I went into this book wanting to feel vindicated - instead I got called out. This isn’t the best written book I’ve read, but it’s the type of book I’m begging more authors to write/more publishers to publish! Final Score: 4.25

What Worked Well For Me

It’s a fable and possibly a metafiction I came into this book expecting delicious takedowns on tradwife influences and/or evangelical/high control religions - it wasn’t until after I finished this book that I realized it reads like a fable. Instead of the targets I assumed Burke would be aiming at, I think we were her ultimate targets. My view on this book is that it is a fable about what happens when we refuse to be self-reflective. When performance is the default state, self-reflection is one of the few tools we have to disrupt the status quo.

But the longer I sat with this book, the more it also started to feel like a metafiction to me. The extremes - of the characters, of the situation, of the plot - they are all delivery mechanisms, and the actual themes I took from this book were quietly buried underneath those extremes. Everyone comes into books with their own biases and perceptions, which is why I think this book is so polarizing - we are walking away with completely different ideas on what this book was or what it tried to be. Some people find this book to be completely nonsensical with the extreme caricatures and ludicrous plot, others walk away feeling satisfied because they got the vindication they were hoping for. So in some ways, I think the reception of this book is doing the exact thing the book is about.

I have no idea if Burke had any intent of writing a metafiction - I feel like you can’t really know how a book is going to land until you publish it, but I find the polarized reception of the book to be very interesting with the themes I ultimately took from this book.

Natalie’s Voice Burke does something with the POV that I devoured: Natalie speaks in Instagram captions, but more damningly, she thinks in them. Her entire interior life IS a caricature even to herself, and she knows it. She’s smart, she’s self-aware, and she’s still trapped, because self-awareness without vulnerability doesn’t get you anywhere. Being vulnerable would require being brave, and Natalie is not a brave person.

I grew up evangelical, but deconstructed about 20 years ago, so I’m not religious, but I would argue Natalie isn’t either. Watching her perform faith with the same muscle she uses to perform everything else in her fake life was one of my favorite parts of this book. As someone who grew up in a (much less intense) religious environment - Natalie’s religious hypocrisy landed hard for me. Of course, not every Christian is like Natalie in this sense, but I do know some Christians who are Christian as a public performance only - even if they don’t seem to realize it themselves.

Burke was shining a light on my shadows and I almost didn’t post this review because I’m ashamed and scared of how I’ll be received/perceived after this This is the actual reason I love this book, so I’m going to be honest about this because I feel like this was the challenge Burke handed me with this book.

If you know me in real life, or even if you’ve just seen me on this platform, I hope you didn’t read Natalie and immediately think of me. In many ways, I think I’m the antithesis of Natalie. I’m not interested in aesthetics. I have pretty low self-esteem and default to seeing my flaws instead of my strengths. I have issues with being perceived at all which causes me a lot of anxiety about how I’m perceived so much so I’d quit social media entirely for several years before I found Pagebound, because the performative nature of it brought me nothing but stress. I’m proud of having deconstructed from my evangelical upbringing and I’m child-free by choice. I do my best to be open to hearing other’s points of views and truly consider them. I do my best to be kind and empathetic, but this book highlighted all the ways I’m not living up to my own ideals.

I came into this book knowing almost nothing except that it was about a tradwife influencer who has to face reality and, I hoped, she would get her comeuppance. People in my inner circle have been harmed by the Natalies of this world and I was excited to feel justified in my anger towards them.

Then Burke handed me this in the opening pages of the book: Natalie doesn’t see her employees as full human beings. She sees a producer, a nanny, or any other label she assigns them that suits/benefits her. Isn’t that exactly how I view real life tradwife influencers too? I don’t see them as fully realized people. I don’t see their backstories or how they got to this point. I see what they portray online and I build my own perceptions on top of to suit my own views of the world.

I thought I had learned to face my Jungian shadows, but this book showed me that I still have a lot of work to do. Being locked in Natalie’s head while she does things I would never do forced me to examine the ways that I was thinking about HER. I assumed, before this book, that I am 100% smarter than a tradwife influencer, because I clearly know better. My way is good and right, and her way is wrong. Which is precisely what Natalie thinks about everyone else too.

I do want to be clear there are things that Natalie does in this book that I could not defend under any circumstance and I’m not trying to. But there are aspects of Natalie that I’m ashamed to admit that I saw myself in her and clearly needed to be called out on, because I was called the fuck out.

