Being a woman is really fucking hard, and this book basically tells us that there’s no winning.

There’s no winning even if you comply with the demands of patriarchy and present yourself as meek and obedient. There’s no winning even if you tear down other women. There’s no winning even if you do “make it.”

But not winning is not a loss, because the world is beautiful and we should all be allowed to participate and bask in it, limitations and all.

There's so much that this book highlights, and it's all so exceptionally done through Natalie's character. She's detestable but so smart and ambitious and so, so contrary to what her upbringing and beliefs demand her to be. Through her attempts to conform to those standards, we see how she keeps failing and failing, shining a light on how impossible it all is.

I definitely came into this book expecting something different. Something like poor backwards tradwife being forced to actually do instead of just perform and get a laugh out of how she absolutely doesn't manage. That's not this book at all.

Certainly, this book is about Natalie in particular and tradwives more as a side note, with the hook of being blasted back into the past as an amazing but perhaps not fully utilised hook. But it does its job as a critique of social media, influencers, motherhood, mean girls, and so much more.

We see how Natalie confines herself into this box despite her own crystal awareness of how she doesn't belong in it. And that's why I don't hate her. I love her character and I feel for her. Her story is a tragedy, one of her own making sure, but not one she necessarily deserves.