A review by erinbarton
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

going into this book, i knew from the premise that it would share similarities with daisy jones & the six, but the similarities were just too many to avoid comparison — both books follow a fictional band during the 70s, written in the format of an oral history /documentary script, the journalist of which is the child of one of the band members who had an affair with the charismatic and magnetic female lead singer, and the journalist is aiming to unpack the mystery surrounding an infamous performance of the band’s. although opal & nev’s plot definitely moved beyond this going into the second half, it wasn’t enough to escape the comparison for me.

the oral history style i felt was actually to the book’s detriment; i didn’t feel connected to the protagonist, sunny, at all since they were so passive in the story, and none of the characters with the exception of opal had very distinctive voices that i felt warranted the script format. the execution of the script format wasn’t as seamless as daisy jones & the six, possibly due to the large amount of footnotes and editor’s notes from the protagonist. i feel this story could have been better executed in a regular prose format with the inclusion of some footnotes and news articles etc 

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