A review by mackreads324
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

dark emotional

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

3.25

Another book by TJR that comes highly recommended to me, but ultimately didn’t live up to expectations. The format, while unique, read like the script of a VH1 biopic. I’ve been told it is more enjoyable as an audiobook, and maybe that’s true. I know that it would work well as a movie/show, and that I would probably watch. But as the entire narrative of the story was told through interview format, the book becomes highly character-driven with little plot substance. We are shown several times that different people have differing recollections of the events of the story, but when your only context is the substance of the interviews, you lack a reliable narrator and the story becomes muddled. To me the writing seemed juvenile at times, with Reid having a tendency to tell rather than show. I think the interview-only approach  created a block between the reader and the characters, and I was unable to develop a strong understanding or relationship to any of the characters. I found the side characters having potential but falling flat and I craved further development. And while I really wanted to love the main characters, I was missing a connection and found them annoying most of the time. 

I think she did a good job of evoking the music scene in the 70s-80s, with all of its sex and drug fueled energy. And I would probably watch this as a movie or show and think it was fine. But honestly for now, if I was looking for the feeling this book was trying to achieve, I would just watch Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham’s 1997 performance of Silver Springs, and save myself a lot of time.