Full Rating and Review - Yesterday by Caro Claire Burke

Yesteryear

Caro Claire Burke

Copyright 2026

391 pages

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Alrighty, this one did not stroll down the path I thought we were taking. I expected a gentle wander through influencer drama, maybe a little light chaos, and instead we took a hard left into what in the farmhouse fever dream is happening. Tradwife influencer turned actual tradwife turned… well, someone who’s cracked under pressure like a farm‑fresh egg dropped on a hot skillet.

We open with Natalie filming her “perfect family farm” content — you know, the kind where everything looks homemade, wholesome, and suspiciously well‑lit. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, she’s got two nannies, a producer, a squad of farmhands, and enough hidden kitchen appliances to make Gordon Ramsay weep. But if the followers can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. That’s the magic of social media: the illusion, the fantasy, the smoke‑and‑mirrors sourdough starter.

Then Natalie buys herself a one‑way ticket straight to 1855. No filters. No ring lights. No “farmhouse chic,” just actual farmhouse. She’s suddenly living the harsh reality of the lifestyle she romanticized daily — and shocker, it’s not nearly as whimsical when you can’t DoorDash a latte. Everything feels almost like home, but just off enough to make her brain itch. The mental gymnastics she performs trying to figure out how she time‑traveled are… well, let’s just say she’s going a little bit cooky, and not in the cute “I baked too many pies” way.

And beneath all the twists and turns, there’s a deeper ache to this story. Natalie built a “perfect” world online until she couldn’t tell where the façade ended and her real life began. When the abuse allegations blew up her carefully curated empire, she didn’t just lose her followers — she lost her grip on reality. So she tries to rebuild it from scratch: new kids, no modern conveniences, a handcrafted life so aggressively rustic it starts to splinter. She bends her world into the shape she thinks it should be, until even she can’t recognize it.

The pacing trots along nicely — steady, engaging, with just enough rabbit holes to keep me nibbling. And honestly, it hits hard because we’ve seen versions of this play out in real life. Social media can swallow people whole, especially when perfection becomes a full‑time job.

I’m giving this one 4 stars. It’s an excellent read with a lot to chew on. I just wish we’d gotten one more twist at the end — one last shoe to drop. I kept waiting for it, listening for it, and it never quite fell.