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Garfield Park Library Hot Topics Book Club

with local author, Susie Bright

Join our book club every second Tuesday to explore great reads and share engaging conversations with fellow book lovers.

A book club organized around discussing the “hot topic” titles in the news,  and book buzz— the controversies, the new classics or perhaps overexposed. 

The Hot Topics Book Discussion group meets on the second Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2pm.  All adults are welcome.

Conversation led by Susie Bright

Free. Registration required.
Include your email for more info: we’ll send you excerpts of the book, and
copies of its most talked-about reviews.

Garfield Park Branch Library, SCPL

705 Woodrow Avenue

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

The below information will be updated monthly to reflect the most current selection:

August 11, at 1:00pm.

We’ll be discussing “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke.

Below is a curated list of excerpts from the title, as well as author interviews, similar books in history, and opinion pieces.

YESTERYEAR EXCERPTS

Short Excerpt, Glamour
Free Sample, on Kindle
THE MARKETING
Deadline: film deal was guaranteed $450k to author with upside to $2M if the movie gets produced and does well. Here’s her extensive representation: LINK. 

AUTHOR BIO / WIKI
Wikipedia on Title history
Author WebSite and podcast

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Elle celebrity author interview with interesting tidbits
BookBrowse - Burke came out of MFA programs
New Ohio Review interview. Her next novel? NO TRADWIVES.
NPR interview  - Caro Claire Burke, 7 minute radio segment
Late Night TV interview with Seth Meyers: 

SIMILAR THEMES IN OTHER BOOKS
This is a story about a woman who builds a curated, ostensibly perfect status and gets destroyed by it— rather than a woman escaping constraint. 

Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier. What a book, what a film. A dead woman’s curated public image is used as a weapon used against the living. Like Yesteryear, an idealized surface — Manderley’s elegance— hides a dark reality, and the gap between the two is where the psychological damage lives.
Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle shares Yesteryear’s tone — comeuppance, isolation, and a domestic facade that curdles. Caro Claire Burke says she loves Jackson’s work, and I’m sure this novel was an inspiration: The performed domestic ideal masking violence.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, (2012) - the “Cool Girl” gets HERS. All about public image vs. private inner rot. The antiheroine escapes justice, at least the legal kind! This thriller was a blast, remember? 
Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online

by Fortesa Latifi - What is it like to grow up with a camera in your face 24/7?
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin: an environment where women sedated on xanax was the norm. More people saw movie than read the book — the title became iconic.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh: This is the anti-Yesteryear. I LOVED IT. 
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton (1905) — Famous character Lily Bart is defined by the pursuit of social status. When she makes one fatal social faux pas, she slides right down to the bottom. 
Maupassant’s short story The Necklace — status obsession leading to an ironic, punishing reversal. Here’s a free internet copy. 

WICKED OPINION
NY Times: This is the profile of Hannah Neeleman, the “Ballerina Farm” trad-wife tycoon, who is rumored to have inspired Yesteryear’s revenge fantasy. 
The Guardian review: “Intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious and callous at best towards her own children, [our antiheroine is] a MAGA Becky Sharp, or Amy Dunne from Gone Girl if she wore smocks.”
Amy Colleen: “I was raised in conservative evangelicalism. YESTERYEAR missed its mark.”
Ex-Mormon says, “this was my life.” 
Yesteryear’s big twist explained (& how it leads to 2026’s most infuriating book ending)

Calendar:

July 14: Strangers, by Belle Burden

August 11: Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke

September 8: Regime Change, by Maggie Haberman

October 13: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

November 1: The Third Reich of Dreams, by Charlotte Beradt, editor

December 8: “Le Cookbook Special” - Your Favorites This Year

For More Info, email: patrickr@santacruzpl.org

All of the above listed titles can be found in the library catalog; inquire at any circulation desk or your SCPL online request account.

*** Reminder: request “any medium” of the Title (audio, ebook, print) 
Also,  if you're signed up for other California libraries, check their catalog - for example, San Francisco PL or Watsonville PL.