bookwormmuse

Daisy Jones & The Six

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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.

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.

After hearing nothing but gushing reviews about ‘Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’ last year, I knew that I needed to not expect too much from the author because for one, this was a very different type of book compared to Evelyn Hugo from what I have heard and second, well, can’t be too hyped about a book otherwise it kinda hinders the enjoyment of the book, I think.

So, with that in mind, I started my reading. The format of the book took me a bit to get used to but I am of the opinion that perhaps nothing else could have worked well with this one. I am sure there are people who wouldn’t find this format to their tastes and I can totally see why that could be. Then there’s the fact that while those interviews work well to help us understand what happened, there was something missing from the book. I couldn’t really feel the characters, if you know what I mean and the format of the book is to be blamed for that, perhaps.

I am not saying that I didn’t like this book but perhaps, this wasn’t the book I should have chosen as an introduction to this author. It might colour whether I pick up her books or not. I hope that’s not the case but I am moody so who really knows. There’s also the matter of characters and how they were used in a way that meant that I didn’t really want to know more about them? Some of the secondary characters felt unnecessary and too bland, I wish they were more fleshed out to give a more genuine feel to the book.

Apart from this, I did enjoy the book. There’s a reason I gave it four stars, after all. I think, in a very odd way, this was my introduction to the music scene in sixties and seventies in LA. I have absolutely no idea how much of that is faithful to the history because I wasn’t born in America and my childhood was basically spent in being interested in all things Bollywood. So that was enlightening to say the least. I really loved the way Daisy’s journey was shown along with Billy and his band.

I really enjoyed the relationship between Daisy and Billy, they were approaching the collab from such different angles and it was fun to see that. Billy and Camila’s relationship was a bit hard to digest for me, Camila was too good a person for me swallow and that might be my fault. She’s too good for him but I like that there was a change in Billy because of Camila. The rest of the band and their internal relationships were also interesting, I really liked Karen. She was so well written. She was also so unapologetic about her wants, her wishes.

I wish I could have enjoyed this novel more but I can safely say that this one was pretty good on its own. I have seen mixed reviews of this one and I agree with most of the points made but overall, I did enjoy it.