There was also a thread running through this whole book around labeling - what happens when you take on a label you’ve assigned yourself versus what happens when someone assigns a label to you that you don’t agree with or assigns their own perceptions to the label you chose. It’s much easier to have empathy for a person who’s been mislabeled by others - we know what it’s like to be perceived incorrectly ourselves. It’s much harder when they picked the label themselves because they believed it would benefit them and made me realize that I have not been as empathetic as I believe myself to be. There’s also a question the book asks early on that I’ve been turning over ever since: is it a choice, if there’s only one option. That single line started to reframe how I think about choice feminism and kickstarted the somewhat painful journey this book took me on.

The Vagueness and Ambiguity I’m not going to go into details here, because I don’t want to run into the risk of spoilers. But one of the things I LOVED about this book was the questions that get raised from different people’s perceptions of this book and I love that Burke didn’t try to spoonfeed us with her answers to those questions. In many ways it felt like Burke was trying to navigate these complicated and nuanced concepts/situations right alongside me and I appreciated her vulnerability in at least coming across like she doesn’t know the answers either, but she thinks these issues are important discussions to be had. And I definitely agree there.

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Where It Fell Short For Me

While I found this book to be pretty solid overall, particularly for a debut, but I can’t ignore some of the craft issues in this book. I’m incredibly excited to see where Burke goes/grows as a writer though!

The plot holes - I’m not a plot driven reader, so this doesn’t wreck anything for me, but they’re noticeable particularly after you finish reading the book and start to mentally work through it all.

The characters are extreme, stereotypical, and can read as flat - For my interpretation of the book, the caricatur-ization (yes, this is a made up word but hopefully you get what I mean) was intentional and was a useful tool because they are elements for a fable. However if I’d come at this book as I think I usually would, as a character-driven reader in particular, this could have bothered me a lot and I fully understand why people will bounce off these characters hard because it doesn’t land for them. In another book, this would have killed the book for me, but looking at this book from a satirical/fable lens it worked here (for me).

Some things near the end didn’t land for me on the page - I made peace with a few of them and others I understand, even if I don’t agree with the choice Burke made. But the issues I did make peace with happened when I was writing mini-essays on my thoughts about this book, not while reading. To be fair, I have no idea how Burke could have “fixed” some of these issues, but that’s why I’m just the reader.

The pacing - Particularly at the end felt very uneven.

The satire gets pretty heavy-handed at points - I felt it the most in the 1855 sections.

The names - Even with tandem reading this closely, I had to work really hard to try and keep the names straight across dual timelines and honestly, I’m still not confident that I kept them all straight. I know it was intentional, but it was kind of annoying for me.

Natalie’s POV is uncomfortable - While ultimately this friction was a good thing for me, I did NOT love being in her POV particularly as she makes some decisions I couldn’t fathom making myself.

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Audiobook Experience

The english narrator was Rebecca Lowman and I truly believe this was a match made in heaven! (pun intended) Lowman absolutely nailed the influencer speech pattern where there was a good balance of it being a performance while also being Natalie’s default state. When I’m tandem reading, I usually have to increase the audiobook speed to align with my natural eyeball reading pace, but Lowman did such an excellent job I didn’t want to speed things up. So even though I read this book at a slower pace overall, I think Lowman’s narration improved the book’s pacing for me.

While the audiobook is fantastic there are some things that are easier to understand via text. Burke does things with punctuation and capitalization that are explained, but more impactful when you can see them.

As a small critique, there were some stretches of untagged dialogue where I had trouble telling Natalie apart from her sister. I don’t think that’s truly the narrators fault, more so a bad combination of untagged dialogue and characters who should sound somewhat similar.

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Final Thoughts, Opinions & Recommendations

I have been really dragging my feet on posting any of my thoughts on this book because I’m really nervous about some of the things I have to say about this book, specifically the fact that I do have some empathy and sympathy for Natalie. If you absolutely despise Natalie, trust me, I’m right there with you! Knowing what she does in this book I fully understand people not having empathy or sympathy for her and I’m not asking for anyone to feel differently. But I’m also not going to pretend that I don’t have some empathy about how she got here. And I do hold her responsible at a certain point - I loved that Burke showed us so many different paths that Natalie could have taken along the way versus what she chose and the themes behind her choices.

The bigger thing I’ve been sitting with is that I’ve spent years casting judgment on women like Natalie, which makes me not so different from her in a way I had chosen to not examine before this book. Part of me is nervous that saying any of this publicly will come across negatively and that people will think less of me for admitting this. That fear is, itself, an extremely Natalie thing to be worried about, which is why I’m attempting to accept the challenge I think Burke handed to me with this book.

My thoughts on the reception/discussion of this book I try to avoid discourse around books until I have settled on my final thoughts and written my own review. However, even with trying to avoid the commentary on Yesteryear, it felt impossible. So the takes I’ve seen from headlines and YouTube titles are most likely at the extreme ends which is why I keep landing on the metafiction reading.

