Daisy Jones and the Six

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Synopsis

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.

Review

Daisy Jones and the Six is a hard book for me to organize my thoughts on, let alone explain it through this review. I’m torn between remembering times the story was interesting and remembering the fact that it feels like nothing enjoyable happened.

I love the idea of a fictional oral history, and what better way to utilize this than with a fictional rock band from the 70s. I could easily believe that all the characters in this story are real. But, that doesn’t mean I like them.

Everyone was completely full of themselves, there was pretty much no character development, and this story felt like a glorification of drugs and alcohol, which is ironic considering one of the main character’s whole spiel is that he is getting sober. I think Taylor Jenkins Reid thought her story would be highlighting the dark side of thrill-obsessed rock stars, but all she did was glorify the gross parts.

Another disappointment in the book was Daisy Jones herself. She boasted of being a strong woman who made it in a man’s world, but all she did was expect the world to bow to her feet. She acted extremely entitled and spoiled, and every time she would point out a problem with the band dynamic, she would just continue to enforce it. One of her points against the frontman of The Six is that he is a control freak who expects everything to go his way, but she acts the exact same way. I don’t know what Taylor Jenkins Reid was trying to accomplish, but my brain is too busy fuming at this novel to actually achieve any form of positive or deep analysis of Daisy’s character.

As someone who is a huge music fan, especially of rock and the blues, I’ve grown a huge obsession with the scene Reid tries to recreate (which is honestly just generic 70s). It’s clear Reid did her research, but I feel like mentioning famous bands doesn’t necessarily mean this is something that really feels like it’s from the 70s. At best it’s a recreation of Almost Famous, which makes sense because this novel feels like it was made with the purpose of banking a screen adaptation. Which, surprise surprise, it did. Kudos to Reid for getting this turned into a series since I actually think this would be better as a TV series than as its original book form. It also makes sense that it is Reese Witherspoon’s studio who’s adapting this novel since it’s Witherspoon who showcased this book in her book club

Daisy Jones and the Six was a cool concept that was poorly executed. The story could be entertaining at times, but painfully annoying at others. In the end, the lack of likable characters and showcasing independent women as ignorant and petty made this book feel like a burden to read.

Let’s Talk:

• Have you read Daisy Jones and the Six?
  • Thoughts?
• Do you know any books written in a similar format/style?
• Do you like 60s/70s music? 🙂
  • The Band and Howlin Wolf some personal favs