The Misleading Reality of Yesteryear
Why the Hype of the Summer Is Not Everything You Think It Is
By Jip Soekhai
Unless you lived under a rock for the past six months, you could not escape the book hype that is Yesteryear. Caro Claire Burke’s terrifying but fascinating debut novel became an instant bestseller and has sold over 1.4 million copies since its release. But where did this hype come from? And, most importantly, is Yesteryear worth all the hype?
As far as the success of a debut novel goes, journalist-turned-writer Caro Claire Burke has had a journey that stands in a league of its own. Ever since the rise of BookTok, novels can go viral overnight and turn into huge bestsellers. As for Yesteryear, its hype has been two years in the making. On the 19th of July 2024, Deadline broke the news that there was an auction underway for the film rights to a novel called Yesteryear. Mind you, the book had not even been published yet, but big stars like Anne Hathaway and Elizabeth Banks were already battling for the rights to turn it into a film. Two weeks later, Deadline announced that Amazon MGM Studios won the auction for the film rights to Yesteryear, with Hollywood A-lister Anne Hathaway attached to produce and star in the adaptation.
The bidding war for Yesteryear’s film rights created a lot of anticipation around the release of Burke’s debut novel. On the 12th of December 2025, Anne Hathaway posted a video on Instagram in which she proudly shows an early copy of the book, accompanied by an official release date: April 7, 2026. With a reach of nearly 45 million followers, she smartly boosted the hype around the release of Yesteryear even more. Fast forward to summer 2026: the book has finally been released. It becomes an instant Sunday Times bestseller, sells over 1.4 million copies and continues to dominate the Goodreads reading charts. But why?
Yesteryear revolves around Natalie Heller Mills, a tradwife and successful influencer. With plenty of money, a handsome hubby, cute children, and an idyllic ranch, she feeds her eight million followers on Instagram enviable content on a daily basis. Freshly baked bread reels play on a loop and each Target visit gets its own vlog. Everything and everyone are shown on Natalie’s platform, seemingly in good harmony. Who cares that nannies and farmers work their asses off to preserve this illusion? Natalie’s life is one that mere mortals can only dream of. That is, until she wakes up in a reality that contains traces of her life, but lacks all the luxury she is used to. The flannel-linen hybrid duvet has changed into a stiff, thin quilt. Her husband Caleb is no longer the soft (in every way possible) husband she knows, but an unforgiving man with no mercy. She has children that look like her own, but do not feel like her own. And apparently, the year is 1855. What the fuck?
The premise is undeniably appealing. Who does not want to read about (the downfall of) a successful woman who seems to have it ALL? And so, Yesteryear starts strong. Within the first few pages, we meet pro/antagonist Natalie Heller Mills, who introduces herself as “a flawless Christian woman. The manic pixie American dream girl[…], the mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to.” She even gets sick sometimes, of how perfect her life is and how good she is at living it.
Burke uses a first-person point of view throughout the entire novel, which allows us to crawl into Natalie’s head, following her every thought. Burke quickly establishes that Natalie has little love to share for a flawless Christian woman. Natalie does not love herself. When she is discharged from the hospital after the birth of her first child, a daughter named Clementine, she “gazed up at the sky and prayed furiously for death.” She does not love her husband, whom she describes as a “nice, dumb rich kid” and “an idiot.” She talks about her mother and sister with nothing but contempt, stating that she hates her sister for having children more quickly than her. As for her actual children, Natalie feels utter relief when a nanny is hired and she never has to be alone with them again.
And then there are the Angry Women, who post hate comments on her Instagram posts: “The ones who called me a tradwife… these women were not sane, nor were they happy… they spent so much time bathing in their own rancid jealousy.” Natalie describes the women she knows from high school and college in a hostile, demeaning manner, with each example illustrating how she sees them as competitors in a game that exists in her mind only. Whether Natalie lacks self-love or is simply unable to see women as anything other than potential rivals remains unclear, but her self-destructive attitude towards them is maintained throughout the entire novel, and the effect is that she becomes utterly unlikeable. While that makes for an entertaining read in the first half of the novel, Burke leaves no room for redemption, slowly turning Natalie into a sour, intolerant bitch. As the final events in the novel unfold, I wish I felt more empathy for her, but Burke managed to make me feel just as sour towards Natalie as the character felt towards other women. I felt like Natalie deserved what she got. Was I slowly turning into an Angry Woman too?
