A flawless Christian woman. The manic pixie American dream girl of this nation’s deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn’t make sense, but also, by God: it worked. ​My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.
page 4
Table of Contents
Why Yesteryear?
I’ve been hearing about Yesteryear since shortly after its release in April 2026. It is a very popular book and talk about it has been everywhere. At some point in May I even considered picking up a copy of it myself until I heard lexi aka newlynova’s short review of it which dissuaded me from that course of action since the book didn’t seem to be for me.
Fast forward to July 11 and I was visiting my local library like I usually do on Saturdays and saw a copy of Yesteryear on the Best Bets shelves. My curiosity got the better of me and I took the opportunity to skip the 2000+ holds queue and see what the fuss was about. I checked that copy out and read the book over the duration of a couple days.
All I knew going into this book is what the description says and from what I gleaned from lexi’s short review. I read a paperback edition of the book (ISBN/UID – 9781039057920). Author blurbs on my edition of the book are from – Nita Prose, Ashley Audrain, Hannah Deitch, Clare Mackintosh, Abigail Dean, Louise O’Neill.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
Yesteryear is a literary fiction novel with satirical elements and a mystery/thriller thrown in for good measure. A satirical mystery is perhaps the best genre descriptor that I can come up for it. It follows the story of one Natalie Heller Mills, a so-called “trad wife” influencer who mysteriously awakens in the brutal reality of 1855. Oh no, how did this happen? Time travel? Elaborate hoax? What could it possibly be?
If it sounds like I am not taking this book seriously, it is because I am not. Quite frankly, I very much disliked reading this book and the more time I spend thinking about it the more I dislike it. Let’s start with the main POV character, Natalie.
Characters
Natalie is the most obnoxious character I have read in a long long while. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about her as a person, she is terrible to everyone around her, she is miserable and is on a quest to make everyone around her miserable in some quixotic quest for freedom and self-empowerment. I hated Natalie and I hated being in her thoughts as she went off on yet another internal monologue about how much she hated $X person.
That brings me to characterization. Every character in Yesteryear is a caricature because Natalie herself is a caricature and sees everyone around her as different caricatures. I can’t say I liked or even cared about any of the side characters in this book. There is nothing there to like or care about. It really felt like everyone in the story had their one specific role they had to play and their particular script was very very obvious.
Take Natalie’s husband Caleb for example. Caleb fully embodies the caricature of a rich failson who having born into money falls into the rabbit hole of the so-called Manosphere and becomes increasingly a right-wing conspiracy pilled rich failson. Oh, did I mention he is also a philanderer? Yeah, of course he is.
Every character felt like the book pointing at them and telling us – “hey look, this is what happens to the people around one of these trad wife influencers! They are all terrible and made even worse by Natalie, do you get it now?!”.
Themes
That brings me to themes. Yesteryear wears all of them on its sleeve – womanhood, tradition, patriarchy, child abuse – it is all presented with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The book hammers home the point about womanhood and Natalie’s understanding of what it means to be a Good Woman to the point of exasperation. I kept thinking – I get it, what are you going to do now?
That is one of the biggest problems I have with this book. It tries to tackle some very large and heavy themes and does a surface level job of all of them. Anyone who has been on the internet for the last decade or so knows what a trad-wife influencer is, what a Manosphere bro is, how patriarchal American Christianity is etc.. This book isn’t saying anything novel, it doesn’t bring any new perspective to the table, nor does it contribute anything meaningful to the discourse. It is all stuff that I already knew about presented in the form of a satire.
And the satire is not good. This book tries to apply a level of dark humour to the situation Natalie finds herself in and it all just falls flat for me. It just didn’t work. I never found the satire even mildly funny. To a certain extent, it felt like the book was very pointedly trying to be funny for the sake of it and not as a way of deeply interrogating its themes using satire.
I mean what is this line supposed to be?
My wagon was hitched to a sex pervert.
page 130
Oh, and its got dick jokes too! I am getting Heavenly Tyrant flashbacks and that is making me hate this book even more.
I felt like I needed to throw a dish towel over his penis and wait an hour to let it rise.
page 89
Mystery
The mystery in Yesteryear is wholly unsatisfying to read. The big reveal at the end had me going, “huh, that’s it?”. If you are coming into this book looking for the fun that comes from trying to figure out a mystery, then look elsewhere because this book ain’t it. I was mostly just glad that I had finished the book and didn’t need to spend more time reading it.
Perhaps the only redeeming aspect of the ending was that it did in fact reinforce the themes but as I mentioned earlier, the themes didn’t need more reinforcing so it just came off as the book browbeating me with its sledgehammer to really make sure I got what it was trying to say.
Concluding Thoughts
I very much hated Yesteryear. No aspect of it was redeemable. The main character was extremely unlikable and the rest of the characterization was a one-note affair filled with trite caricatures. The book does a shallow job of exploring its myriad heavy themes and its use of satire fell flat on its face and made me dislike the book even more.
This is now the worst book I have read this year. I should have trusted my gut instinct and stuck to the original plan of not reading this book at all. Books like these are sometimes the price for satiating my endless curiosity about popular books. That said, I don’t understand why this book is so popular and I am not sure I want to. In fact, it is probably for the best if I erase this book from my mind after I publish this review.
Boy howdy am I glad I didn’t buy this book. Yay for libraries.
That is all from me. See y’all in the next one.
P.S – No, Yesteryear does not get any grace for me for being a debut novel. If a book is topping bestseller lists like this one is, it is exempt from that particular personal policy.
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