A take on Yesteryear you haven't heard yet

I’ll admit it: I wasn’t going to read Yesteryear. The term “tradwife novel” kind of makes me roll my eyes, not because I’m a tradwife apologist, but simply because I don’t like the idea of writing a novel about a trending topic. I read the other big tradwife novel last fall and hated it. So when Yesteryear suddenly became THE book of 2026, I think I audibly sighed. Sometime in May, I plucked it from the stack on the front table at Barnes & Noble, then hastily traded it for Belle Burden’s Strangers before I reached checkout. In the few minutes I spent hovering over the towering pile of green and yellow bricks that looked like cheap knockoffs of The Antidote, debating how badly I wanted “in” on the discourse, I decided to read Yesteryear once I could buy it at Half Price Books. I didn’t want to pour any more money down the mouth of the machine that leads the publishing industry to take bets on trendy shit that is often both derivative and terrible.

So let me be the first to profusely apologize to caro claire burke and Anne Hathaway and everyone who even lightly touched this book on its path to publication. I absolutely fucking loved Yesteryear, possibly even more than Famesick. My only regret is that I didn’t write it myself.

If you don’t know already, let me catch you up: Yesteryear is about a tradwife influencer, Natalie Heller Mills (widely understood to be modeled on Hannah Neeleman and Ruby Franke), who suddenly (maybe?) gets transported back in time to actually live out the traditional values she upholds. It’s a juicy premise. I saw someone else call it a “White Kindred,” and I have to agree. Both books are dark, cuttingly sharp commentary on a social topic that was very timely when it was written.

Influencers may have ruled the 2010s, but the backlash is finally here. Meta laid off 10% of its workforce in May, and its stock is currently in its longest losing streak in the company’s history. Like my friend Emily Cody says, mega-influencers as we know them may finally be on their way out. She says influence is getting “quieter, smaller, and harder to fake.” I think regular people are tired of seeing a “perfect life” performed online by women who we know, on some level, are lying. Consumer skepticism and anxiety are through the fucking roof. Yesteryear taps into these feelings and sets them on fire.

I suppose I’m in a bit of a unique position in which to share my extremely detailed thoughts about Yesteryear, which is the only reason I’m even writing this essay four months after Yesteryear’s release when 400+ reviews already exist. I never worked for a tradwife, lol, but I was employed by a popular 30something fashion and lifestyle influencer whose job it was to lie to you, even if it was done with a light touch. Her online life—like Natalie’s—was a well-curated highlight reel, and a substantial part of my job for nearly seven years was coming up with content ideas that did not involve my boss needing to leave the house, get dressed, or even take a shower. The “Online Natalie” vs. “Offline Natalie” dichotomy in Yesteryear felt very accurate to me, except for the fact that my ex-boss’s “offline” persona was the more likable one and she wasn’t a callous witch.

Yesteryear cosplays as a time-travel novel, but it’s actually a razor sharp story about maternal mental health and the pressures the political right puts on women to have children and then not complain about how hard it is, which puts all my interests and experience smack dab in the center of this 391 page thrill ride.

***There are massive spoilers below, so please proceed at your own discretion :)

I finished Yesteryear in two days. The force that drives the breakneck pace is trying to figure out what the hell happened to Natalie Heller Mills in the second timeline, which is cleverly told in present tense. Where is she? When is she? Did a tradwife influencer with millions of Instagram followers really get transported back to 1855? Is Natalie experiencing a psychotic break? Is she being held hostage on a reality show? Wtf is actually going on here???

Pardon me for currently being in grad school for mental health counseling, but I clocked the psychotic break about 80 pages in and spent the next 300 pages more or less confirming my suspected diagnoses. I’m glad I didn’t read Yesteryear in May, because I didn’t study schizophrenia and personality disorders until mid-June and mid-July, respectively. You are about to get a bit of a regurgitation of what I’ve learned about mental disorders that I, somewhat shockingly, have not seen anyone else discuss in their reviews.