Title: Daisy Jones and The Six
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Series? N/A
My Rating: ★★★★★
Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction
Age Range: Adult
Publication: 5 March 2019 (Ballantine Books)
You know when you pick up a book and instantly know you’ll love it? That’s how I felt about Daisy Jones & The Six.
Daisy Jones & The Six was easily my favourite read of 2019. It is exciting and multidimensional, not to mention utterly fascinating. I love ‘70s music. In fact, some of my favourite bands and artists are from the ‘70s, including but certainly not limited to Fleetwood Mac. Upon reading this, I instantly noticed the similarities between the band’s story and Fleetwood Mac. And that certainly helped grab my attention!
Picture this: it’s the 1970s. The biggest rock band to emerge in the decade is on the biggest tour of their career. And all of a sudden, in the middle of the tour, they suddenly breakup. What happened? An exclusive interview with the band members for the first time in 40 years reveals everything that went down even the secrets they never imagined would go public.
Straight away, readers find out that Daisy Jones & The Six is no more.
You know from the get-go that you’re about to dive into a slow burn that ultimately leads to an explosion. I thought it was rather interesting to start the book in this way as it is a major risk but judging by how intently I read on, I’d say it paid off. There was a lot of tension between the band, as a whole and between specific members. So it lead to a massive guessing game where I tried to figure out what would be the cause of their demise.
I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.
While music is a big theme in this novel, it’s not the only thing worth mentioning.
Music is a career. And the employees—the band members—are just humans underneath it all. They endure addiction, love, heartbreak, grief, loss, abuse, and family problems. Taylor Jenkins Reid touches on each topic with sensitivity and respect for the characters, weaving them together to tell the story of the band and the people in it. Everyone has a story.
I really enjoyed the clashing perspectives in the retrospective, where certain band members would remember circumstances differently than others. It gave a touch of authenticity to the novel as that’s how fickle the human memory really is. It also shows how each character views themselves in the context of the band, as well as the other band members. You can see how their personalities and their feelings towards others influences their memory.
This is a book that begs to be brought to the screen... And luckily, it was!
In early 2023, “Daisy Jones & the Six” was released as an Amazon Prime limited series, starring Riley Keough as Daisy Jones and Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne. Everything—from the cast to the soundtrack to the plot—was perfect. Maybe I’ll do a review of the TV series on here someday…
But for now, suffice it to say that I yearned to hear these songs one day and while many were altered from page-to-screen, it was a beautiful adaptation and I’ve been playing the soundtrack on repeat for months.
Daisy Jones & The Six is a riveting rock ‘n’ roll story for the ages.
Synopsis: Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their 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.
Also getting noticed is The Six, a band 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 that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
Are you enjoying the Daisy Jones & The Six TV series? What’s your favourite song from the show? (Mine’s Look At Us Now 😍)
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