How tradwives took over the book industry

It’s a trad, trad world.Tradwives abound not just on social media — baking up their own sourdough and homeschooling half a dozen children — but also at the bookstore, where titles about women Instagramming their supposedly traditional lives are filling up shelves.Caro Claire Burke’s novel “Yesteryear,” about a modern tradwife who wakes up to find that she’s living in 1855 — and doesn’t love it — has been the undisputed book of the summer.It’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for 15 weeks and counting, and sold more than 461,000 copies, according to Circana Bookscan.

After a bidding war, Anne Hathaway is attached to star in and produce a movie adaptation for Amazon MGM Studios.It comes in the wake of several tradwife-focused books published in the last 18 months, and several more in the pipeline.There are no less than five recent or upcoming books called “Tradwife” or “Trad Wife” alone.“I should have known.

It is honestly a nightmare,” quipped Sarah Langan, whose “Trad Wife: A Novel” comes out Sep.29.

“Someone told me ‘Yesteryear’ was going to be big … [but] when you write a book you can’t think about that .”Loan Le, Langan’s editor at Atria/Simon & Schuster, said the tradwife trend hasn’t surprised her, but its scale has.“I just didn’t expect this amount.

Everywhere I see now is about tradwives, I didn’t expect it to blow up,” Le told The Post.When she acquired Langan’s book in March of 2025, the appeal wasn’t the subject matter — she was aware that there’d been a “big auction” for “Yesteryear” but the book had yet to come out.Langan — a noted horror author Le had worked with on two previous books — and her unique perspective on tradwives was the attraction.“It felt like a true conversation versus an attack or a criticism,” she said.Langan’s gothic-tinged book focuses on a journalist sent to cover a wifely influencer, only to find that something is not right a...