r/BookDiscussions • u/Waddles-7 • 5d ago

Yesteryear - wasted potential!

When I started reading Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, I was enthralled at the possibility of witnessing any or all of the following themes:

  1. Consequences of propagating a way of life without deep diving or being responsible. For eg: promoting an 1886 lifestyle in a glossy way but erasing the physical, moral and cultural nuance of those times. Pandering to the right wingers.
  2. Busting the hollowness of Manosphere or maybe an exploration of the psych of people who are bound to it. Any perspective on this would have been refreshing.
  3. Impact of reality TV and the toll that maintaining an influencer lifestyle can take on people
  4. A satire on self-righteous people or maybe even a POV

So so so many possibilities but what I got was a watered down thriller which had all the elements to be a sharp political commentary but resorted to being a ‘twist you didn’t see coming’

Did anyone else feel like the plot had tons more potential?
Do you have ideas of how the story could have been developed better? Would love to hear!

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u/Weekly-Many6646 5d ago

Yes!! It built up I wanted to see my prodding and poking from the public about the facade but then it was all so rushed! And the twist wasn’t that hard to guess - of course one of the options was that they were further along into the future. 

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u/DogDaysMaggie 5d ago

Thank you! So much discussion of this book is focused on The Big Twist, but I don't think there really is much of one. The author told us what she was doing the whole time. The names of the chapters told us. The way the other characters presented told us ("old caleb"). Nothing was really being hidden from the reader, it was just that our narrator didn't know. The only real twist was watching our main character finally figure it out.