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If you’ve walked past any bookstore window in the past month or so, you’ve probably seen a copy of Yesteryear peeking out from the display. This is one of the must-read books of 2026, and I am thrilled to report: the hype is very well deserved.
As per the blurb on my copy, Roxane Gay describes Yesteryear as ‘absolutely unhinged’ – and I couldn’t say it better myself.
The narrator, Natalie, says she has “never had that much trouble with anything in her life”. She lives on a farm in Idaho with her husband, Caleb, and their litter of adoring, adorable children. She earns money selling this dream lifestyle on the internet, capturing every moment of her perfect days on camera (as long as the light is good and the angles are right).
Never mind that it’s all a facade. Her followers don’t need to know about the two nannies, the disgruntled producer, or the twenty-odd ranch hands who do all the actual farm work. They don’t need to see her children’s meltdowns, or her fights with her idiot husband (who spends most of his time watching conspiracy theory videos on YouTube and can barely get it up). Natalie was born into “a world where good Christian women moonlighted as crisis managers for their good Christian men”, and she is definitely a good Christian woman. She takes great pleasure in looking down her nose at the ungodly Angry Women who fill her comments section with accusations of anti-feminism and white supremacy.
Too bad Natalie skipped over that whole “judge not, lest ye be judged” bit in Bible study.
Without warning, she wakes one morning to find herself living the real version of the all-American pioneer lifestyle she’s been faking online. She has to wash her clothes by hand, bake bread over a fire, shit in an outhouse, and her husband backhands her if she gets too mouthy. There’s no escape. How did she end up living the nightmare reality of the dream she was selling so successfully?
Yesteryear is the ultimate contemporary ‘be careful what you wish for’ parable. There’s a delicious schadenfreude in seeing a ‘tradwife’ influencer forced to reckon with the consequences of her lies, but there’s also a fascinating commentary about the many forms and iterations of patriarchy. I look forward to devouring every review essay that interrogates the many layers of this brilliant novel, and watching the (inevitable) screen adaptation with rapt attention.
Read Yesteryear on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)
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