THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“Back then, I had an oversize sense of self-importance and absolutely no self-worth. It didn’t matter how gorgeous I was or how great my voice was or what magazine I was on the cover of. I mean, there were a lot of teenage girls that wanted to group up and be me in the late seventies. I was keenly aware of that. But the only reason people thought I had everything is because I had all the things you can see.

I had none of the things you can’t.”
– Daisy

Everyone was talking about Daisy Jones & the Six last year. However, because I try to stay away from hyped books as much as possible, I didn’t read this book until early this year – It was the best decision ever.

I am in love with Daisy Jones & the Six. I completely agree with all the hyped stuff everyone has been saying about this book because it was amazing. Nothing short of amazing.

LET ME TELL YOU A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE STORY:

The story follows a group of people, seemingly unrelated at first, but then eventually you’ll see how their path’s crossed in the most interesting way.

Basically, we have a girl who wanted to prove herself that she was more than just a pretty face. Then we have a bandleader who, like the girl, has also something to prove. The plot isn’t as simple as that, but all in all, that’s the basic plot of it, then add addiction, infidelity, relationships and a whole bunch more drama. I normally would hate unnecessary drama.

However, Daisy Jones & the Six made it in a way that you get why such drama exists in the story. It reels you in and keeps you invested in what each of the characters were going through.

There were so many things to love about this book. Let me start with Daisy.

• I want to really talk about Daisy first because, I feel like, I related to her struggles so much more than I anticipated. I couldn’t relate to her issues as a rock star, but I could relate to her personal issues. Daisy never felt like she was loved, this led her to seek for the affection she was looking for from her parents from something or someone else. This led Daisy to the path of self-destruction. Things I am all too familiar with. As Daisy was telling her side of the story and how she ended up the way she did, I feel my hear broke with her, because at some point in my life, I was also struggling from the same issues myself. I did not love myself enough because not a lot of people taught me how to do that. She suffered from the same thing. Also, the fact that she fell in love with the first person who saw her who she really was, was also something that I am very familiar with. Knowing that someone finally saw who you are and appreciate you for who you are. So I understood why she fell because I fell exactly the same way.

• Camilla. Oh dear Camilla. She might probably be the best character in this book. I could relate to Daisy the most, but Camilla is something else. The love she has for Billy Dunne (the lead of The Six) and their children is worthy of admiration. If there is someone who can love so purely and unadulterated, it is Camilla. What a woman.

“No matter who you choose to go down the road with, you’re going to get hurt. That’s just the nature of caring about someone. No matter who you love, they will break your heart along the way. Billy Dunne has broken my heart a number of times. And I know I’ve broken his. But yes, that night watching them on SNL… that was one of the times that my heart cracked. But I just keep choosing trust and hope. I believed he was worthy of it.”
– Camilla

• I liked how the story doesn’t focus on romance. There is romance, however, it will not slap you in the face of its prominence in the story. I’d say it focuses more on relationships and commitments more than romance. It shows you that relationships are more gray than completely just black and white. Each character had their own relationship issues that had been dealt with in such a realistic way.

• How the author dealt with all the women in this book was amazing. She gave them so much power to decide for themselves.

• I am in love with how this book was formatted. This feels like an autobiography in a way. It was written in an interview-like manner where each people gets to tell their own version of the events that happened, while still being able to let the story unfold in a very linear manner. If done incorrectly, alternating POVs per paragraph could be a disaster. But it was done so perfectly here that I fell wholly in love with it. I’m not sure if it would have been as effective it was if it was written in any other way.

• The characters. OMG. The characters made this story so memorable. They were the reason this story worked so well. With bland characters, this would have been just like any other story. Each and every character had their own quirks and idiosyncrasies which make them so much more fleshed out.

• To add to the previous bullet note, I would highly, highly recommend you to listen to this on audiobook. It is a full cast audiobook so each character would have a different narrator. I was able to associate the voice to the character as I was reading it which made the experience reading it more enjoyable.

• We get a glimpse of the behind the scenes of how a rock band is formed as well as the problems they encounter along the way. I feel like there is some truth to the issues that this band faced. I did mention earlier that this book had drama, and the drama that this band had was pretty warranted based on how the story was moving along. I don’t know how accurate everything was, when it comes to the drugs and all that, but it felt pretty authentic to me.

• It dabbled with the topic of addition a little bit. A few characters in the story were dealing with addiction. We see how the characters dealt with it, one more successfully than the other. The book did not obscure the reality of what addiction can do to you nor did it completely shove the truth to you in a preachy way.

• There were a lot of quotable quotes:

“I fell in love with the wrong guy who was exactly the right guy. And I had made decisions time and time again that made it worse and never made better. And I’d finally pushed myself right over the edge.”
– Daisy

“”You can justify anything. If you’re narcissistic enough to believe that the universe conspires for you and against you – which we all are, deep down – then you can convince yourself you’re getting signs about anything and everything.”
– Teddy

• The story was set in the 1970s. The book gave me the feel of that era.

• It made me cry. Like fat ugly tears. Especially towards the ending. My heart was breaking for Camilla as I was for Daisy.

These are some of the things I nitpicked as I was reading it.

• I did not like how the story ended. But that’s just me. I mean, the author already went down this route, I just didn’t like how at the end of it, you can still go back and do this. I was already happy that this person chose this route, I would have wanted them to have their own individually ending. It’s so hard to not be spoilery about this. LOL. But yeah, I wish the epilogue was deleted altogether.

• It was a little bit predictable. It was very easy to see where things were going.

• Not a big fan of love-hate relationships, then one moment, they were falling for each other. I was not a fan of that.

THERE WAS NOTHING. THERE WAS NOTHING EXTREMELY BAD ABOUT THIS BOOK.

Title: Daisy Jones & the Six
Author: Taylor Jenkins-Reid
Genre / Themes:  Fiction, Historical, Addiction, Romance
Point of View: First Person, Multiple POV
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: March 5th, 2019
Pages: 355

SYNOPSIS:
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six: The band’s album Aurora came to define the rock ‘n’ roll era of the late seventies, and an entire generation of girls wanted to grow up to be Daisy. But no one knows the reason behind the group’s split on the night of their final concert at Chicago Stadium on July 12, 1979 . . . 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.

5 stars!

Everything about this book was beautiful. Yeah sure, I had some tiny nitpicks, but everything was so beautifully done. The story was so intricately put together that will leave you wondering if this book is fiction or not.

After finishing the book, my mind drawn me think that this would be a good movie or series – turns out there is already a mini-series for this on the way! I would love to hear those songs they’ve written be performed live.

Highly recommended.