Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid Published by Ballantine Books on March 5, 2019
Pages: 336
Genres: Contemporary, Historical Fiction
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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.
The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.
I have yet to read a book by Taylor Jenkins Reid that I haven’t loved, so I am not surprised that I inhaled Daisy Jones & The Six in one sitting. She manages to take an interesting story and make it exceptional by telling it in an innovative way.
The history of a 1970s rock band’s rise to fame is chronicled entirely in interview format, with each band member and other key players giving their recollections separately to the author. I was quite intrigued by the moments when people have distinctly different memories of the same event and the reader is left to determine what truly happened. It’s such a human thing to interpret situations or motives differently and, of course, time can make memories fuzzy.
The imagery is so strong that I felt like I was watching a “behind the music” documentary. I visualized myself in the room where Daisy and Billy were arguing over lyrics, and in the sound booth while the vocal tracks were being laid down, and on stage during a sold-out concert, and in the living room at a drug-fueled raging party.
The story is very much character driven, and in Daisy and Billy we have two talented, strong-willed, tortured, and complicated singer-songwriters steering the tour bus as it were. It is a dream for all music lovers who want to know what goes into collaborating on a hit album. The process is painful at times, but always bursting with energy and unpredictability. The band members have equally dynamic personalities and intricate relationships with each other, which are explored in riveting detail. One real rock star in this story is someone who isn’t even a member of the group: Camila. I want her strength and goodness when I grow up.
If you’re looking for a captivating beach read, I highly recommend Daisy Jones & The Six.
Recommended for fans of:
The 1970s
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll
Historical fiction
Fleetwood Mac
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About Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of the New York Times Bestselling novels Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, as well as One True Loves, Maybe in Another Life, After I Do, and Forever, Interrupted. Her books have been chosen by Reese’s Book Club, Read with Jenna, Indie Next, Best of Amazon, and Book of the Month. Her novel, Daisy Jones and the Six, is currently being adapted by Hello Sunshine into a limited series for Amazon. She lives in Los Angeles.
Great review! I listened to this one and it was epic!