Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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I Would Not Survive in 1855…And I Wouldn’t Want To

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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We meet bright, but cold Natalie Heller as she goes off to Harvard. Instead of experiencing the world, making friends and learning, the experience shows her that what she knows is “right” and that the world is wicked. She meets a man, a man who’s family is wealthy and heavily connected to politics and she sees in him someone she can mold and make the perfect husband. They quickly marry and things immediately go downhill. Natalie loathes her husband. He has no ambition, he wants […]

more zeitgeist-y summer reading

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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CBR Bingo: Refuge, because of what the ‘strange horrible version of reality’ represents for Natalie. And also, yes, because this gives me a second bingo I feel like having just read and reviewed Fruit Fly, in which I reference my feelings on this book, I should also, you know, review this one. So here we go. Luckily, it’s come up in conversation multiple times since I read it, so my thoughts aren’t as scattered as you’d/I’d expect. SO, as the blurb and all the media makes […]

Giant Ranch on the Prairie

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke, features a tradwife influencer by the name of Natalie Heller Mills. Natalie lives on a charming little 500-acre ranch in Idaho with her cowboy husband, Caleb, and their five kids, with another on the way. On Instagram, in front of millions of followers, a pious, obedient Natalie tends to her flock of children as well as her flock of chickens. Natalie makes sourdough bread, drinks raw milk, from her own cow, of course, and makes family meals with the organic […]

Is there a good time to be a woman?

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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I can’t remember where I first heard of Yesteryear (2026) by Caro Claire Burk, but I was immediately intrigued by the premise. A successful Youtuber “trad wife” suddenly finds herself back in the year 1855 as an OG “trad” wife. I knew nothing else about the novel, but I was hoping for some clever satire. The book begins with our protagonist, Natalie Heller Mills doing an interview. She lives in a gorgeous farmstead with her husband and five (?) children–with one on the way. Their lives are […]

When You Hate the Protagonist (But Enjoy the Book)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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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. […]

The Stepford Pioneer

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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Yesteryear is the debut novel of Caro Claire Burke, and is centred on a delightfully fiendish “what if”. What if a popular American tradwife influencer one day found herself living in actual pioneer times? Such a simple conceit, and yet so thoroughly engaging. So it pains me to say: this book completely squanders its brilliant premise. I really loved the setup, following Natalie, a woman pretending to be the perfect housewife while hiding nannies, microwaves, pesticides and farmhands juuuust out of frame. I should have […]



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