Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid Published by Ballantine Books on March 5, 2019
Genres: Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Sagas, Fiction / Women
Pages: 400
Format: Audiobook
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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 ’n’ 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.
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.
Daisy Jones & The Six is super popular. Still a wait list to get it on Libby. Made into an Amazon Prime Video series. And it came out 7 years ago. Book Girls Guide brought it to my reading list, and honestly, while I totally get the hype, I don’t get the hype. I know that doesn’t make sense, but maybe, if all things equal out, I can try to make it make sense. Maybe.
I don’t know if it was the audiobook or just me, but I struggled to keep all the characters straight. Like, maybe I should have taken notes. I chose the audiobook due to the different narrators for each character, but it felt more broken that way. But here’s the deal: much like a song, oddly enough, the voices start to blend, and it becomes a story and not just a name and some words. Somewhere along the way, you get pulled into their lives, and you stop trying to figure it out. And I think, at least in the audiobook, that’s where the magic is. That’s why it’s so popular: you lose a sense of who/what/when/where/why/how and just exist with the voices telling their story.
I can’t begin to tell you what this story is about; it’s in the synopsis, but I can tell you how it made me feel. Seven very humanly broken people. They aren’t all bad, though they struggle through some really rough things. They aren’t all good, either, though they do some good things. They just happen to do it all on a world stage that, while it only lasts a couple of years, amplifies their strengths and struggles. Egos, romances, addiction, amazing talent it’s all there. Do identify in any way with any of these people . . . I mean maybe ego 😀 Do I feel immerseded into their lives . . . absolutely! There’s just something about this book that I absolutely can’t identify with, and while I can’t say I loved it, I can absolutely say I did live it. And that’s where the hype comes in, I think; you don’t read/listen to it, you feel it.
About Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of the New York Times Bestselling novels Atmosphere, Carrie Soto Is Back, 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, GMA Book Club, Indie Next, Best of Amazon, and Book of the Month. Her novel, Daisy Jones and The Six, is now a limited series on Amazon Prime. She lives in Los Angeles.
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