Ratings:
Star Rating: ★★★★★
If This Book Was a Movie Rating: R
Review:
“When you think of me, I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll.”
i don’t think i’ll ever be able to get over this book.
It was broken. It was beautiful. It was so heartbreakingly real. Because as much as we hope we can, no one can live on laughter and wildness and heartbreak and passion. Reality is pain and conflict and blood. Facing our demons and emerging victorious.
I don’t know how to review this book. I’m not even sure there is a right way to review it. But I want to do this masterpiece justice, so I will try.
Daisy Jones & The Six.
During the 1970s, Daisy Jones & The Six were a wildly popular rock band, famous for the rhythm of their songs and the heart in their lyrics. Everyone knew them. Everyone knew Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne, lead singers for the most iconic rock group of the decade. Everyone knew the songs that defined an era.
They were everything.
But then in 1979, at the absolute pinnacle of their popularity, the band broke up. Nobody knew why. Nobody was told. Their tours were canceled. The former bandmates never spoke about the split. The details were long considered to be lost, long locked away with those involved.
Thirty years later, those details are finally being brought to light.
“This book serves as the first and only time members of the band have commented on their history together. However, it should also be noted that, on matters both big and small, sometimes accounts of the same event differ.
The truth often lies, unclaimed, in the middle.”
I rarely cry because of a book. As in the list of books I have cried because of can be counted on one hand.
But this book?
This book made me cry.
I won’t discuss much about the plot, because flying blind into this masterpiece is exactly the way to get into it. When you first crack open the book, you have all these ideas and theories in your head as to who these characters will be. Who they are, what they’ve done. Why the band decided to break up.
The album that the band builds across the course of the novel, Aurora, is beautiful. TJR’s writing and descriptions makes you feel like you can feel the emotion and the heart that is poured into each song. She actually wrote out all the songs with all their lyrics and put them into the back of the book.
In fact, the line “when you think of me, I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll” is from the song Regret Me.
I listened to the audiobook (stunning masterpiece with a full cast), and immediately after finishing it, I went and searched up all the songs. Four of them (Young Stars, Impossible Woman, This Could Get Ugly, and Aurora) have been covered and made into actual songs. Which made my entire week.
I think I've listened to Impossible Woman for over an hour by now. I’m listening to it now, writing my review.
Next, the characters.
“We love broken, beautiful people. And it doesn't get much more obviously broken and more classically beautiful than Daisy Jones.”
Daisy Jones, Daisy Jones. She’s the drugged-up queen of rock ’n’ roll. She’s the beauty who owns the hearts of half the world. She’s the kind of icon who once said,
“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.”
Daisy Jones is a star, but she has countless demons. She was a lonely child. Her parents abandoned her, and she constantly searched for something in the clubs and bars on Sunset Strip. She often didn’t even know what she was looking for. During her time in the band, she was addicted to drugs, downing cocaine and pills and whatever she can get her hands on.
Billy Dunne is just as much a star as Daisy, but his struggle is with alcohol. Fortunately, he has his wonderful wife Camelia, pulling him back towards sobriety and their daughter.
He and Daisy are two strong-willed stars on a collision course, the sparks they create forming that brilliant album.
I loved how real every character felt. Daisy and her lonely desperation, Billy and his struggle with alcohol. Camelia with her unwavering, unflinching faith in other people. Eddie’s bitterness and resentment. Pete and Warren with their strength and skill. Graham with Karen, and Karen’s famous line.
“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”
Every single one of them. I can’t do them justice. Every single member of that band tore at my heart a little, and several of them tore it clean in half.
As I wrapped up this book, the reasons for the band’s breakup seem natural. Maybe even inevitable. It doesn’t make it any less painful, but you finally understand where they’re all coming from. What really happened. We’re all broken in our own ways, ripped apart at the seams and stitched together so many times we’re not even sure how we were before. Were we even okay before the rips?
The whole novel shows this so perfectly. It’s all so perfectly bittersweet.
But Camelia’s last note at the end?
That was what finally shattered my heart, in the best possible of ways.
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Buy this book: https://www.amazon.com/Daisy-Jones-Taylor-Jenkins-Reid-ebook/dp/B07DMZ5YR9/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1649460237&sr=8-1
Recommendations If You Liked This Book:
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
Heartless by Marissa Meyer
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