Yesteryear

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is everywhere in bookish spaces right now. I managed to reserve a copy of the audiobook at my library and it arrived just in time for the beginning of summer. It seemed like a perfect opportunity.

I enjoyed this book. It's an interesting premise that reminded me a bit of R. F. Kuang's Yellowface, with its unlikable but compelling narrator who becomes more and more unreliable as the story moves along.

I found the pacing of this book very agreeable. It didn't feel like there were too many slumps and the tension-resolution arc happened at satisfying intervals. Just enough questions and surprises to keep the reader engaged without giving the game away too early.

Most of the characters in Yesteryear are disagreeable and obviously flawed people, but they are written in a way that I found intriguing. I wanted to know more about these messy people and see how their problems resolved, or did not, as the case may be. There were a few surprises along the way, which I appreciated.

This book is an interesting commentary on social media culture, belonging, identity, ethics, and the values of a lifestyle/career dependent on living in a constant spotlight. I'm not sure that it's going to be a book we're still talking about in two years' time, but it's an entertaining read in the meantime.