Ohhhh it’s a really bad book y’all. The author had the idea for the (excellent!) premise but it turns out she really didn’t want to research or write anything related to it. In this book about a tradwife having to labor under the actual pressures of homestead life in 1855, there is very little actual tradwifery or homesteading. It’s like the author sort of waved her hands and said “Ehh you get the idea of what a tradwife is, no need to get into all that” and then wrote a soap opera with lots of extraordinarily hamfisted commentary on gender politics. Characters are flat and internally inconsistent, the dialogue reads like they are turning to the camera and making an announcement, every most-obvious narrative option is taken and the editor didn’t concern themself with checking details whether it’s possible for a man to be elected to eight US senate terms by age 55. It’s weird revenge porn written by a woman liberated enough to criticize misogyny and christofascism but not liberated enough to feel confident in just writing the weird actual porn that she would clearly prefer to pen rather than the wrapper she contrived around it.

But all that said and done? It’s a fun hate read. You can tear through it pretty quickly and you might enjoy it, as many are. Or it might make you waste precious hours of your one wild life ranting at your girlfriend like it’s an issue of actual import.

Erin Eichenberger