DAISY JONES & THE SIX – Amy’s Book Pick of the Week

Hi, friends!

Since my favorite aspect of working at my local library is helping patrons discover new books, I thought I’d take this readers advisory service to cyber patrons like YOU!
This week’s pick is Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Synopsis
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six: The band came to define the rock ‘n’ roll era of the late seventies. But no one knows the reason behind the group’s sudden split the night after a concert at Chicago Stadium on July 12, 1979.

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. 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. Click here to watch the book trailer.

Review
Amazing! I came to the end wanting more, which is always a good sign. The structure of the book, which is written as if taken from actual interviews, is highly unique and unlike any book I have ever read. At first the author’s style of jumping from person to person was off putting, but once I settled into it, I was hooked. I loved how differently the characters viewed the same events and conversations, each with a slightly different take on what happened. Although Daisy Jones & the Six is a fictitious band, I imagine the goings on behind the scenes are common to many rock groups, especially back in the sixties and seventies. Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll was the rule, not the exception, and life on the road was not conducive to healthy relationships. The characters were complex and well developed, the plot was gripping, and all my senses were engaged. I alternately read and listened to the book and the voice talent was exceptional. I am pretty stingy with five-star reviews, I save those for the epic reads, but Reid definitely deserves 4-1/2 for this one! FYI, Daisy Jones & the Six has been optioned by Amazon Studios and will be produced by Reese Witherspoon and others as a mini-series. I’m looking forward to it!

 

 

Audience

This novel is for mature audiences. The content includes adult themes of drug abuse, sex, and language that may be offensive to conservative readers.

Quote
“You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.”

 

Until next time,

Amy

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