The Tradwife Fever Dream | Yesteryear Review

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]I just finished reading one of the most talked about books this year, the Tradwife fever dream that is Yesteryear.

[00:00:05]But is it worth the hype? Hey, it's Jamie. Thanks for stopping by and today we are going to be talking about a book that has received a lot of attention recently. It is the sensation of Yesteryear by Cara Clerk Burke. FYI, just to let you know this video will contain some light spoilers around certain plot points and characters, but it won't spoil big moments. So if you want to go into reading Yesteryear based off of the blurb alone or knowing nothing about it, then save this video to watch later for once you've read it.

[00:00:29]But if you don't mind some light spoilers, I guess, then stick around. So Yesteryear has been doing the rounds, many, many, many of them. And the rights have actually been bought by Anne Hathaway to turn it into a film. Despite its hype though, it has received its fair share of criticism with some people not liking its portrayal of Christian traditional wives and others haven't gelled with the writing style.

[00:00:48]Personally, I loved it. I found it to be a pretty addictive read. I did not want to put it down. I was just so fascinated about being inside the head of this main character, Natalie. The elevator pitch for Yesteryear is that a Tradwife influencer living her perfect life suddenly gets transported back to the 1800s and is forced to live out the authentic, true, traditional version of the life she was aspiring to. Fantastic.

[00:01:13]And well, it turns out it's not all sunshine and roses. It's more freezing cold and disappointing loaves of bread.

[00:01:19]The book starts with a section on the past, not the 1800s past, a more recent past where we meet perfect Christian woman Natalie. She's married to her perfect husband Caleb. Caleb whose father is a big hitter in American politics and whose surname carries a lot of weight as in manages to get Caleb into Harvard when he has absolutely no academic right to be there. And Natalie and Caleb have five perfect children together with a sixth on the way. I literally made a note of how many times Natalie describes herself and her life as perfect in just the first three pages. She is immediately and intensely dislikable.

[00:01:54]>> Shocking. On the second page, she literally describes herself as 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.

[00:02:09]>> Okay, sweetie. In the first section, you get this impression of a rich, beautiful, perfectly put together wife and mother who loves her life and loves her position in the world. It's so wonderfully deluded because you quickly learn that Natalie is actually incredibly bitter and obsessed with modern women who are feminists, including her college roommate who she literally shared a room with for not even a term, I don't think, at college, 15 years ago, and she's still obsessing over her and her life.

[00:02:37]>> Why are you so obsessed with me?

[00:02:38]>> She calls the women who hate her or leave her negative reviews angry women, which is ironic because being inside Natalie's head felt like if you were inside the head of somebody who is purely driven by anger from inside out with maybe a sprinkling of disgust and envy.

[00:02:52]>> [screaming] >> But she is so bitter, it's unbelievable.

[00:02:56]And a lot of this seems to come from a mismatch between the values that have been instilled in her, mostly by her mother, and values that she never challenged and just went along with it because that's what she thought she had to do, as compared to perhaps what she maybe would have wanted to do if she felt she was able to. And for this reason, despite all of her actual hateability, there were some small moments where I felt sorry for her. But they were small because she is just so hateable, but also unbelievably hateful and self-righteous when it comes to other people's lives.

[00:03:25]>> Who does she think she is? Convincing herself that she is this flawless Christian woman and the epitome of what every other woman actually wants to be like and who they actually want to be.

[00:03:35]But her inner thoughts are just wow, very mean. But it's okay, though, because she apologizes to God afterwards. OH, WELL, THAT'S ALL RIGHT, THEN. SHE literally thinks things like most people are morons, and many of my followers were very simple people. And she refers to smooth brain social acceptance when it comes to the names that other people call their children.

[00:03:57]Because she's called one of her children after a fruit, she's quirky, she's going against the status quo. She's not a smooth brain social acceptor. To highlight her anger though and her hatred towards other people, she literally goes on to call a woman a just because she called her child Zoe. That's a bit extreme if you ask me. And while she's out judging other women very harshly for the names they choose to call their children, she's literally so disinterested in her own. You realize that baby is crying. For example, she takes her youngest when they're a baby out on a shopping trip but literally to get content out of it. She ends up leaving the child in the car whilst she goes shopping. And then later in the book, Natalie has a huge wave of relief after she hires a nanny because she realizes that she would never have to be alone with her children again.

[00:04:40]I feel like this gave an interesting commentary on people feeling pressure to have children and also on the ethics of filming your children for content. I personally do not like the idea of family vloggers and people whose content revolves entirely around their children.

[00:04:54]And I don't know if it was a purposeful commentary on where family vloggers veer into actually being incredibly problematic. From my interpretation, the book also explores the dangers of things like echo chambers mostly through Natalie's husband, Caleb. That man has had about three original thoughts in his entire life and he ends up falling down into the manosphere and conspiracy theory side of the internet. And from then on, his entire life and his outlook and all of his opinions are built around the forums that he goes on and the live streamers that he watches. And also Natalie. Social media and influencers are also discussed more generally, not just in terms of echo chambers and conspiracy theories, but Natalie is the main source of this discussion because she is the one that is the influencer.

