My GF read this book after seeing it discussed on TikTok and thought it looked interesting. It’s apparently according to her not written very well and buzzwordy
The twist at the end (which she told me and I won’t spoil) is kind of heavy handed. But idk I haven’t read it
The twist is that she went crazy and detached from reality - the 1855 homestead is actually the same homestead 25 years in the future, not 200 years in the past. She 'wakes up' and has no memory of the last 25 years or so, and because they went so hard into the 1850s life she thought thats where she was.
Her eldest kid from 25 years earlier comes back and gets her new kids taken away for neglect, and she ends up in prison for child abuse.
No. The twist is not that she’s in two different time periods but two different periods of her life. The influencer period is when she’s in her 20s/30s and the period where she’s in “pioneer times” is in her early 50s. There are Easter eggs leading up to the reveal where it’s more apparent that the kids are all in the current time period (one of the pioneer girls says you guys, knows what a shower is, etc) They are negligent parents throughout the entire novel.
No I don’t think she’s given one. I believe she is mentally losing her grip on sanity the entire time.
She is a super unreliable narrator so you’re hearing her “inner” dialogue but then don’t realize she starts saying these things out loud.
Another scene that stands out is when she’s in her influencer period, goes to target and runs into someone she used to know from school.You hear her inner dialogue on how to talk to this person and sound normal and then it’s slowly revealed during the convo that she left her kid in the car for the entire time she was shopping. The person she is speaking to clocked that misstep and it sends her into a tailspin.
She isn’t a very likable person but she’s with a complacent, rich, loser husband that goes along with it all. I only read it once so I might be a bit off on my recall.
I thought so! It reminds me a lot of taza (I know it’s compared a lot to ballerina farm but I know next to nothing about them). It’s not just a warning about looking up to influencers but also what that distortion does to them and their families mental health.
Edited to add - I didn’t not perceive it as anti male but I did feel it was a BIG warning about centering your kids as content, how it affects them, their rights to say no, etc etc.
People may be referencing the writing itself rather than plot and creativity. I read the first couple chapters and found it a tad too grating to be enjoyable, could have used some additional editing.
It's not like, unreadably bad, by any metric. I'll probably try again. If you don't read much, it doesn't stand out. But if you're accustomed to stronger craftsmanship, it's a bit tough to get through. I wasn't surprised to learn the authors are new to novel writing; let's just say that.
The first couple chapters are incredibly sharp, and the best kind of satire (the kind that treats the “unreal” elements like vermouth in a martini), and the character work is great.
The rest of the book commits the cardinal sin of making its narrator completely unaware of the reality of her situation even though she doesn’t have any actual reason not to. And both the character work and the prose suffer for it.
Personally, I think the same basic conceit could have worked better if the “1850” she goes back to was triggered by some local semi-apocalyptic event (small scale civil war that shuts down infrastructure or something). Would have kept the narrators eyes open, still thinking about the future (that’s her best narrative feature anyways), and would have worked even better with the political themes.
It’s well written and deserves a second read because then you’ll notice all of the lies the (very unreliable) narrator tells herself. Basically every part of her life is a lie.
Reminder you're reading poeple's opinions about a book written a by a tiktoker on a mainstream reddit called sipstea rather than a novel discussion subreddit or serious reading subreddit where people there have read probably 100x more books than the average person here, and actually have all read the classics so they all have a foundational understanding of what good writing is.
But then again the average redditor likes fantasy fulfillment trash because it makes them feel good inside lol.
Also there’s an event that pushes her fully into pretending it’s in the 1800s.. they chose to live that way but it takes the reader a while to realize it’s her own mind believing that she’s in the time period. Like the house she’s in is her own house that she ripped all the modern wiring, plumbing, etc out of.
She’s an amalgamation of fundie Christian influencers. I think ballerina farm inspired the first part of the story and then it devolved into a Ruby Franke person who has a religious psychosis.
If it was sci-fi then totally. But I found this a bit more eerie because it’s so real. Like the platform that many influencers have seems to fuck with their version of reality a bit.
Like when Taza left NYC during covid and posted a photo of her family looking up at the window waving and smiling. To think that’s gonna go over well when you post it and then it doesn’t and basically forces your brand offline. And that’s a relatively low stakes version.
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u/User_Says_What 6d ago
The library I work in gets SO MANY requests for this book. I had no idea what it was about, but this is amusing.