There is one critique I have seen in headlines that I want to share my thoughts on - that there is no social commentary found in this book. I do see where people are coming from, but the social commentary I found wasn’t in the places I assumed I should be looking when I started this book. I think the commentary was very quiet and maybe intentionally easy to miss under the flashy extremes laid out in this book and, while I found this book ultimately rewarding, there was a cost to digging into the social commentary underneath because I had to truly face some things about myself that I didn’t love. For readers who were already not enjoying this book, I think it would be really unreasonable to expect them to dig for the commentary I found particularly if they might feel called about it like I did.

I’ll also say it feels really strange to have a kind of “middle of the road” take on a polarizing book. I really do see/understand aspects of both camps, so I can see some people agreeing with aspects of my review and I can see other people being baffled on why I spent so much time writing about this book both in this lengthy review and closing in on 50,000 words of mini-essays from this book (no, that’s not an exaggeration - I’m not kidding when I said this book gave me a lot to chew on). I also don’t know if I have fully fleshed out my “final” thoughts on this book. I think when I re-read this book in the future I’ll have even more things to say and I might change my mind on things now that I can actually jump into the discourse about this book.

You Might Like This If you love ambiguity in books, like satire, social commentary, and digging deep into thematic elements. If you enjoy unlikable characters - Natalie is one of the most unlikable characters I’ve read (and I’ve read American Psycho...). I will also say I think this book will be so much better if you have people you can discuss it with - a huge reason why I was spending hours on end writing mini essays was because I didn’t have people to talk about it yet. I think this book would be a GREAT pick for a bookclub because having more people with different backgrounds and perceptions would make for very interesting conversations!

You Might NOT Like This If you can’t stand 1st person POV of an unlikable protagonist - Natalie’s POV is one of the most uncomfortable POVs I’ve been in and I fully understand not wanting to read an entire book from her POV. If some debut author craft issues including plot holes, satirical extremes of characters and on the nose satire would ruin a book for you, you might not like this as much as I did. If you like books with clean, clear themes, personally, I don’t think you are going to find them here. From what I’ve seen so far, people have wildly different perceptions of the themes and how they land.

My thanks to my local public library for having the audiobook available - the wait was well worth it for me! GO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY!! WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE THEM! Also my thanks to ME for spending my own cold hard cash so I could have a physical copy to tandem read.

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TL;DR

Would I Recommend it? Yes, with caveats. Check the content warnings - there’s a surprisingly high amount of them - and then go in being prepared to be uncomfortable. Would I Reread it? 100000% Yes, I’m already looking forward to it! Would I Read More From This Author? 100000% Yes, I’m already looking forward to it! Series Information: True Standalone

Star Score Breakdown

Personal Enjoyment: 5 (if I could give this more points, I would!) Overall Execution: 4 Craft & Writing Quality: 4 Characters: 4.25 Plot: 4 Final Score: 4.25

DNF @ 10%. I'll give you two versions of my review. The first is going to be the simple, spoiler-free reasons why I DNF'd so early. Beneath the line I'm not going to worry about spoilers because I only read the first 5 chapters so I don't even know if you can call them spoilers, but I already know it's going to get ranty.

This is not the worst thing I have ever read and it very well could get better, but I could not make myself keep reading.

Simple Spoiler-Free Reasons I DNF'd

After the first 5 chapters (10%) of the book, each chapter had significant craft based issues. The physical staging/movement of the characters did not make sense - sometimes because they contradicted themselves, others are not physically possible even in a fantasy world. This repeatedly pulled me out of the story. If this happened once, it wouldn't have been a big deal but this happened in almost each of the 5 chapters I read.

There's also a lot of "worldbuilding" dropped mid-scene, right when tension should be building, which kept undercutting any momentum - like facing immediate life threatening danger, but Rubi's narration stops looking at the thing that is about to kill her to detail what another character is wearing, in detail, even though it's dark out and she has dropped her lantern, and that other character is "several yards away" and positioned physically behind her so she can't actually see the details. I say "worldbuilding" because really these were info dumps/lore drops. When the direct information isn't being told from Rubi's perspective, other characters sounded like NPCs, for example "I'm the one who trains you every morning, remember?"

Even though there was a ton of "worldbuilding", I never actually felt like I was learning anything because major concepts would be introduced and immediately dropped. For example, Rubi is reflecting on something at happened at a "Judgment" at the end of one chapter. The next chapter opens to describe what happened in great detail of this event as though we have gone back in time, but actually it's just Rubi remembering the event. Nowhere in the chapter do they actually call it the Judgment or a Judgment, they call it by many other things. After I decided to DNF, I decided to search the book and "Judgment" comes up once more at the 50% mark where is remembering the same thing. It never comes up again in the book.

