If you are anywhere on social media, you’ve probably heard of Yesteryear. This is the first book in a while that I have had multiple different people, in completely different social settings, mention it to me and ask if I’ve read it. And boy, have I. Yesteryear is the kind of story you can’t put down, because you have to find out what the hell is going on. It’s also the kind of story where you are actively rooting against the protagonist, because she is terrible.
Natalie Heller Mills has the perfect life, and she is perfect at living it. She and her handsome husband live on farm in rural Montana where she homeschools their six children and shares videos of her perfect life to her 8 million Instagram followers. Sure, there are half a dozen farmhands who do the actual work on the farm, and yeah, maybe she sometimes has trouble remembering the names of all her children – that’s what the nannies are for, after all – but her life is perfect and she is building an empire, dammit. Not even The Angry Women – those coastal elite haters who call her a trad-wife and flood her comment section with negativity – can bring her down.
Until one morning Natalie wakes up in a strange facsimile of her perfect life. Her house, her husband, her children, are all familiar but strangely different. Her children are skinny and dirty, and answer to the wrong names. Her husband looks strangely hardened, hardly the dashing cowboy she remembers. And her house looks like it was built in the 1850s, with no electricity, running water, or heat besides the kitchen fire. Natalie cannot figure out what’s going on. Has she been kidnapped and is starring in some strange reality show? Is this a test from God? Has she truly traveled into the past? Whatever is going on, Natalie knows that this is not her perfect life, and that she needs to get out.
Yesteryear goes back and forth in its storylines, between Natalie in her new reality, and Natalie becoming the social media influencer that we first meet. And in both storylines, Natalie is the absolute worst. Completely self-centered, judgmental, calculated and grasping, Natalie always wants more. More money, more followers, more influence, more employees so she doesn’t have to actually parent her children… it’s not often I read a book where I want the protagonist to lose, but Natalie is so hateful that rooting against her is a pleasure. But she and the book are also enthralling. I could not put the book down, and I could not even begin to guess what was actually going on. The final few chapters were just one revelation after another and with each one my jaw dropped further toward the floor. If you enjoy a bonkers story where bad things happen to bad people, Yesteryear is the book for you.
