Book Description 

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.

My Review 

A few weeks ago, one of my Facebook friends tagged a bunch of us in a post about reviving our lockdown-era book club. She said we absolutely had to read this book. Coincidentally, I already had a library hold on the audiobook via the Libby app and the stars aligned to drop it into my account a couple of days later. 

I listened obsessively at 1.5 speed eagerly wondering what was going to happen next and then I impulse bought the hardcover at Target. And then I started re-listening to the audiobook. 

I still can’t figure out the book’s angle. It’s clearly satirical, but there’s something deeply earnest about the way Natalie’s machinations to control her empire are already beginning to crumble, so it’s almost like adding insult to injury when she wakes up in the past. 

There’s a big dose of schadenfreude watching Natalie try to adjust to life in the 1800s because it does not go well at all. Of course, there’s a reason why she travels back in time, and that was one of the more interesting aspects of the book. I definitely missed some clues the first time around, but I caught them on the second listening. 

I think the biggest problem with the book is that Natalie is not very likeable at all and not because of her lifestyle and/or beliefs. She’s supercilious and condescending and thinks that she’s better than everyone. Case in point: there’s an incident we hear about but don’t actually experience firsthand. When Natalie is at Harvard (yes, the Ivy League school), she prepares a ton of notes and rebuttals to debate one of her professors. Natalie was under the impression she was super awesome and everybody was amazed by her debating skills, but a classmate says that she thought the debate was sooooooo funny. 

I would absolutely recommend Yesteryear, but this book is not going to be for everyone. I know it’s already been optioned for the screen, and I think the format might be better suited for that medium because it should fix issues with static characterization etc. I found myself rooting for Natalie to succeed despite finding her incredibly unlikeable. The book kept me entertained throughout the entire narrative and there are certainly plenty of juicy bits to pique people’s interest.