Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel

By Caro Claire Burke

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR) • A traditional American woman, a “tradwife” influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel. "A bold and biting satire, Yesteryear…will have you cackling and gasping right to the final page." —Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid series My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive. Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

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Published Apr 7, 2026

400 pages

Average rating: 7.17

5,698 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

What Bookclubbers are saying about this book

✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI

Readers say *Yesteryear* is a provocative, well-written satire exploring influencer culture, gender roles, societal pressures, and faith. Many appreci...

kmaz
Very different and thought provoking.
IdleExpatter
9/10 stars
Welp, I read it. I can finally join The Discourse. There seem to only be two camps on this book: you either love it or you loathe it. I'm in the "love it" camp. This book is bonkers. Like, omg bonkers. I found it utterly unputdownable (I tore through it in about a day and a half). The story, the action between the covers, is very much a sort of trainwreck experience - you cannot look away no matter how awful it all is. And oh man, there sure is plenty of awful on these pages. If you need to have likeable characters to enjoy a book, this is not gonna be for you. There are ebbs and flows of sympathy for the main character over the course of the novel (in fact, the deftness with which Caro Claire Burke played with my feelings about the narrator is certainly one of my favorite parts of this book), but it is extremely unlikely that she'll be somebody you ultimately root for. But when I say "awful" and "trainwreck" and "bonkers", I mean the story being told. I do not mean the writing, which I found to be absolutely tremendous. I am astonished that this is a debut novel. It's so richly and fully realized, so commandingly authored as a singular vision and an experience, with such a strong voice, that it feels like the career highlight from somebody who's been at this for ages. I will definitely be keeping my eye out for anything Burke writes in the future. I read this for one of my book clubs, and I have to say this is kind of the perfect book club book because there's no way anybody is gonna come out of this one with a shrug and a "it was okay, I guess". You're gonna have capital-t Thoughts for sure. What a book! (crossposted from my Storygraph review)
Reading is Learning
7/10 stars
Frustrating to see how Natalie navigates her life.
ZQueenB
8/10 stars
Wow! I hated this main character so much…tell me what you think. It’s about how you live lie and entrap yourself in lies.
Adventurer
10/10 stars
Intense read… Not what I expected at the end and highly recommended.

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