable happens: One morning, Nathalie wakes up and suddenly finds herself in the harsh, filthy reality of the actual year 1855. Without ring lights, without modern luxuries, and facing the brutal hardship of the nineteenth century, she must find a wat to survive and figure out whether she has landed in a bizarre reality show, a timeless nightmare, or a test of God.
 
Natalie is calculating, hypocritical, and remarkably lacking in self-awareness, but her razor-sharp, cynical inner voice makes her as intriguing as she is reprehensible. With her she has created a sort of MAGA version of Amy Dunne (“Gone Girl”).
 
The humor in the book is dark. The way Natalie dissects her own marriage and modern culture is, at times, painfully funny. The book tackles deep, timely questions about the gap between online identity and lived reality, the commercialization of motherhood and the dangerous romanticization of a violent past.
 
By shifting between Natalie’s past at Harvard, her life as an influencer and the raw struggle for survival in 1855, the tension remains palpable throughout.
 
The big plot twist is unpredictable and dark, but the end felt a bit rushed. That was my only complaint. Because overall, because it’s a fast-paced book you just can’t put down. “Yesteryear” is definitely worth the hype.
 
Rating: 4,5/ 5