Published by Ballantine Books on March 5th, 2019
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 368
Format: Audiobook & Hardback
Source: Overdrive via Brooklyn Public Library
Amazon • Add to Goodreads
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
TW: drug use, alcoholism, addiction, abortion, cheating, abandonment, deaths, sex (all of your basic 70 troupes)
Goodreads Synopsis:
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . 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 and 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.
"BE STILL MY HEART" TOP BOOK OF 2019
Lets first start by saying I had no desire to read this book at all. But the more I heard about it, the more I wanted to know what everyone was talking about. I am not fond of the 70's lifestyle but i wanted to see what all the hype was about. GUYS! Best book I have ever picked up. I can no express to you or put in words how much I loved this book. This put me back at my teenage heart where I loved music groups and had pictures hanging all over my walls of my favorite singers. I could just see my walls being filled wit pictures and those album covers were epic.
This is by far the best book I have read of 2019! I listened to this on audio but followed along with it in the book. This had a full cast audio and by far the best audiobook I have ever listened to. The book was wrote in an interview format which I was sure how I felt about it at first but I absolutely fell in love with this format. You could feel the 70's coming out of the pages. I really wish that they would put these songs into a CD - the book world would sell this album out. I want to hear the sounds behind all the words and music they were writing and singing. I am a singer so my singer heart is wanting to hear these tunes. I do love how at the end of the book, they wrote the songs out for you so you could read the lyrics but let us please get this album! I wanted this band to be real but it is fictional but it is wrote so well that you fall in love with the cast. They are rude, judgmental, arrogant, and self-absorbed but this cast together made the best music of the 1970's. This is one band that I would want front row seats and back stage passes to.
I don't even know where to start with this cast. The book starts off by introducing all the cast of "THE SIX" - they are being interviewed at how their journey started and how their stardom to fame took off and ended.
Billy - Billy was confused. His life was hard. He never had his father there, he struggled with drugs and made bad decisions but when he missed the birth of his first child, his entire life changed. He struggled with staying away from drinking, drugs, and even Daisy. (BTW, I loved Camila but this thing between Billy and Daisy could have been BIG!!!!! That bad could have exploded!
Camila - I love Camila - the heart of a pure wife and loving mother. It never lost her trust and faith in her family and her husband. She held on.
Graham - Brother to Billy - such a good brother in my thoughts but sometimes being there is not enough and he begins to learn who is there for him.
Karen - OK so I loved Karen. She was all about herself but I still felt connected with her. She reminded me so much of me when I was younger. Never wanted to marry or have kids. It was my life and I wanted to enjoy it and never wanted anyone to interfere with my life. However, I loved her and Graham. My heart wanted this for them and then when "The something" happened - my heart broke and I was devastated at her choice she made. I don't want to spoil that something!
Warren & Eddie - not my favorite two people.
Teddy - Billy's sidekick. Billy was lost without him until one day he has no choice.
Then we meet Daisy - a nobody wanting to be somebody and will do as she pleases to get what she wants. She will dress, walk, talk, and do as she wants regardless of what others think. You wanted to love her, you wanted to hate her, you wanted to be her, but you ended up just feeling sorry for her and loving her completely. She is a complete drug addict, hitting bottoms and coming back only to hit bottom again. Doing things without thinking of her consequences. I wanted to beat her at times, hug her at times, and even cry with her times. Her love for Billy was heartbreaking and doing the right thing at the end was the hardest thing I watched for this band. I loved them even with all the chaos going on around them.
I ended this book laying in bed with my ear buds in my ears and looking at the pages of the book as I read along as I listened and this book stunned me. I did not want it to end. I wanted to see more and hear more. I wanted things to be different. My heart hurt but I knew that the choices made were the right ones even though my mind stood still. I wanted to immediately start the book over and hope things would change if I read it again but HELLO - its a book - it wont change but this journey was so much fun. This is by far the number 1 book of 2019 for me.
This book was full of amazing quotes. I don't normally annotate my books but this book is one I want to re-read and annotate the tail off of it. Here are some of the great ones that stuck out.
“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”
“I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it's not faith, right?”
“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.”
“Passion is...it's fire. And fire is great, man. But we're made of water. Water is how we keep living. Water is what we need to survive.”
“You have to have one person in your life that you know would never do anything to steer you wrong. They may disagree with you. They could even break your heart, from time to time. But you have to have one person, at least, who you know will always tell you the truth.”
“No matter who you choose to go down the road with, you're gonna get hurt. That's just the nature of caring about someone. No matter who you love, they will break your heart along the way.”
“Music is never about music. If it was, we'd be writing songs about guitars. But we don't. We write songs about women."
“But knowing you’re good can only take you so far. At some point, you need someone else to see it, too. Appreciation from people you admire changes how you see yourself.”
This is one book I could go on and on about but I will end here - but highly highly recommend this book, even if you don't read stand-alones or want to give it a try - DO IT!!!!
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