Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick

Pros: Fascinating story. I couldn’t put the book down. A real page-turner that kept me guessing until the end. Cons: “Anyways”. The use/misuse of this word , quite frankly, made my brain hurt. How that got past the editors and publisher, boggles the mind. Anyway… Some of the context was off - cattle “farming” instead of ranching, she mentions hearing her mother’s “sewing needles” as she knit. Small details. However, our main character Natalie is an influencer in Idaho during the rise of the Prepper community. We have to remember that for the ending of the story. While Natalie may have lost her audience, her marriage, and may have faced charges for selling organic products and not using organic practices and assault. She would not have lost her children. She did nothing wrong regarding her children. Weird? Yes. Emotionally disconnected? Yes. But it was a huge stretch in the story to get us to believe that Clementine could just take-off with the children one time. Let alone just drive up with a piece of paper she calls a “warrant” (court order?) and drive off with them again. No police. No counselors. No medical staff. Just throws 19th century children into the 21st? That in and of itself would be an act of cruelty, much worse than anything their mother did. Also, how do we know she raised the first batch of kids well? Perhaps she was a horrible ‘parent’? And then we’re sold a bill of goods that Natalie is in jail for child neglect? Those children weren’t abused, starved, etc. No court would convict a mother for having mental illness. Again, this is Idaho.. And what about Caleb? He has no share of guilt in this whole debacle? Anyway; (note the singular) the premise of the story was great! The faux time travel kept me guessing (I loved that!, so original). But, the ending was weak, ill conceived and too harsh for old Natalie. So while I’m glad I read this book, I’m left wondering who was the hero? The winner? I hate just about every character in the book but Mary and Maeve. And I feel even they were hurt and manipulated by the actions of their sister, so if the story was to continue, I probably wouldn’t like them either.

This one was different. It took many chapters to get into it for me and try to embrace the characters. Overall good, a bit disturbing too.

What a twist at the end!

I was expecting a lot more from this book. It was hard to get into and pretty flat until the last 10%.

This book challenges societal practices in organized religion, gender roles, domestic abuse, social media, hypocrisy, and so much more! The narrator and protagonist, Natalie, is not liked or understood (not by any of the characters in the book or by the reader). She is annoying, frustrating, and bizarre. But if you’ve ever experienced or lived through a Christian extremest, this book provides provocative insights for consideration. There is a bit of a lull in terms of the rising action, but the climax is so unpredictable and outrageous making 100% worth the commitment. And at ~400 pages in length, you’ll finish and be wanting CCB to publish her next novel already! While it falls under the psychological thriller genre, it’s more psychologically twisted than thrilling. If colorful language makes you blush, this may not be for you. However, if you have a warped sense of humor, I recommend this for your next book club, as there is so much captivating material for intense debate and discussion.

This is a story about contradictions, and an explorations of expectations: the expectations we place on ourselves and others, the expectations that others place on us, and how those affect each other. It’s also about parenthood, womanhood, lies, families, and conspiracy theories. I read it while away from home on a work trip and it made me want to run home and hug my wife. The main character, Natalie, is an engaging anti-heroine. I found myself rooting for her even as I found her intensely unlikable. She elicits sympathy because she is a victim of a sheltered upbringing, a broken family, and unrealistic expectations of role as a woman and Christian. Meanwhile she seems to have no genuine sympathy for anyone else, including her own children. Unlike many anti-heroes, she is not driven by ruthless ambition or greed. Her first steps down her cursed path are driven by a longing for intellectual challenge and a community of peers, but when she leaves home to attend college it’s not how she expected it to be, which creates frustration and bitterness. Later she’s driven by her need to live up to a certain ideal, her fear of what other people think of her, and her fear of poverty. Most of the other characters are fairly one-dimensional, and familiar archetypes (cliche?) but they serve their purpose well, and there are some moments where their complexity and humanity is acknowledged. Natalie herself doesn’t seem capable of appreciating the depth of others, so it’s fitting. Through Natalie’s eyes, everyone is a simplistic version of the stereotype she assumes they are. Natalie’s character arc is not direct, and does not come to a tidy conclusion, which I appreciated. She struggles with squaring the circle of so many conflicting expectations: her own, her faith’s, her community’s, her instagram followers’, and her family’s, as well as the conflict between those expectations and reality, and between reality and the untruths, mistruths, and partial truths we tell each other, particularly the truths that lie outside the frame of social media posts. By the end of the book, we see that Natalie is capable of love and thoughtfulness, of shedding some of her rigidly oppressive personal standards, of forgiveness, and possibly (but not quite for sure) opening her mind to others’ point of view. While the book is obviously highly focused on the many competing demands on women by society, it also touches on issues that men face: rigid gender roles that prevent men from pursuing their interests or being themselves, and lack of fulfillment (perhaps due to those rigid gender expectations) leading men into the swirling paranoid Man-O-Sphere world of right-wing conspiracy theories and toxic masculinity. I appreciated the pace of the novel, especially the way it picked up steam around the climax and toward the ending. However, the end felt a little lacking in volume and detail. I think section 3 could have been fleshed out a little bit more. It felt like kind of an abrupt conclusion. The reveal was done well though, and I thought the epilogue/section 4 was great and brought some much needed additional resolution. One thing that I really disliked were the couple lines where a character mentioned foraging in the forest for saffron in autumn or winter in the mountains of Idaho. Saffron is a rare and expensive spice that comes from flowers that are cultivated in the Middle East and grow wild nowhere. I thought everyone knew this? How did that make it through editing and fact checking? She might as well have said she was going out to pick pineapples in the Idaho winter. I thought maybe it was some clever clue to the reader as to some deceit, but after finishing I feel confident it was just a bizarre mistake. I also thought it was weird that fishing and trapping were mentioned as ways of obtaining wild meat, but not hunting? The Man-o-sphere sucked characters into conspiracy theories about chemtrails and plague infested cities and civil war, but didn’t turn them into gun nuts? Seemed like an oversight to me. Overall, it was a very entertaining read and fairly well written. It was exciting and thought provoking. It had me wondering what was really going on right up to the big reveal, which I thought was surprising and creative. I took off one star for the slightly underweight final chapters, and one star for the saffron thing and gun oversight.

The word ANYWAY does not have an S at the end.

Less than the sum of its parts, this book touches upon important ideas without ever fully exploring them or providing any satisfying conclusions. I thought maybe the author was bringing a radical vision into clear view, but alas, it’s an unreliable narrator tale with some moments of brilliance.

Great story- I loved all the different time lines and how the end tied it together!

This was a total waste of time and money. Do yourself a favor and don’t read this book. It’s actually just plain stupid. DO NOT READ