[00:05:36]Caleb consumes the content and Natalie creates it. She has millions of followers and this was initially kicked off by a shoutout from just what sounds to be like one of your typical white straight alt-right men who has a podcast who literally describes Natalie as a traditional Aryan wife.

[00:05:55]Okay, that's enough.

[00:05:56]>> Natalie quickly takes on this social media persona that's been prescribed to her, that everybody assumes that she is, despite none of it seemingly coming naturally to her. But despite that, she still becomes a trad wife family vlogger. This is where she talks about the angry women a lot, the people who hate-watch her and like hate comment. I find that concept so fascinating. The book made it sound like a lot of her followers are not even people who like or support her. They're like hate followers. I don't get that. If you don't like somebody, just leave it, unless you want to call out what they're saying cuz it's harmful, fair. But like, why would you follow somebody just to like leave a hate comment? The idea of the conservative grift is also explored in this book. Yes, Natalie and Caleb were already predisposed by their upbringing to be conservative, but they both seem to fall very deep into it when they realize it can be profitable, or at least Natalie falls very deep into it when she realizes it can be profitable.

[00:06:43]Caleb falls very deep into it when it seems to give him a purpose or opinions in life. A whole bunch of things from social media to generational lies tie together to mean that Natalie is far more concerned about her outward appearance and what other people think of her than she is about her inward happiness and fulfillment in life. She also projects this onto her husband when he expresses wanting to be a kindergarten teacher. When he says this, she thinks a substitute kindergarten teacher job was the professional version of a fully flaccid penis. Safe to say she wasn't on board. She was initially drawn to Caleb because of his name, because of his status, because of his money, but very quickly became disillusioned to who he actually was.

[00:07:21]Overall, I really like this book and I ended up giving it four stars. It was a true page-turner for me and I was just desperate to figure out what the hell was going on. And also see Natalie's life and her lies totally unravel. That was reasonably enjoyable. And I do also just love a book with a detestable narrator. And this book really lived up to this. Two other books I read fairly recently that give me similar vibes were Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kushina and Yellowface by A.R. Rahman. Both very questionable protagonists and I've realized I just really enjoy that in a book. I would have given Yesterday 5 stars but there were just a couple things that I didn't love. Firstly, I wanted just more. Like I just wanted more detail on certain things. I wanted more detail on Natalie's religious beliefs. Like more specifics about it, more about how that fitted in with her life other than her just thinking of herself as this good Christian woman. I wanted more on the politics and the actual viewpoints of the characters. And I really, really wanted more detail on the back in time sections, the 1800s bits. Those chapters were extremely short. Some of them were literally just like two paragraphs. Whereas the other timeline which starts with Natalie in college through marrying Caleb and having kids and moving to this farm right up until just after the first chapter of the book when she's in her early 30s. That had a lot of detail and I just wanted more from the past bits.

[00:08:39]Everything built really slowly and it was so sparse. Give me more of the heinous Natalie actually having to live the life that she was desperately trying to emulate. Going back to the politics bit as well, I definitely feel like the author maybe assumed that the readers would just know what the specific political beliefs of these characters would be based on the information provided. Like the tradwife lifestyle and then the very strict gender stereotypes. And whilst yes, I think I could take a pretty good guess and I think most people could take a very good guess at what these people's political views would be. I kind of wanted them to be explored a bit more. How did they fit in with their lives and just have them explicitly talked about? I mean there are snippets, there's there's snippets of racism and homophobia and incredibly strict ideas on gender. You know, woman has baby and stays at home and cooks whilst man makes money. That's the role of a good Christian woman and a good Christian man. But they were more one-liners just here or there or something to be interpreted rather than something that was explicitly discussed.

[00:09:35]Except for the gender roles, that was a lot more consistent and explicit. And maybe the fact that the other elements weren't discussed that much makes it more powerful, but I personally would have enjoyed a bit more depth. Then generally I felt like everything was just like a little bit lacking in comparison to the main character. But at the same time, the book is written in first person, and I kind of interpreted this as, "Oh, I'm reading like the inner thoughts of someone who is so unbelievably self-absorbed." And that's kind of why we're not seeing much outside of that.

[00:10:01]>> I know you? So, was this worth the hype?

[00:10:03]Yeah, probably. And maybe even just for the premise alone and the fact that it was actually decently executed, in my opinion, I would recommend giving it a read. Especially if you like books with unbelievably dislikable main characters.

[00:10:15]>> Delicious. And are intrigued on the idea of a commentary on tradwife lifestyles, social media influencers, echo chambers, and a book that is just generally kind of unhinged, but in the best way, then I would go give it a read. So, in conclusion, Yes, Daddy turned out to not be what I expected going into it. And I can't decide if that actually overall made it better, worse, or neutral in my opinion. I will say the twist got me, but there had been breadcrumbs for it throughout the book, which meant that it made sense. And so, I found that really enjoyable. But was it the twist that I was like wanting? I don't know. I won't spoil it, but I do think for the twist and the epilogue alone, the book is kind of worth reading. If you have read it, let me know what you think in the comments down below. If you are thinking about reading it, have fun. If you like the video, think about giving it a thumbs up and subscribing if you want to, but no pressure. Although, I am on a mission to hit 60K at some point this year, so that would be really lovely. Oh, yeah, as always, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next chapter. Much love. Bye.