If you take anything from this article at all, I hope it’s the desire to pick up this book from your nearest bookstore as soon as possible and begin indulging in the wonderful words that Taylor Jenkins Reid put to paper.
While I have certainly rated my fair share of 5-star reads, I’ve rarely found myself in a situation where I’ve had to wait before reading my next book because the characters and story I just finished reading impacted me so deeply. This is what I like to call a book hangover: its contents were simply so good that you need a few days to digest them before you move on. Daisy Jones and the Six just about gave me the worst book hangover I have ever experienced.
At a time in my life when finding myself (and more importantly, finding people that fit into the environment I have so far crafted for myself) is prevalent, this book gave me great character friends and hit on topics I never knew I needed.
If you haven’t read this book yet (which is wild), let me quickly sum it up for you. This book follows Daisy Jones, a rising star who tries to make it in a 1970s male-dominated world where people see her only for her physical appearance and take her work as their own. Alongside her story, you follow the lives of Billy and Graham Dunne, two brothers in Pennsylvania who dream of going big with their newly founded rock band, The Six. It isn’t long before the two cross paths and Daisy is put on an album with The Six, officially becoming Daisy Jones and the Six.
If you have read anything from Taylor Jenkins Reid before, you’ll know that her depiction of fame and the spotlight is anything but sunshine and rainbows. She often depicts the scene for what it truly is: toxic, overly romanticized and predominantly filled with sex and drugs. While from an outsider’s view being in a rock band seems effortlessly cool and free, it is oftentimes anything but for the characters in this book. Daisy struggles with abandonment issues from her parents’ lack of attention, which often leads her down a dark path with any relationship she gets into. She often mistakes any bit of attention for love and affection when really it is exactly what it seems: toxic attention given by men who use her for the wrong reasons.
Daisy isn’t the only one facing issues. Billy battles his own demons in the form of liquor and drugs. His wife Camila and his three daughters are what he cares about most in the world. He would do just about anything to protect that world from the outside darkness and toxicity of band life. Graham suffers from constantly living in his brother’s shadow. Karen, like Daisy, battles with society’s definition of women and the roles they are expected to play. Being Billy Dunne’s wife was anything but easy for Camila, but as she did everything else in the book, she played that role with patience and understanding. No matter what Billy did, Camila would wait at home for him every night and walk her husband to bed with just as much love as when she said “I do” on her wedding day.
The characters in this book made mistakes… lots of them. What they never did, though, was give up on their dreams, their loved ones and most importantly themselves. Sure, there were rough times and moments when you think a character has hit rock bottom and will surely never come up from that until you reach the next chapter when they absolutely do. It goes to show that no matter how hard life gets and no matter how strongly you feel that you have been dealt the crappiest cards in the deck, both me and the characters of Daisy Jones and the Six are here to tell you that you can make the best of it and succeed. Maybe the boy you like doesn’t feel the same or maybe addiction has seemed to take over your life. Guess what? Life keeps moving and you will move along with it. Life is a series of challenging obstacles and puzzles that you must solve, but it isn’t about the speed at which you do so or how you look after it all. In the end, it’s who you’re left standing with and the person you have become.
Out of this book, I hope you take Daisy’s rebellious nature to never take crap from anyone, Billy’s unwavering determination to become a better man for his family, Camila’s overwhelming devotion to her husband and friends through thick and thin, Graham’s fighting attitude to make an individual name for himself no matter how dark that shadow seemed to get, Karen’s urge to divert from the female societal norms and be who she wants to be and not who everyone expects her to be and most importantly, Warren’s attitude to have fun and take life a little less seriously sometimes. Everyone needs a Warren in their life.
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