Daisy Jones and The Six

I started reading this book about at 11pm and got about 10% of it read that night before forcing myself to go to sleep. This is the kind of book that makes you want to finish it in one sitting, but also makes you want to string it out to make it last forever because you just don't want to give up the characters yet. It's told in an interview style with each person giving their recollection of events ... very well done especially when different characters remember things from their own perspective and knowing them after a while you see why they saw things differently. Daisy Jones is a young girl who has been on her own from a very early age ... a golden girl, hippie child, drugged out groupie who finds her voice, literally, and becomes show more the biggest thing in rock and roll. The Six is a band of six individuals each with their own story to tell and their own lives to lead. The main character in the band is the singer songwriter, Billy Dunne. The story truly revolves around Billy and Daisy and boy what a ride. I'd read this story again and again ... and I am sure I will. I just wish that I could hear the music their fictional characters made because the songs sound like they would be awesome. A terrific read ... a really terrific read. Heartbreaking, uplifting, dark and sad, and very warm and genuine all at the same time. show less

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a very highly recommended account of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll via the history and breakup of a legendary fictional 70's rock band. This one is a winner.

Daisy Jones, the daughter of a famous artist and a French model, grew up in LA in the late 1960's. At fourteen she started hanging out at the famous clubs on the Sunset Strip and drinking and doing drugs followed. Her friend, disco singer Simone, is the only one trying to look out for her. Daisy is a free spirited "it" girl who is first noticed for her looks, but soon has her voice capturing the attention of those with influence and she is signed with Runner Records.

Billy Dunne and his brother Graham started the band that eventually grew show more and took off to become The Six. Billy is the song writer and charismatic front man for the band and has artistic control over the group. On their first tour, Billy went wild and nearly ruined his marriage to Camila, who was pregnant with their first child. After the tour he went to rehab and his overwhelming goal beyond making it big with The Six, is to stay sober and faithful to Camila and their family.

After they have one hit where Daisy sings with Billy on one of his songs, Runner Records decides that Billy and Daisy need to work together. While they are both dynamic on their own, when they sing together they are extraordinary, electric, and transcendent. Billy doesn't want Daisy as part of his band, but they end up working together writing the songs on the album that produced some of the biggest hits in the seventies. No one knew the story behind the band and the split that ended it all - until now.

Daisy Jones & The Six is written like a documentary novel, an oral history, with quotes from the band members, Billy, Daisy, Camila, and Simone. All the characters are written with unique voices in their comments so you can tell who is talking even if you didn't note their name. While reading you can't help but envision the video in your mind, flipping between comments from the different people involved in Daisy Jones & The Six. This is part of what makes the book so amazing. You will easily believe this was a real band and real members are being interviewed. You will be surprised once you learn who is conducting the interviews and asking the questions.

The plot unfolds through the oral history interviews, starting with their beginnings up to their rise to fame. Reid definitely sets her story in the time and place of the late sixties to the late seventies. The clashes, struggles, and power of Billy and Daisy working together, writing the music, is captured perfectly. This really is a riveting and unforgettable novel; my attention was captured right at the start and held fast to the end. Remarkably, at the end of the book Reid has written all the lyrics for the songs. Need I mention that the writing is amazing? Well, it is an incredibly well-written book and captured my attention from beginning to end. I simple could not read it fast enough as I was desperate to learn what happened next.

(When I first read the synopsis for Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & The Six, I immediately tried to get a review copy as I knew it would be a novel I would love. I never did get the advanced reading copy, but I was right to try as this is an amazing novel. Now I need to find time to read Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.)

http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2020/01/daisy-jones-six.html show less

I was nervous to pick up this book because of all the hype, but I couldn't resist a book about musicians (even fake ones) told in a biopic sort of way. And, man... I am SO glad I picked this book up because it deserves all of the hype and more. I was so impressed by this book and it was very difficult to put it down.

Daisy Jones and the Six is a fictional band that was active in the 60s and 70s. We have Daisy, this young and hip girl with big hoops earrings and piercing eyes that jumps into the music scene. Then there's The Six, a rock band of six participants that are slowly working their way up the charts. They get united to create one rocking band after they make an awesome hit, "HoneyComb", and suddenly they are international show more superstars. But remember, not all is what it seems. The band has a lot of troubles and rocky behaviours that go on that lead to their breakup. This book tells their story in an interview format.

