Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Genre: Historical Fiction
Blurb (on back of book): A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous break up.
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the real reason why they split at the absolute height of their popularity…until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
MY OPINION: *****
I absolutely loved this book, despite the number of times it took me to actually sit down and get through it. I started it a while back but stopped reading it in favor of other books at about sixty pages in. I actually bought it last July and it's just been sitting by the side of my bed for however long, waiting for me to read it.
I'm a sucker for anything 70s and 80s themed. I especially love the music of the time period, making this book perfect for me. It follows the rise of a 70s rock band, "Daisy Jones and the Six" in a sort of oral dialogue format, as if reading an exclusive interview in a magazine. I loved the format of this book because it made it really easy to read and helped speed things along. There were times when I did lose track of who was talking and what their actual role was, but for the most part, this style kept me really on top of things.
Given the format, this is a very character-driven book. I personally am much more of a character person, rather than a storytelling person, in terms of the books I like to read. I love to see character growth, development, flaws, changes, and the individual personalities of each person in a book. This one definitely did not fail. Despite the fact that this is entirely dialogue, we get to know each character more personably and personally. We also get to learn more about each character through the dialogue of the other characters, which offered a bias but interesting perspective on each person.
I actually liked this book considerably better than 7HoEH, despite the fact that I rated both five stars. I think this one was more my taste and my love for Evelyn Hugo was far surpassed by my love for Daisy Jones and the rest of the band. I know a lot of people were not fans of this one in comparison to Seven Husbands, but I personally found this one to much more my speed.
This book carried us through the crazy times of the 70s and what it was like as a rock band, touring the world, access to drugs, alcohol, girls, and all that jazz, and read very much like a documentary. As someone born in the early 2000s, I was obviously not around for those times and I think I got to learn a lot about the culture and trends of the time period, even though it as a fictional novel. I think I read somewhere that this was inspired by Fleetwood Mac (correct me if I'm wrong), so I think that adds some sort of validity to the overall novel, fiction or not.
Daisy Jones is a one-of-a-kind, unique, rockstar who does what she wants and says what she wants without thinking twice about it. Her rough upbringing and easy access to drugs makes her very problematic for recovering alcoholic and addict Billy, the lead singer of The Six. The rest of the band don't seem to play side characters but definitely aren't at the level of rockstar as Billy and Daisy. I liked how we got to see the different reactions to the unfortunate reality that most bands have one real shining star (i.e. Freddie Mercury, Bono, Kurt Cobain) and the rest are sort of just... the rest.
I do think some of the relationships were very forced in this book (I honestly did not see the chemistry between Billy and Daisy). I hated Camila (she was annoying and while I felt bad for her, her irritating character didn't do much to help her case), and while Graham and Karen Karen were cute, it felt like one of those that would never last. I liked the inclusion of an inter-band relationship because I think that was fairly comment in many bands (and unfortunately led to many band downfalls).
I liked how we got to see some of the other people involved in making the band what it was, such as the producer or manager. It added a lot to the whole lifestyle of the book and helped me to see how everything was made instead of merely focusing on the band members solely.
I wish I could hear the music in real life and really feel the music and what they were trying to convey with their songs. Reading lyrics is not the same as hearing the songs, obviously, and I think it would be cool if the album was actually made into a real demo album.
I want to listen to the audiobook because I heard the cast is incredible and with such a dialogue-heavy book, I think it would be fun.
Overall, I would recommend this book to readers looking for a documentary-style, dialogue-driven novel about the rock-and-roll lifestyle culture of the 70s.
Main Character: Daisy, Billy
Sidekick(s): Eddie, Pete, Graham, Karen Karen, Teddy
Villain(s): Drugs, alcohol, cheating, etc
Historical Fiction Elements: This book told a fictional narrative of a time in history.
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