Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

This book is a masterpiece of contemporary/near historical fiction. The characters feel like they really were fixtures of the 70s music scene. The world of the book felt amazingly grounded in reality. Using the point of view of a journalist writing a history for the novel's voice was genius and worked perfectly for the story she meant to tell.

Listening to the audiobook was an added bonus, as it was read by a full cast of actors! It really helped bring it to life.

Without saying much about the plot, the voice of this novel, and the book-in-a-book's protagonist, were the perfect mixture of likeable heroes that you want root for and multidimensional, flawed humans.

This hit all the marks for me.

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frenandjen's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

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jashanac's review

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3.75

I quite enjoyed this -- more than I initially suspected, simply because historical fiction about a made-up rock band just doesn't strike my fancy, as a concept.

The audiobook is fantastic -- definitely recommend reading it that way if possible!

I thought the story was interesting and had a lot of nuanced conversations surrounding race and gender, throughout several decades in American history. The characters were compelling, and even the side characters were compelling and I thought really added a lot of depth to the overall story.

Ultimately though, I'm NOT really "into" rock music like that, so those elements of the story didn't captivate me as much as they probably captivate other readers. And I honestly found a lot of Sunny's portion of the story to be a bit unnecessary, as it stood. I guess I wish we had actually gotten more in-depth with her perspective and her own story. I know that wasn't exactly the point here, but it made it so that any time we stepped out of the Opal and Nev history and into Sunny's current life, I didn't care all that much.

I also did think that the ending was a bit rushed, but not enough to "ruin" the ending for me.

Overall I felt like this was immersive (it's true what everyone says -- you forget that these are NOT real people and events...!) and covered some really good conversations and themes, but ultimately it isn't a book I ever see myself re-reading, simply because while I enjoyed my time with it, I didn't LOVE my time with it, probably because I'm just not that "into" rock music and band stories in general!

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ringofkeyz's review

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

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horizonous's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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spookyaz's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

3.75

this book was written in such a convincing/interwoven way that I had to stop myself at several points and be like "no, opal & nev was not an actual musical duo"

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alomie's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

This was such a fabulous book, like a avant-garde punk version of Daisy Jones and the Six, with so much more to say.

Steeped in conversations about race and gender, the winners and losers and who should be getting the spotlight, and how so many times the system fails women and people of colour.

Nev is still a highly successful, white "rock star" but with all the ego and none of the sparkle, a talented musician sure, but a man who is willing to step on anyone to get the fame, and who allegedly started a riot, that ends up killing a man.

Opal is by far the stand out of the pair, vibrant, powerful and with a richly layered past, brings a fire to the music and performance Nev can only wish, but as is the way, Opal is the one who is sidelined and not taken seriously, and ridiculed.

I really enjoyed this book, and I understand why this was on the women's prize shortlist.

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