This rock'n'roll, fictional biopic is truly miraculous and enticing. It pulled me in and I couldn't get out. I began to feel like these characters were real, and the way the story was told I wouldn't have been surprised that this was a real band. The story telling was fresh, honest and breath-taking, in all the best ways. It tackles difficult topics too, like addiction and abortion, as well as how to make one's self better. And of course, the lead character is a rocking female who no one should step on, giving it a real feministic vibe.

The plot twist I didn't see coming (I really should of, it's not mind blowing), but I really enjoyed it! It won't shock you, but it did give me a small smile and chuckle to realize that Taylor Jenkins Reid was doing. I also found it intriguing that I didn't notice certain characters weren't getting interviews in, and realized why once certain events happened.

This book will be hit or miss for people, but I really enjoyed it. You have to enjoy the biopic or interview format to be into this. I just think it's so unique and it's not something I have seen before. I've only seen biographies of non-fiction tales, but having an interview of a fictional group? That's different! I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen it before. With so many books out there today, it's shocking to me that every idea hasn't been done in some way yet. Additionally, I think this book will stand out more for those who loves 60s and 70s music and are interested in the background of bands. I lived off 60s music for most of my life, and as an adult I have looked into the history of bands I loved. Not all bands have sunshine and roses backgrounds!

Overall, I think this book is wickedly awesome and will transport you back to a time of drugs, sex and rock'n'roll. There's characters in this book you'll connect with or hate with a passion, yet feel for them the whole time. They're relatable in so many ways. If you like Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born (Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper), then I think you'll really enjoy this book (even though those are movies... yes, I realize that).

Five out of five stars. show less

I finished this book in 24 hours. I was so invested and intrigued by the narrative style and the story. This book is told in interview format so you hear the story through the eyes of all the band members, photographers, producers, etc. Reid does this incredible story telling device where you hear the same story from different perspectives and each person changes the event just a little. It really humanized the characters because nobody ever remembers something in the exact same way. I can see why some people don't like the writing style but I listened to the audiobook, which is told with a full cast so the writing and characters really came to life. There is this impending feeling throughout the novel. You know this band broke up for a show more reason and you are always in the edge of your seat waiting to hear why and wondering if this is the moment everything fell apart. TJR does an amazing job of writing characters that feel alive. They are flawed and make mistakes but in a way that feels natural and real. There were several times throughout this novel that I wanted to search images of album covers or red carpet outfits because the story felt so real that it seemed like I could find evidence of these events on Google or in old magazines. I loved this book even more than Evelyn Hugo. If you can listen to the audiobook, I highly suggest you do. It was a great reading experience and based on the way this book is written, I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it quite as much if I was reading it physically. show less

Book Review *** A huge thanks to Goodreads and the publisher for the advanced copy.
I finally finished reading Daisy Jones and the Six. Truth be told, I read it slow because I didn't want it to end! It was everything I expected and more. Told in an oral history question answer format, except no questions. It's like a behind the music story. Band members and others like producers and spouses basically just talk about the rise to fame for The Six, and the even higher level of success when the band becomes Daisy Jones and the Six. It's so well written and completely realistic. I swear they must have been a real band in the 70's. Daisy and Billy and Karen and Graham are so alive. Daisy grew up on the sunset strip. She grew up too quickly. show more Daisy is troubled, lonely, naive, longing to feel like she belongs and extremely talented,though she would rather write songs than sing them. She's also self destructive and wild which leads to bad decisions. People see what they want, her beauty and talent, but not her problems. Billy is a talented musician, the leader of The Six and a man who fiercely loves his family. He is also easily prone to addiction and very bad behavior. He is too pushy sometimes with the band because he wants everything to be his way. Each band member has a unique situation and problems to work through in addition to their music. The dynamic and complex interactions between them is fantastic. Daisy and Billy obviously have a connection,especially with song writing. The question is what will they do about it? As the story unfolds, sometimes we see the same event from different perspectives of band members.It's amazing how differently two people can see the same situation. All of these individual pieces come together seamlessly to create the overall story. The writing is amazing. It's smooth and suscint. Of course,everything leads up to the breakup of the band in 1979. I won't spoil anything. I will say there was an awesome little twist at the end that gave more closure to the story. It's an exceptional story that does live up to the hype. Read it. You will not be disappointed. Taylor Jenkins Reid has created a masterpiece of rock and roll history, even if it's not real. show less

