Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Published By: Fourth Estate
Publication Date: April 7, 2026
Date Stopped: May 3, 2026 @ Page 120
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Bought
Format: Hardback
Pages: 400

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‘My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive…’

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle – and has the social media accounts to prove it. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy, her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What Natalie’s followers don’t know won’t hurt them.

Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. Her home, her husband, her children―they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? Natalie knows just two things for sure: this isn’t her perfect life, and she must escape, by any means possible.

Yesteryear is the book that is everywhere right now. Everyone is raving about it, and after looking into it a little bit more, I definitely jumped on the hype bandwagon with this one. Now, this is very different to my usual kind of read, I am really not a literary fiction girl but hearing about the premise of a trad wife influencer waking up in 1855 and having to live the life that she has been promoting, sold me completely. I am such a time travel girl! I adore any book that includes time travel so I was completely sold.

Honestly, the first part of the book, I loved. Seeing Natalie’s life as a trad wife influencer was really interesting. Especially seeing this difference between what her followers see of her life online and what the reality is actually like. I was really interested in it. Then the time jump happened and this should have been the part of the book that I loved, but my interest very quickly waned and I ended up being really bored. I was really looking forward to seeing Natalie having to adapt and see the reality of a ‘Trad Wife’, but up to where I read we really didn’t see any of that. Once we got into the 1800s time period, the book spent more time on flashbacks of Natalie’s life than it did her actually experiencing this life. And I was really disappointed by that. I got to the 120ish page mark and I was so bored and sick of being in the head of such a horrifically horrible person, I decided to google the ending to see whether it was going to be worth it. Prior to this I had had my suspicions about what was really happening here, and I am sad to say I was completely correct in my assumptions so I decided to put this book down.

I am so sad that I didn’t like this one, as I was so excited for this book. I had such high hopes but sadly it wasn’t for me. I know this book has been optioned for a movie and I will definitely watch it. I think this book actually will translate really well to film and what didn’t work in book form for me, I think will work exceptionally well on screen. So I will give it a go, but for me… for the book. It was a no.

I always keep my full reviews completely spoiler free, but I feel like there’s just so much more to say so here are my spoilery thoughts. If you haven’t finished the book and intend to read it do not read any further.

~ SPOILERS ~

So prior to me looking up the ending, there were a few areas of the book that just didn’t seem to fit for me. For example, Natalie wakes up in 1855 and she says to her family that she needs to use the restroom, at which point her family reply ‘so go on then’. My initial though here was that I don’t think someone in the 1800s would know the term ‘restroom’. They were barely having toilets indoors at this point. This was my initial hmmm moment. Then just Natalie’s erratic behaviour, and her family just being exhausted as if to think ‘here she goes again’. You would 100% be put into an asylum in that time period. So I had my suspicions at this point that she hadn’t actually gone back in time and that she was more than likely having some sort of mental breakdown. At this point I googled the ending… to find I was in fact correct. This was the thing that really made me put the book down as the only reason I picked it up was I was so intrigued about the time travel aspect. So to find that that isn’t actually in the book has made me really disappointed and I just know I wouldn’t enjoy the rest of the book. It’s such a shame, but never mind.