Reviews with content warning for Death - Daisy Jones & The Six

Simone: . . . This was a girl that hadn't ever released a single piece of work. No album, no single. But she was in the magazines in photos with rock stars. Everybody loved her.

the oral history genre is really difficult even for historians to master. and the key part of building an oral history is to accrue hours and hours and hours of content, and then to go back and slash through it all; kill your darlings. you can’t necessarily do that with a fiction novel, without maybe feeling like you’re wasting a whole lot of time.

daisy jones & the six fell flat for me in large part because of how dishonest i perceived it to be to the craft of oral history. none of the conflicts felt real, few of the characters felt real, everything felt so contained in a way that real life rarely is. it feels unfair to critique a work of fiction for feeling like exactly that, but it was incredibly difficult for me to suspend my disbelief and read this as an oral history. but that's the challenge you take on by choosing such a distinct format for your story. i think i could've enjoyed this novel a lot more if it didn't mimic the oral history.

furthermore, moving beyond the key fact that none of the characters felt like real people—or, worse, like cardboard cutouts of real life musicians—taylor jenkins reid's greatest weakness as an author to me has always been her pacing. i noticed it in the seven husbands of evelyn hugo, and oh boy, did i notice it here; it was grotesque, at times. it's much harder to cover up any flaws in your pacing when your book is so hinged on its organization.

Spoiler

for billy to have his drug issues and then sober up so quickly was incredibly frustrating to me. it felt like there were no stakes every time he discussed his fear of relapse, because we barely got to see him at his lowest in the first place. we were constantly being told he was a “reformed” man, but it felt like he never even had anything to reform from. and for daisy to have constantly been portrayed as perfect, save for her drug issues—eye roll. being constantly told that your main character is just effortlessly amazing is grating. and this is such a minor, technical complaint—but for reid to portray her as an almost textbook heroin addict, and just be too afraid for her perfect main character to actually be a heroin addict is also infuriating.

unfortunately, this book just wasn't it for me. i didn't like daisy, and the way i was told so many times that i should; i didn't like billy, and how he felt entirely one dimensional; in fact, i only liked karen, and sometimes eddie, i think. and if there was supposed to be a plot twist, color me unimpressed—an oral history is not necessarily a plot-oriented form for telling your story, is all i have to say on that front.

sigh. i wonder if the series is any better.

Content Warnings

bookcaptivated's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

nyreads's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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maride's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

at the beggining i was like "wowwww lets go rock and roll" but then i was like "this pretentious people can never shut up" like yes i know this is a interview but still ... i was so annoyed with everyone...

Camila, Daisy and Karen deserve waaaayyyyy better.......

Hoping that the series is better tho

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klimatyczny_bluszcz's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

wow, that was a piece of a great book. nuanced, well-written, fun to read.

i loved, once again, the way Reid creates female characters - complex, complicated, powerfull, unapologetic, full of rage and with a big heart at the same time.

the dynamic between the characters was just *chef's kiss*.

glad for the author to make such good choices within the plot - which were apparently much better for the book itself, rather than to please the readers. it made the story have many more layers and depth you can explore

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wisemangrace's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

An incredibly engrossing story about a band's ups & downs as they make it in the industry. Unique way of structuring the book as it’s directed to be more of an interview/transcript format. Exhibits major life struggles that are faced & reiterates the different paths people in close proximity/ with the same goal have; everyone is on a different path, even if they’re doing the same things or working together in close proximity.

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staticbananas's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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scmiller's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

4.1/10

Enjoyed the narrative technique of the novel — characters recounting events in an interview, engaging in dialogue with the interviewer.

I was impressed with how Jenkins Reid’s wrote her characters’ dialogue so conversationally. It was convincing and effortless.

I liked the stark discrepancies and contradictions between characters when recounting events. They were all unreliable in that way and I like how the story leaves the truth unclear.

I have a love/hate relationship with novels that are about music. It’s the same dissatisfaction I feel when watching cooking shows. You can describe it and show it to me all you want but it’s not in my mouth.

I consumed this novel via audiobook and really loved that there was a full cast. It was like I was listening to a play on the radio. It was so emotive and artistically done. Arguably one of the best audiobook narrations I’ve heard.

I found the ending of the band sudden. We all knew it was coming but yet I still found the way it was written anticlimactic and incomplete somehow, and not in a satisfying literary way.

I found the attempt at actually writing the band’s hit song “Honeycomb” and playing it at the end of the audiobook embarrassing??? You can’t write a novel and paint a picture about how extraordinary and talented and huge this band was and then expose my ears to whatever that was and expect me to say, yes, people definitely would have gone crazy over this song. It was cringey.

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