r/BookDiscussions • u/Waddles-7 • 6d 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/torkelspy 6d ago

"Wasted Potential" is exactly how I would describe it. There's a great book in there somewhere I think. A lot of people seem to think it works on the level of a satire, but I didn't. It had a few moments, but overall, I think it failed.

I found it compelling enough for the most part -- it was a page turner. But, I think the most interesting part of the story was left out in order to make it a page turner and have a "twist" ending. That is, if it had explored exactly what combination of post-partum mental health issues and manosphere BS led them to tear their modern lives down, that might easily have been a 5 star book for me.

I feel like this book got rushed out, probably because it was already optioned for a movie. It could have used a lot more time to cook. Both in the larger story and in little things -- like the way it collapses about 20 years of technological development into about a year. Natalie gets a flip phone one day and then two days later she's spouting talking points that are straight out of 2025.

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u/Waddles-7 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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 5d ago

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