Ballantine Daisy Jones & the Six

This tedious, uninspired novel manages to take sex, drugs and rock n roll and somehow make them deepply uninteresting.There isn't a plot. Take four or five seconds to imagine a pretty girl joining a band and there, you've already imagined all the nuances that this book has to offer.There isn't any interesting writing to speak of - in fact, the interview style becomes grinding after a few pages, let alone several hundred pages of scarcely-drawn characters who all have the same voice.The most telling detail of the quality within these pages is the glowing review on the back cover from noted literary critic and public intellectual Edith Bowman, who notes, "I thought all the characters were real." That is presumably to be taken literally and says all that we need to know about the target audience, given that poor old Edith once struggled to understand the complex metaphor at the heart of Rhianna's "Umbrella", moaning, "Why would she offer someone to stand under her umbrella? It just doesn't make sense!"This isn't literature, it isn't fun and it isn't entertaining.

A unique revisiting of the rise and fall of a fictional 70s rock band. Seems simple and ordinary at a glance but is far from it...Part Netflix documentary, part film Almost Famous and yet something completely its own.Written in an interview style and being about a successful band could make it hard to engage with emotionally, but wow does it do just that. You very quickly forget the style and fall for the various characters, and for me not the main ones necessarily in Daisy and Billy, I really liked some of the other band members and hangers on. You get sucked into all of their stories, how they viewed the same events very differently and rush through the pages as you desperately want to find out what happened.Easily one of my favourite books of recent times that I’m recommending to all my friends. The only annoying thing is that I can’t now listen to their music or go to a concert...I felt the band was so real by the end that I almost googled them anyway!

I had heard lots of buzz about this book, so I thought I would give it a go, even though it is not my usual type of thing. It tells the story of the meteoric rise of the band Daisy Jones and the Six told in a series of interview with the key members of the band and those around them. At first it is a little hard to keep track of who is who, but this soon eases as you get used to the format, each character has their own style and voice. Taylor Jenkins Reid manages to deliver the bigger picture through the details of the bands day to day life, and of course as the interviews are carried out nearly 40 years after the events not everyones version of the truth is the same. The tone is very authentic and I found myself completely hooked racing through the book, unable to put it down. Highly recommended.

I’m not going to talk about how I am late to the game reading this because it doesn’t need to be said, I have read it. Ok, I lie, I listened to it, I devoured it, I lived it!I bought the book when it came out and I’ve been waiting for that moment when it was the right time to read it. I have heard all the praise, I did a bit of googling and I heard the best way to enjoy the book is by listening to the audiobook.That audiobook! It’s pure genius and ecstasy to the ears!You know the story, it’s a band in the 70s who have made it huge and they are telling the story, as they remember it, to what led them to their last ever gig in 1979. This is just immense.Everything about the narration was spot on. I felt like they were real people being interviewed and everything they said sounded off the cuff and not that they were reading a book. The minutes where they had to add the laughter, the emotion, angry and then the moments where they struggled to speak, too choked up with emotion. My god, it got me and it broke me. The woman who played Daisy, my god her voice, it was perfection.I didn’t want anyone to interrupt me when I was listening. I lost myself in that book, I was living the dream with the band. Everyone had their own demons, issues and quirks.Daisy and Billy were battling demons, ones you knew were very real in that era. Making some poor life decisions as they try to muddle through. Daisy, yes she could be a bit of brat at times, but she was young, too young when exposed to the life but she grew up knowing her mind and what she wanted. Billy, he isn’t like the other men, well he is at the beginning but he met his love and he fought everything to keep hold of it. Yeah, he is a pain in the band, wants things his way but I admired him. Pair him and Daisy and the talent is off the wall but could also be explosive! Eddie, he was such an angry member of the band. Graham, Billy’s brother, struggles to understand a situation he does not want to be in. Karen, she was a woman, she knew her own mind and the rest of the supporting cast was superb. Camille, however, she just stole the show in her bits. She was a woman I could only dream of being like, such a beautiful soul. These were the main voices you hear, they told the story. I did love how everyone remembered things slightly different from each other. Like how they got their band name, what the lyrics mean in a song.There were 2 endings I wanted but the one we got, well it was perfect. Made me sob. I had to go and sit in a room on my own for a few minutes to compose myself! Crazy I know but that’s how much the book affected me. I have a serious book hangover from this book, even once I have finished this review and my mind has cleared. I still won’t be over this book, no way.

I rarely read books that are as over-hyped as this one, but it had so many rave reviews I decided to give it a go. I wish I hadn't bothered. I have no idea what everyone was raving about. Characters were cliched and two dimensional. I didn't care about any of them or their stupid music. I tried to persevere but I was so bored I chucked it across the room at about a third of the way through. Honestly cannot see what is so fabulous about this book to garner the rave reviews it has had. I expect it will be on TV soon and I won't watch that either. I want my money back.