by Caro Claire Burke
Yesteryear had a premise I genuinely wanted to love: the idea of a woman traveling back to the 1950s and confronting the reality behind nostalgia for the "good old days" is clever and full of potential. Unfortunately, this ended up being a DNF for me. The main character was so unlikeable, disagreeable, and relentlessly irritating that I found myself dreading spending more time in her head. I don't mind flawed protagonists, but I never found her interesting enough to offset how frustrating she was as a narrator. The concept itself raised some intriguing questions about history, privilege, and perspective, but I ultimately couldn't push past my dislike of the central character to see where the story was headed. In the end, the premise was far more appealing to me than the execution. The acclaim received by this author is wholly misplaced.