Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - Daisy Jones & The Six

Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

3250 reviews

malima's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional informative reflective relaxing sad tense slow-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

4.75

Daisy Jones & The Six tells the story of, well, Daisy Jones (singer) and The Six (band) and their rise to rock star fame both separately and together, and their subsequent falling out.

Daisy Jones is a young woman to whom everything always came easy except for getting the attention of her parents. She gets into drugs and unhealthy relationships very early in her life, puts out an album that is popular, but not what she wanted, and finally finds the fame and creative freedom she's been yearning for when she sings a duet with The Six.

The Six are a rock band formed around the Dunne brothers in their teens. They search for fame and rock'n'roll, but there's tension in the band, as Billy sees the band as his and searches for ways to be steady to his wife, while the rest of the band want more space for creative input and not only to play songs about Billy's wife. Their big break comes with a duet with the pop singer Daisy Jones. Her consequently joining the band changes dynamics in the band, both for the better and for the worse.

The book then follows these changes and how the different bandmates cope with it, as well as with their changing relationship dynamics.

To be quite honest, this book included less drama and cheating than I expected. The relationships between the band members and those around them are complicated, and there is plenty of drama, but from the premise, I expected it to be "worse".
Maybe it is this, or the biographical style of this novel, that made me feel very calm while reading this book.
Taylor Jenkins Reid really thrives in this biographical style. So far I have only read "Daisy Jones & The Six" and "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo", but she manages to write true stories about fictional characters. These books include things that happened to real people in the music and film industry, making these things tangible to the reader, without this being a non-fiction book. "Daisy Jones & The Six" really dives into the characters' struggles with drugs and other issues of the industry.
Additionally, though both books are written in the style of a biography, Taylor Jenkins Reid chose two styles that are as different from one another as can be, but that work equally well. I am starting to become a fan.

Content Warnings