The Good Ole Days

SPOILERS WILL BE IN THIS BLOG, SO IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK YET, DON'T GO ANY FURTHER.

I had a very hard time walking away from this book! I've seen this novel labeled as rage bait lit for women, which is so insulting, I want to scream! Yesteryear is a layered and emotionally charged story about a woman who is barreling towards the brink of a psychotic break before fully throwing herself over that edge as the years go on.

Natalie Heller Mills is an Instagram tradwife influencer who, from a very young age, showed signs of antisocial behavior alongside a lack of empathy and social awareness. But being raised in a very religious and single-parent home, Natalie was taught by her pious mother to essentially just be kind to others because God wants you to be, not because you necessarily feel the pull to. Not really in those words, but that seemed to be the lesson I gleaned from the plot. Natalie then, in college, begins checking off her ever-important to-do list of life necessities. Number one, find a mate; it doesn't matter if you find said mate attractive or have anything in common with them, they just need to be able to provide. And number two, start procreating, even if you have zero desire to be a mother. That fact, combined with Natalie's sociopathic tendencies, is a recipe for disaster. Throw in a man-child whose own personality disorder was never dealt with as a husband, and what a cluster fuck her life becomes.

I wanted to write this blog with a spoiler warning because I would find it very hard not to mention how confusion turns to clarity by the end of the book, once the reader realizes they are reading from the point of view of someone deteriorating mentally. The premise of Yesteryear is that Natalie believes herself to have the perfect life, complete with millions of followers on her Pioneer Woman-esque Instagram page. But out of nowhere, Natalie wakes up in the real 1850's and finds the lifestyle she is pimping out to her followers is, in fact, not very glamorous or sustaining at all.

What is actually happening is that the reader is receiving Natalie's life in two parts. One part is the precipice of her online life falling apart, due to an altercation with her producer, among other things, and her ever-dissociating state. She consistently refers to herself internally as "offline Natalie" and "online Natalie" throughout that timeframe. And the other part of her life, years later, after having completely snapped in two mentally. She is ever confused that the world she has woken up in, an actual kind of pioneer lifestyle, to escape assault charges, is of her own doing. Therefore, she is frequently convinced that she has somehow been kidnapped or transported to another time, either for nefarious reasons or as a lesson from the almighty himself.

I loved how the author delivered such a surprising ending: Natalie herself made the 1850s world she lives in, by never faltering from the main protagonist's POV. Once the reader discovers that the main protagonist is falling further and further into her mental illness, the whole story makes sense. It's a sad story, but it's told with such poignancy and, yes, a good dose of rage toward the main character, and it still somehow ends on a positive note. Not for Natalie, obviously, but for at least some of her children who weathered the abuse their sick mom dealt them.

This isn't a rage-bait chick-lit book. This is a tale of some crippling mental health disorders alongside a world where values, religion, and self-worth are exploited for fame that is as close and accessible to obtain as it is to capture that one perfect shot. The social media perfect picture or reel of your own superiority, meant to elicit just the right amount of disgust alongside envy, that can create an icon. And for Natalie Heller Mills, it did. But she paid a terrible price for it.

This book lived up to the hype for me! I hope it did for you as well! I cannot wait for the movie to come out; it is currently in pre-production with MGM under the direction of Anne Hathaway! I'll be impatiently waiting for the release date! Happy reading!