While Burke never confirmed that she based her main character on a real-life individual, BBC states that readers of Yesteryear have been quick to point out parallels between Natalie and the very real tradwife Hannah Neeleman, founder of Ballerina Farm. With more than ten million followers, nine children, and a rich husband with an even richer father, the similarities are striking. In an interview with Penguin, Margaret Atwood said that she did not make up the events in The Handmaid’s Tale; they were based on real-life newspaper articles. Suddenly, The Handmaid’s Tale went from ‘dystopian fiction’ to ‘closer-than-you-think fiction.’ I am convinced that Yesteryear continues to fascinate its audience because of its parallels to our contemporary society, as tradwives such as Natalie are very much part of the world we currently live in.
The comparison makes for an interesting thought: How would Natalie deal with fellow tradwives? Based on how she treats everyone else in her life, a fellow tradwife becomes no friend of Natalie, but simply another female competitor to win from or — worst-case scenario — lose to. But real-life competition or not, over the course of the novel Natalie slowly turns into the exact person she loathes the most, an Angry Woman. Thanks to the first-person narration, we get invited into her jealous and, at times, irrational mind to experience this process alongside her. Ultimately, Natalie turns out to be an unreliable narrator, which is by far the most interesting aspect of Yesteryear. Without spoiling the entire novel, I will say that near the end of the story, it becomes clear that Natalie’s reality is not necessarily the most truthful one. Her thoughts become so unreliable that fact and fiction slowly merge into one big blur. It made me think back to an encounter Natalie described with Vanessa, a woman she met in high school. Did Vanessa actually wear a “sour expression” and a smirk, or did Natalie bend the truth to fit her reality? While analysing this grey area would make for a great case study on female protagonists written from a first-person point of view, Burke does nothing to deepen the psychology behind Natalie’s character traits, which leaves me with the most important point of this review: why Yesteryear is absolutely not worth its hype in terms of substance.
As it turns out, my hopes and dreams for the ambitions of Yesteryear were slightly too high. Between marital problems, frustrations about her children, and a father-in-law who is running for president, Natalie decides to fool the world. She sets up an Instagram account on which she creates an image that later becomes her (misleading) trademark: that of the happy tradwife. Thanks to soft hubby Caleb and his manosphere forums, the account blows up overnight. Yes, you read that correctly: the man-o-sphere. Seemingly on her way to give Yesteryear more substance, Burke first introduces us to the term over a dinner Natalie has with her parents and in-laws, and with it, the story seems to steer in a direction I could not have imagined before picking up this book. Was this novel really going to burn the tradwife to the ground while simultaneously critiquing the idiocy that is called the manosphere?
The answer is no. After Burke first mentions the manosphere, she does absolutely nothing with the ideology behind the term to strengthen her story. Near the end of the novel, Burke mentions the manosphere again, except now it functions as the name of a log house in the woods, complete with a television and someone peeling potatoes. It has nothing to do with the definition of manosphere that currently goes around online. Burke had the opportunity to score an open goal and still managed to miss. Had she dug deeper into the themes behind the frightening concept of the manosphere and managed to weave it together with the ideology behind tradwives, this novel could have become a modern piece of ‘closer-than-you-think-fiction,’ just like The Handmaid’s Tale. However, it does no such thing and therefore remains (safely) on the superficial surface.
Burke’s debut novel is an undeniable hit, if a story without substance is your kind of thing. Reading about the downfall of Natalie’s life is certainly captivating, but the story lacks depth on its most promising fronts. Burke does nothing more than scratch the surface on themes such as feminism, political power, the manosphere, and child abuse. Had she dug deeper on any of these subjects, Yesteryear could have become a lot more than a fun read that now leaves you empty-handed. On the back jacket of Yesteryear, fellow writer Bella Mackie’s blurb reads: “Everyone will be talking about this book.” And I get why. It is because Yesteryear makes absolutely no point. Readers are left on their own to figure out whether there even is a point to this novel, which leaves me to draw only one conclusion: the hype of the summer has no message. And this realisation turned me into the one thing Natalie loathes more than most. An Angry Woman: unsatisfied and waiting for more.
Jip Soekhai (she/her)
Whether they come to me in books, films, plays, ballet, or musicals, stories have been my lifelong love. I surround myself with them; they make me feel safe, and in the future, I hope to make a living by making sure they continue to be told. One of my career goals is to interview queens Emma Thompson and Olivia Colman on whatever they want to talk to me about. And I cry a lot (we’re talking at least six times a week).
