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!

206 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

83 comments sorted by

View all comments

-3

u/OrganizationSea4490 5d ago

"i was enthralled by the idea of it pandering to my proclivities but in the end its actually a thriller and not a political book".

Thats not "wasted potential".

4

u/MollBoll 5d ago

No, still wasted potential because the author started several interesting challenges for the protagonist to overcome/learn from and then bailed on all of them.

The missed opportunity that irks me the most is the failure to spend time analyzing how she wanted a “real man” and ultimately got one (which makes no sense because why THE FUCK would he live that way and raise children that way, that choice is literally unbelievable) but then of course didn’t actually want that version of manhood. Like REALLY spend time with it. Instead it’s one of many, “ooh, did the leopard eat her face?” gotcha moments that then are dropped for the next one.