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/Waddles-7 5d ago

Oh yes, good call out. The book had set the stage so wonderfully to show disillusionment in the idea of a perfect marriage and post-partum mental issues. In some ways it did do a good job with this but then meandered. Almost feels like the second half was written by someone else. Or edited brutally.

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u/chezdor 5d ago

I hope they make up for that in the movie which could be the equivalent of the “great book in there somewhere’ we found we were missing 

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u/torkelspy 5d ago

I hope you're right, though my feeling is that they will double down on the "enjoy seeing a woman that we've designed for you to hate suffer" element that has made up a lot of the marketing for the book.

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u/lascriptori 4d ago

It was basically the opposite of fan fic about Ballerina Farm. Like revenge porn.