Yesteryear Book Club Questions

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke has taken book clubs by storm. I knew I needed to make a list of Yesteryear Book Club Questions for your next book club meeting.

When Natalie, a successful influencer, wakes up in 1855, her life is turned upside down. She thought she knew what it was like to live like a traditional family, but quickly realized that she had no idea what life was like. The book moves back and forth between Natalie’s life before and after her trip into the past. The themes in this book make it the perfect pick for book clubs.

I also created this list of Book Club Questions (+PDF). These are universal questions you can use in addition to the specific ones below. I have tried to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but I knew that any Yesteryear book club questions would be incomplete without some details.

Yesteryear Book Club Questions and Discussion Guide

1. Did you like Natalie at the beginning of the book? Did this change, and if so, when?
2. Do you think Natalie has a mental illness, or is she just self-centered and cruel?
3. When Natalie goes to Harvard, her mother tells her to “be nice”. What did you think that quote meant at the beginning of the book? Did it have a different meaning for you at the end of the book? (Think about how her mother sys “Why is it so hard for you to be kind?”)
4. What did you think about Caleb?
5. Do you think that Natalie and Doug were inadvertently enabling Caleb’s behavior?
6. What did you think happened to Natalie when she woke up in the past?
7. Natalie found a small microphone in the past. Did you think this was a real microphone, or did you think she was mentally dissociating with her present circumstances?
8. I was shocked at the way Natalie talked about Clementine when she was born. Do you think she was suffering from post-partum depression, or do you think she truly did not relate to Clementine?
9. Do you think Natalie would have had more children if she had not made the deal with Doug?
10. Discuss the hypocrisy of the Instagram tradwives. Many of these women are the primary income providers for their households, yet they are promoting a traditional household where the man is the primary source of income.
11. Has reading this novel changed your opinion of influencers? Have you changed some of your social media habits?
12. Did you notice some of the parallels between Doug’s political campaign and Natalie’s social media persona? Both are shows for the public. Who was putting on the bigger show?
13. Natalie is a hypocrite. There were so many instances where Natalie projected her feelings onto others- Vanessa, her sister, Reena, the “angry women,” etc. Do you think she was aware she was doing this?
14. Why do you think Natalie spent so much time thinking about the angry women if she hated them so much?
15. Natalie notices that for the first time in her life, she is being satisfied by a man. She thinks this is Old Caleb when it is the same Caleb. Why do you think their relationship changed? Was it that Caleb finally felt like he had some control in his life, that Natalie did not have control, or a combination of both those things?
16. What do you think happened to Caleb?
17. Natalie is spending 30 years in jail. Do you think justice was served?
18. Why did Natalie choose Reena to interview her?
19. What do you think happened with the kids?
20. Do you think Natalie was ever happy?

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Epilogue

Will you be using these Yesteryear book club questions for your next book club?