Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - 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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bxcvi's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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annabulkowski's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious sad 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

5.0

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bealittlebrave's review against another edition

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challenging emotional medium-paced

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

4.5

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jashanac's review against another edition

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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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redheadragereads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny reflective tense slow-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

5.0

Immersive. I loved the characters. It is always impressive when an author can make you toy between loving and loathing a single character between the pages of one book.

Guarantee this is a great audiobook!

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thehmkane's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-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

4.75

It's unfortunate that this book won't be able to avoid comparison to Daisy Jones, because this, to me, is a much more solid journey into that space. Timely, but nostalgic; classic, but modern.

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