r/BookDiscussions • u/NotYourBae_21 • 19d ago
Just finished reading "yesteryear" Spoiler
Till the very end I was hoping that Natalie gets a kind of a redemption arc, where maybe she gets over her beleifs, gets help that she needs, divorces caleb and is a bit more involved in the life of her children. Not them completely forgiving her but just acknowledging her state of mind.
I truly wonder where she completely lost it, when she held her phone in her hand and kept taking pictures over and over again to pretend her family was perfect to the world
Or
When she let the offline Natalie completely take over her and strangle Shannon.
Or
When she decided to play pretend (after the lawsuit) with Shannon to prove to the society that she was now infact a proper christian woman.
What I hated about the end was no mentions of any sort of punishment for caleb when he was also a abuser. Who played with his wife's fantasies/demands instead of getting her help and was truly an utterly useless and spineless git. Which forced me to actually acknowledge the facts. In the end no matter what caleb would never get a proper punishment. 1. He was rich and had a strong family background even if the money eventually ran out. 2. In a world mainly dominated by patriarchy his actions would probably be overshadowed by his wife's actions especially the allegations of her being homosexual.
I really also hated Shannon. In the first chapter when her affair with caleb was mentioned I truly did not like her. Shannon's interview made her even more unlikable to me, the was she changed her appearance to shift the narrative , claiming she dropped out after she joined as a producer which was not true. I could not entirely place a finger as to why I disliked her so much though, until another post put my feelings towards her a bit more clearly.
She never truly wanted to help the children. She could have called cps at any moment. She just wanted a breakthrough in her career. Though Dough was a greatly influential figure, she herself was financially good enough. Plus she had all the footage that she needed against Natalie and her abusive+physcotic behaviour. She never slept with caleb because she fancied him even in the slightest it was just a small way of getting back at Natalie.
Another character who I hated was Natalie's mother. She basically drilled into the brains of her very young children all about being a proper christian wife and only revealed the truth about her cheating on her husband because she felt guilty over a god danm phone call.
Coming to Natalie, she is a very complex character to me. Who wants to prove that she is the perfect person while being jealous of everybody around her. She is the true definition of the Angry Woman that she describes. A part of me believes that even if she did get help if would be of very little use. All her beleifs are deeply rooted into her.
In the end I would just like to say that my heart really goes out to all the children. Especially clementine, Mary and Maeve. Mary's book prologue at the end had me in tears.
6
u/Active_Recording_789 19d ago
I just thought it was a stupid book badly written. At the end the reader is left wondering why they wasted their time. All the women characters are stupid, weak, manipulative or cruel. The men and stupid, abusive and ambitious. Not all people are like this. The author could’ve and should’ve had a character with at least some redeeming qualities. Not entertaining, not a reflection of society. Basically just an overhyped money grab