Review: Yesteryear

Damn. THIS is an amazing book. I read it cover to cover today because I had to know what in the world was going on. Natalie and her husband run Yesteryear Ranch, and she has amassed a huge social media following. However, things are not as they seem on the ranch ... and someone has discovered it. And then one day she wakes up in a distorted version of Yestyear, a version truly stuck in the past, with no foreseeable way home.

I was on pins and needles, both wondering how she would escape the madhouse she had woken up in, as well as reading about the chaos happening in the alternating chapters as we learn what is unfolding as someone discovers the truth of what Yesteryear looks like in "real life" vs online.

This was wonderfully written. Natalie is the all-American influencer that so many women aspire to be, and she projects the all-American perfect life, and has millions eating out of her hands. The truth of what she has to give up to actually make that "perfect" life happen is much darker, however. And that truth, and how Natalie is forced to deal with it, in many different ways, is what makes this story so powerful.

ABOUT THE BOOK

My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

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 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 now 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.

A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.