These issues in the first 5 chapters makes me think the book really needed some more editing rounds before printing. I was given an ARC copy, so maybe these things were caught before final printing.

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I read this so you don't have to extended version of why I DNF'd but I'm not going to worry about spoilers since I only made it 5 chapters anyway (an unhinged rant)

This book was compared to Fourth Wing meets Hunger Games, but I haven't read Fourth Wing and don't see the Hunger Games comparison except for maybe the "Judgment" event where it's gladiatorial slaughter of the Azures (the blue haired people, like Rubi) who are refugees from an "Annihilation" event. They are ruled by the Silvers - why? Because they are big and strong and not refugees? idk.

Here is everything I learned about Rubi Morningtail in the first 5 chapters: Rubi is in her early 20s, impoverished, and is a professional ribbon dancer (also dancing may or may not be illegal except the guy who would have arrested her for dancing was at the tavern too but it comes up like 3 chapters later that she could have been arrested for dancing...). Also, she has amnesia. I'm going to spare you from repeating it every other paragraph, but the book REALLY needs you to know she has NO MEMORIES AT ALL, except for the ones that are innate, and the ones that the scent of sandalwood reminds her of, and that she knows that she is definitely an orphan, and the dreams she has, BUT OTHER THAN THAT 0 MEMORIES. Nada. And her only goal in life is to have her memories back. Oh and she lives with the woman who found her after she "woke up" with amnesia on a boat.

Oh and she is HOT. Like hot hot. Like seduced half of the bar just by dancing, including her "friends with benefits" Quinn, who she doesn't want to have benefits with anymore, but she doesn't tell him that because that involves communicating to your friend. No, guys, I don't think you understand HOW HOT SHE IS. She is so hot that a leader of the Silvers (the people oppressing, enslaving, and killing The Azures which are her people) thinks she HAD to be something besides dancing because she she is sexy and her dancing is sexy but he has never been THIS attracted so someone before. What he doesn't know is that she is actually.... ALSO SINGING very quietly so no one can hear her and THATS how she is seducing everyone - magic singing!

That's all we learn in 5 chapters about our protagonist, the rest was "worldbuilding". I'm not being dramatic, I really can't think of anything else.

How do we know that Blake Axefire doesn't know that Rubi, a woman he has already nicknamed Songbird, is actually singing seductively not just dancing seductively and being hot? When he is chasing her on a giant magical tiger after she jumps of a cliff (more on that in a moment) they are having some fun banter and she accidentally slips up and says that she won't dance OR sing again if he doesn't arrest her and that's how he figures out she is singing. Wait - why would he call her Songbird if she was "just" dancing... when I think Songbird I think singing... hold that thought I'll come back to it.

Let's rewind a step right before she jumps off the cliff. Rubi goes out to get firewood and OH NO a giant magical god tiger warrior is outside her door. (Also, the book spells it tyger, but I refuse to do that - I'm already going insane from this book.) So she drops the wood AND HER LANTERN in the middle of the night in the woods. But DON'T WORRY our girl has fucking x-ray vision and she can see all. Okay, back to the tiger who is about to eat her, scary right? She's talking about how big it's teeth are and it's salivating - so she can only take her eyes off the scary tiger for just a second because she hears a males voice... in the middle of the woods... where it's just her hut apparently. AND GUESS WHOOOO It's Blake Axefire... again! I forgot to tell you he also assaulted her after the tavern because it literally doesn't matter besides there was some uncomfortable sexualization to the assault imo. The tldr: he tackled her to the ground AND a tree simultaneously (and here I thought the love triangle was going to between Quinn and Blake Axefire... not planes of existence) to look at her hands and then he let her go, called her Songbird, and left.

