Book Review: Daisy Jones & The Six

I’m sure many of you have heard of Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I heard about it a long time ago and had it on my tbr since I loved the two other TJR books I’ve read (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and One True Loves). A miniseries for the book is coming out on Prime so I wanted to read it before then. Of the three I’ve read so far, I liked this one the least. Let me say, I did like the book, but I didn’t love it and I’ll explain why!

Daisy Jones & The Six is written interview style. I pictured it in my head like a documentary. It’s sort of supposed to be a book within a book where the author of this book about Daisy Jones and The Six is interviewing the band members and people associated with them to learn about the rise and fall of the super popular 70s band.

Daisy Jones was born in California and very privileged to parents who were more interested in their own careers than their daughter. Free spirited and artistic, Daisy spends her teen years partying and making friends with celebrities in LA. As she gets older she wants to get into songwriting and singing, but no one will take her songwriting seriously. They just want her to sing pre-written songs and covers.

The Six is a band that is growing more and more popular due to their immense talent and the brilliant song writing of Billy Dunne. After a hit debut album, the record label and Billy’s producer thinks it would be a great idea for them to do a duet with Daisy Jones. It become wildly popular and thus begins the journey to joining forces and becoming Daisy Jones & The Six, songwriting together, recording the album, and going on tour. It’s all filled with music, rock & roll, drugs, sex, etc.

The book follows all their perspectives on how things played out back then. Daisy and Billy had a love/hate relationship. Their songs together were magic, but they would butt heads and Daisy’s troubling drug addiction was bad for Billy who desperately wanted to stay sober for his wife and kids. Working so closely together and having a lot in common caused a lot of tension, hurt feelings, heartbreak etc. The interviews of the band members and others close to them gives “fans” a look at what really happened (though stories differ from person to person at times) during the band’s years together and why they broke up.

So as I mentioned at the start of this post, I liked the book but I didn’t love it. I thought the format of the book was cool and different. I felt fully immersed in the world of the band and like I was with them in the recording studio or on the road. The story actually made me have big feelings, but they weren’t happy feelings which is why I didn’t love it. I actually liked Daisy the least (except for maybe Eddie – one of the band members who was always acting like a tool). Yes, she was flawed and had her reasons for being sort of messed up and believe me I love a lot of flawed characters. But, with Daisy I just never felt for her. She actually irritated me a lot of the time. I did not like the whole emotional affair that comes and goes between her and Billy, because I loved Camila, Billy’s wife. And because I loved Camila, I just felt the whole relationship and will they or won’t they thing was so disrespectful. Honestly, Camila is the hero of the story in my opinion!

Although, I didn’t love Daisy, I did love a line of hers from early on in the book. She says, “I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.”

I have to also include a quote from my favorite character, Camila.

“All I will say is that you show up for your friends on their hardest days. And you hold their hand through the roughest parts. Life is about who is holding your hand and, I think, whose hand you commit to holding.”

This is clearly now a Camila Dunne fan account.

Have you read this book? I’d love to know your thoughts!

P.S. This is set in the same universe as some of TJR’s other books so there is a brief mention of Mick Riva at one of Daisy’s parties and he is one of Evelyn’s husbands in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I believe he’s also a major character in Malibu Rising, which I own but haven’t read yet.