Daisy Jones & the Six (WITH SPOILERS)

 Some time ago, I read and reviewed Taylor Jenkins Reid’s ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’. In the review, I mentioned I did not fully enjoy it and I found a lot of flaws with it. However, a friend of time mentioned that she read ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ and that she preferred it.  I have also seen a lot of readers get emotionally invested in this story, which prompted me to finally read it. This was an entertaining read, with a rather original way of telling a story full of complicated characters and relationships between them, but I must admit that I did not get too emotionally invested in it and unfortunately I found a lot of flaws with it.

‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ tells the story of a sudden rise and fall of a rock band and their lead singer Daisy Jones in the 70s. Through the interviews of the people who participated in the events, the readers slowly start to put together the true story about how these people started playing together and why they stopped. Because of that, there are multiple narrators, often depicting the same events in different ways, simply because they experienced it as such. The narration is framed as a book within a book, and an attempt to discover what happened, while understanding that the full truth might never come out. I am a sucker for this narration, and especially one that has multiple narrators all depicting events in their own way, so I really enjoyed this choice of narration.

There are so many characters, with the seven in the band being the protagonists and those around them giving their view on the situations every once in a while. It did take me a while to imagine them all in my head and make sure I understand who is telling what. However, I do think that they are made distinct enough that I did not mix them up, but there were just so many of them. However, a significant amount of attention is paid to Billy, the lead singer of the band and his relationship to other people, especially two women Daisy and his wife Camilla. I thought that they are all well developed with compelling motivation to their behaviour. I do wish that at times, the author did not chew up everything for us, but allowed the readers to make their own opinions. While I understand that at the time this account is written, all characters speaking are recounting their days of youth and this is their confession in a way, I wish that there was more ‘show do not tell’

The characters were far from likable to me, with a few exceptions, but I do enjoy reading about flawed people, so I did not mind this at all. Daisy is presented as an incredibly privileged (at least at the beginning), selfish and destructive person who was just naturally better than everyone else at mostly everything she ever did. The effect she had on people is magnetic and everybody wants to be around her, despite all of her flaws. She is constantly getting herself in awful situations and expecting others to help her out. I did appreciate her stubbornness and confidence, as well as the refusal to stay a victim. Daisy also often got called out by how she dressed or carried herself, which she simply did not care about.

On the other hand, Billy is a massive jerk, often incredibly condescending to other members of his band, not allowing their opinions to play a part in how their music should be. Billy is also a recovering addict, with only his family keeping him sober. I did enjoy this part of the novel talking about how hard it was to stay sober for him, but I was also quite annoyed with the way he would treat his wife at times. Still, it is obvious that there is a lot of love in Billy that she simply did not know how to give. I did love Camilla, and her perspective added so much depth to the story. She is not in the band, so she is way less messy than most other characters, as she is fully sober and is working really hard to support Billy and his dreams. However, I did really enjoy that she was ready to leave if the situation was to become unsafe and she did set boundaries for her family. Camilla also was incredibly intelligent and supportive of other women, even Daisy who at one point threatened her marriage to Billy. She has shown more grace throughout the novel than I think anybody I know would in that situation.

As I said, there were a plethora of other characters, more or less successful. I adored Karen, with Daisy the only other female member of the band. Aware of her position, Karen was also not afraid to defend herself when she needed to and was not willing to let anything prevent her from achieving what she wanted with her life. Even when she entered a relationship with another band member, she still remained herself and I did really enjoy reading about that. Unfortunately, other members of the band felt too bland for me, more there to give their commentary on Billy’s addiction or Billy’s relationships or Billy’s attitude etc. For me, they read more like underdeveloped side characters there to give a quip than their own people with their own stories. I guess this was to be expected in a shorter book with that many narrators, but I was a bit disappointed. I wanted more from them.

The novel does deal with a lot of important themes, with some being given more attention than others. One I already mentioned is addiction, both through Billy and Daisy. While Billy’s addiction was kept under control, Daisy’s was completely out of control as she was not able to do almost anything without her drugs of choice. I am not an expert on the topic of addiction, but I thought that at times, this depiction was a bit…naive I guess? The consequences of drug abuse are shown in the book, but they are always a little bit too polished in my opinion. I expected a bit more from that discussion. Female friendship is another one that was a lot more successful. Karen and Camilla’s friendship and the way they talked about each other genuinely warmed my heart, especially the way Camilla reassured Karen about her abortion. Although at that point Camilla already had three children, she still took Karen to the clinic and stayed with her the whole time.

But for me, the biggest theme was that of love. The way that the relationship between the people in the love triangle was described was quite refreshing. It was full of understanding, relatively good communication and empathy. I enjoyed the way Camilla and Billy knew each other well enough to be able to speak without words and support they gave each other. This love was far from perfect, but it felt very realistic. In terms of Daisy, although she did annoy the living hell out of me at times, I did feel bad because I understood that all she wanted was that kind of love. Once she saw what Camilla and Billy shared, she wanted that as well but backed off once Camilla asked her to.

Still the reason I rated this 3 starts instead of 4 or 5 is because of the end. While the novel is set up to lead to a grand reveal to why the band fell apart, it was not exciting or surprising to me. The fact that the person writing this confession in the form of interviews was Billy and Camilla’s daughter was interesting, but not too special to me. Additionally, Camilla’s death and her plea to have Billy contact Daisy again after years of not speaking, while lovely did not feel emotionally satisfying. I understand the author wanted a kind of open end with potential for second chances, but again I expected more.

Overall, this book filled out a few of my afternoons and I did think it was entertaining. However, while I did enjoy it more than ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’, I did think that there were a few flaws in it that took away some of my enjoyment. As I said, I rated it ⅗.

Did you read this book? Did you read anything else by this author? What were your thoughts?

source: goodreads.com