Review: Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Title: Daisy Jones and the Six

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Year published: 2019

Category: Adult fiction

Pages: 368 pages

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Location: (my 2023 Google Reading map): USA (CA, OH, KS)

Summary: 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.

Review: I can't believe I waited 4 years to read this novel. I enjoyed Reid's Malibu Rising and Carrie Soto is Back (see my reviews here and here respectively) so I don't know why it took me so long to finally read this one.

I like the format of this book, it reminded me a bit of the 1980s move This is Spinal Tap (an all-time favorite of mine) in that it's about a fake rock group and done as a series of interviews with all the players. Each section of the book has a paragraph intro saying how well (or not) the band is doing and then the "interviews" begin. What a clever structure for this story!

I felt like I was reading an extended Rolling Stone article and it was fun. It's clever to give us the perspective of all the characters, to see the ins and outs of their relationships, how the music industry worked (or didn't) for all of them, and how success affected their lives.

When I first heard about this novel I thought someone referenced Fleetwood Mac, but then I heard it had nothing to do with them. I just finished the book and the acknowledgements make it pretty clear that the band was an inspiration for the novel. I like Fleetwood Mac very much and appreciate the connection.

Challenges for which this counts: