Audiobook Review: Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy Jones and the Six
by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Publication date: March 5th 2019
Publisher: Random House Audio

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Summary:

Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.

Cast List:
Daisy Jones, read by Jennifer Beals
Billy Dunne, read by Pablo Schreiber
Graham Dunne, read by Benjamin Bratt
Eddie Loving, read by Fred Berman
Warren Rhodes, read by Ari Fliakos
Karen Karen, read by Judy Greer
Camila Dunne, read by January LaVoy
Simone Jackson, read by Robinne Lee
Narrator / Author, read by Julia Whelan
Jim Blades, read by Jonathan Davis
Rod Reyes, read by Henry Leyva
Artie Snyder, read by Oliver Wyman
Elaine Chang, read by Nancy Wu
Freddie Mendoza, read by P.J. Ochlan
Nick Harris, read by Arthur Bishop
Jonah Berg, read by Holter Graham
Greg McGuiness, read by Brendan Wayne
Pete Loving, read by Pete Larkin
Wyatt Stone, read by Alex Jenkins Reid
Hank Allen, read by Robert Petkoff
Opal Cunningham, read by Sara Arrington

Source: Goodreads

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Thoughts:

“Daisy Jones and the Six” is an absolute masterpiece. I can’t claim to have listened to a lot of audiobooks, but my goodness, this is going to be hard to beat!

Told with a full cast, this audiobook fully immersed me into the world of fictional 70s rock band ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ and just ‘The Six’ in the early days. It’s not real, but if you had told me it was I would have fully believed you.

To summarise, this is the story of Daisy Jones, a beautiful young woman with an amazing voice and The Six, a rock band finding its feet in the industry, led by guitarist Billy Dunne. It’s told in a compulsive interview style, as if the members of the band are looking back at their hopes, struggles and dreams and reflecting on the events that lead to their global success. The best part of this audiobook is that it has a full cast, so you can really feel connected to each and every voice. The characters are human, they’re vivid and complex and their memories of their rise to fame are disjointed and all vary somewhat, which adds to the reality of it all. I’m sure that if you interviewed real people and asked them to recall events several decades later, there would be some discrepancies!

From start to finish I was fully immersed in this story and I would highly recommend you give it a try. I think I’m a bit obsessed and really hope the upcoming Amazon Video series does it justice!

Overall rating: “Daisy Jones and the Six” has quickly earned it’s place in my favourite reads of all time. Telling the story of a fictional rock band in the 70s, this story is so real. It’s fully immersive, compulsive and addictive – a very strong 5 stars!

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See my other reviews of books by Taylor Jenkins Reid here:

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
• One True Loves
• Maybe in Another Life

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