Anyway, back to scary killer giant god tiger! That's where Rubi's focus should be!! But now she feels Blake Axefire (yes I will be repeating his full name every time because it's a fucking stupid name, it's better than his title "Ambush Master") power and it. is. revolting. It's like a hurricane. She has to do everything in her power to not run. So here's Rubi - killer tiger who wants to eat her in front of her. Behind her by several yards is Blake Axefire and his terrible magic. She makes sure we know she cannot look away from the scary tiger who IS GOING TO EAT HER ANY SECOND! Ah! Wow some tension! Let's immediately undercut! So what random info dump do we get this time? DEETS ON BLAKE AXEFIRE'S OUTFIT OF COURSE. Is he (again) several yards behind her, in the dark, in a forest, at night, without her lantern, lit only by the moonlight? Yeah. But here is what Rubi is focused on instead of her immediate death, and I quote, "He stepped toward me, silent despite the weight of the midnight armor he now wore in place of his falsely tattered clothing. The silver veins across the onyx steel glinted in the moonlight, and the sigil on his chest--a coiled tyger in a diamond--gleamed. His fine cloak was fastened with a real tyger fang, a symbol of his favored status." Yas girl, clothes are my top priority in life, I feel ya on this. #relatable #OOTD

Anyway, that's when her adopted grandma figure comes out of the house and the tiger attacks her BUT even though she looks old and frail, grandma actually trains Rubi every morning so GRANDMA attacks the giant magical tiger with a broom! She even springs off the tiger's shoulder's over it's head, and I quote, "with agility". But then the tiger swipes grandma and she crunches against a well motionless.

So Rubi decides to get the tiger's attention again and right as it pounces on her SHE THROWS HER RIBBONS AT ITS FEET AND TANGLES IT GIANT PAWS! Giving her "mere seconds" to run. So then she runs to the edge of a cliff and blindly jumps off it into the dark. No. I'm not joking. She literally thinks, and I quote, "I didn't need to see. I knew exactly where the least steep path downward was. I'd mapped it by feel long ago. This part of the land was as familiar to me as my own hut. I loved heights--the higher the better. This was what I did when I woke in the middle of the night, shaking from dreams, though I could only remember the screams and fire. This was where I went when my chest ached from wanting answers I didn't have."*

Rubi, girlie pop, YOU JUST UNLOCKED A NEW MEMORY! You LOVED heights? You do remember things!

Anyway Blake Axefire chases her down on the tiger that he is technically doesn't control but also he is the leader of the tiger warriors or something, idk. So she throws her dagger at the tiger while running AND bantering with Blake Axefire. Mulitalented queen. Oh, where did the dagger come from? GREAT QUESTION because Blake Axefire actually knocked it out of her hands and it went "flying" when he sweep kicked her into the ground/against a tree. But our girl has telekinesis too so that just reappeared magically!

The dagger did... nothing. They catch her and he arrests her because that tiger... not only are all tigers under the King's protection, you actually get killed if you hurt any of them. Oopsies! But it gets WORSE! This isn't any old giant magic tiger. Nope! This is "the only tygress queen capable of breeding at the moment. She is the future of the royal Tyger Warriors. Her value is beyond price." Why is this actual queen out in the middle of a random forest right at the door of Rubi's hut? Great question. She just walked there, idk.

If she is so valuable why did Blake Axefire come alone to get her without any supplies or people to help him because the tigers don't listen to them even though he is the tiger warrior leader? idk.

This is when she accidentally reveals that she's working late, cause she's a singer and he hauls her off to jail or something. Idk cause I stopped there for my sanity.

And that's all 5 chapters!

This book is so predictable I'm willing to publicly state my guesses at 10% in

• Rubi is not an orphan, we are gunna find her parent/parents alive and well. It's gunna be someone you never suspected, maybe a bad guy or someone who looks like a bad guy
• Rubi's amnesia was caused by her parents to protect her when they fled from the annihilation thing. Why? I don't think Rubi is a demi-god so I'm guessing some kind of royalty or her family is important for some reason, maybe a prophecy. They wanted to keep Rubi safe when they fled and they thought it was best for her to not remember who she is. Also guessing once she breaks the amnesia her full powers will come out.
• Rubi and Blake Axefire are fated mates or something. That's how he knew to call her songbird before he knew about her singing magic. This is also why when she was facing the tiger and he showed up (you know the guy who is a leader of the group that oppresses "her people" and she watched him literally slaughter innocent people in the coliseum she couldn't decide if she felt, and I quote, "relieved or more terrified")
• It's a gimme but Blake Axefire is going to have an altruistic reason for why he is on the side of the oppressors because he has to be a good guy at least by the end of the series
• Rubi is not an Azure or at least not a full blooded Azure. Why? Her name is fucking Rubi. And when Blake Axefire slaughtered her people in the coliseum his cloak turned "crimson". I can't explain why my brain made the jump from that point... but it did. They also allude to her having some kind of special connection with her house cat (omg, wait don't actually count this one but it would be hilarious if one of her parents is the house cat hahah) Also her name is fucking Rubi but she is part of the blue haired people idk it just feels like something this book would do. Trust me on this.

Whoever reads this book, let me know how many I got right.

Okay, thanks y'all. I feel better now that this is out of my system!

My thanks to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.