Blink Book Review #3: "Daisy Jones and the Six" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

My dream has long been to quit life and join the band. While I’ve taken up music lessons in recent years (see photo at the end), this book allowed me to vicariously live out that dream without the messiness, madness and complexities of doing it in real life. My fascination with the behind-the-scenes intrigues of being in a band played out in every chapter of this book.

“Daisy Jones and the Six” (2018) by Taylor Jenkins Reid chronicles the rise and fall of a successful ‘70s rock band, The Six, and its lead singer, Daisy Jones. Written in a format that could be called an “oral history,” each chapter is narrated in first person from the various characters’ perspectives. The narrative feels more like an interview than traditional prose.

Daisy is a strikingly beautiful and hugely talented young singer who makes her way to the stage in a band called “The Six.” The story weaves through the drama, successes, secrets, failures and personal demons of these seven people, their families and close friends.

Daisy is both self-aware and, at the same time, completely unaware of how she impacts the people around her. She’s lovable and despicable at the same time. Characters like this usually turn me off, but just when I was ready to hate her, she shows her deeply human side.

A key to my love of this book was listening to it as an audio book. The voice actors are spot on. Normally, I find listening to a book with a lot of narrators confusing. The voices in this book are distinctive and exactly what I would have heard in my head. My favorite voice was the keyboard player, Karen. She sounds gentle and lilting exuding a calm that balances out Daisy’s sometimes-frenetic voice and the male voices that I did occasionally get confused.

For anyone who grew up in the ‘70s, there are plenty of generational references that keep you laughing about the food and fashion of the era, not to mention the intrigue of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.

It wasn’t until I finished this book that I realized it’s written by the same author as one of my favorite books I read last summer - “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” Both are great summer reads.

This book crossed my radar because of the Amazon Prime series based on the book. Several people advised me to read the book before watching the series. I’m glad I did. I came to love the characters (and their spot-on voices) so much, I doubt I’ll watch the series. Nothing could beat the audiobook voices already engrained in my head.

My summer challenge in 2022 was to get off the screens and back to books. My accountability was to write a dozen-ish short Blink Book Reviews of 300-ish words (short enough to read in a blink). Now we're back for summer 2023. Join my Blink Book Review Facebook group to get the reviews and book suggestions from others.

I'm no Daisy Jones but this still is so much fun!