Starting off book reviews this year with one of my favorite reads from 2021.
About the Book
Title: Daisy Jones & the SIx
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Series: none
Genre: Contemporary, Historical Fiction (the 70s are now considered historical fiction according to GoodReads, jeez I’m getting old!)
Pages: 355
Dates Read: October 28 – November 3, 2021
Edition Read: Paperback
Blurb: 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.
Review
So many things to love about this book. It is definitely a story of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, that is for sure. It feels like such a whirlwind in the best way possible.
To me, the style was very unique. It is not written in as a straightforward novel, but as entries in an interview with Daisy, the members of the band The Six, and various other writers, producers and friends or lovers. It definitely felt very real – if I didn’t know any better, I would think this was a true story based on a real band. That’s got to be hard to do!
Daisy is such a complex character and I absolutely loved her for it. She is such a force of nature. She is a LOT of trouble, but she’s also just so completely likeable at the same time. Her main foil is Billy, the leader of The Six who writes most of their songs. Watching them orbit each other, hating each other but being drawn to each other at the same time, was so captivating. There was a constant will-they-or-won’t-they vibe that kept me reading.
Also keeping me reading was worrying about Daisy and hoping she would survive. I’ve never read about anyone addicted to more substances than she was.
This book feels like such a perfect time capsule of the late 70s. I wanted their songs to be real so I could go listen to them! I wanted to hear how all these different, sometimes warring people, came together and made magic. Which makes this book pretty magical, doesn’t it.
GoodReads rating: 5 stars
Categories: Books I've Read
Life With No Plot 
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