Fan-freaking-tastic book! Absolutely not a book that I would normally read but I saw it on a lot of "best of 2019" lists plus I knew it was an old Reese Witherspoon book club pick so I decided to give it a shot. I was absolutely blown away! I listened to it as an audiobook and that was absolutely the right move. If you don't listen to it as an audiobook you are cheating yourself out of the full experience besides on the unabridged version they play the instrumental music for "Honeycomb" (important song in the book) at the very end. This story felt so real and so authentic I had to go online and search to make sure it was not an actual band from the 70s, that's how believable this story was. I loved all the characters, they felt like show more real people to me.I went through such a range of feelings for them especially for Billy whom I liked then hated then loved. Though I will say I loved Camilla from start to finish. I wholly recommend this book and it is well deserving of any awards it receives. show less

Daisy Jones & The Six could be read as a book about how a fictional band of fictional succeeded, but I think it's better viewed as a story about how a fictional band failed. Or maybe about how they both succeeded and failed. Or about how success and failure look different to different people: how the same event can be understood in infinite different ways from different perspectives and at different times in someone's life. Much like a song.
This book is mostly about how people are different. How they see things in different ways, how they have different goals in life, how they can affect each other in ways that they never suspected they could. Reid does a great job handling a cast of distinctive and clashing characters. Rather than a show more traditional narrative novel, the book is formatted as a collection of snippets from interviews with various people involved in the story of the band Daisy Jones and the Six. And instead of focusing on just Billy and Daisy, the two central characters of this story and the stars of the band, she also takes care to show the tensions and internality experienced by other members of the band, as well as their producers, their managers, Billy's wife, Daisy's friend, and other people in their orbit. Doing so both builds up the band's image, allowing us to see them through the eyes of outsiders, and builds up the world around them, showing us to understand why their story would matter to anyone enough to be recorded and published years after it's supposed to have happened. No character exists in isolation. Even no relationship exists in isolation: through the complex split perpective, the effects of Daisy's fight with Billy or of two of their bandmates' budding relationship become apparent in the dynamics of the band. As a result, the many characters and plotlines are memorable and tightly connected to one another in a way that makes the book feel cohesive.
It goes deeper than just the characters' different reactions to plot events: they also have very different views of larger thematic ideas, such as love and music--and the multiple perspectives allow these ideas to clash and interact with one another in interesting ways. Some members all about how passion and love--or perhaps darker emotions--are what make music good, while others are really focused on guitar riffs, or production, or persona, or something else entirely. Is music about talent or hard work, star power or collaberation? Is love about passion or commitment? And so on. The book doesn't give simple or easy answers (perhaps because there aren't any), but it shows a wide variety of approaches to those questions, and isn't afraid of the fact that those approaches clash and contradict each other.
When I started this book, I was asking myself, what's the point of a fictional music biography? What's a musician without their music? By the end, I felt pretty satisfied that Daisy Jones & the Six had answered that question. It's not a perfect book. For one thing, it's written like an interview transcript, and I'm not a big fan of reading scripts, since they're usually better performed. I think it would be better as a podcast, and it might be a better experience as an audiobook than a text one--but as I've explained, I think the format is crucial to expressing the themes of the book, so I mostly just got used to it. Another probably is that since the style of all dialogue and no narrative serves to emulate reality and the real experience of listening to celebrity interviews as much as possible, the few occasions when that reality was subverted for the sake of enforcing a certain aspect of the narrative were quite jarring--almost an uncanny valley effect. For instance, it seems like every person "interviewed" in the book agrees that Daisy is the most ethereally beautiful woman they've ever seen, which is rather tiresome, and either makes you think the fictional interviewer is being rather selective, or disrupts immersion. Even though those two things made the beginning of the book pretty slow for me, I was still hooked by a third of the way in--so don't let those issues stop you from reading. show less