Format: Paperback
Published: March 5th, 2019
Age: Adult
Genre: Historical
Rating: 2/5 Stars
I need to preface this review with a warning: if you read and liked this book, if you were one of the many people who loved this book, turn back now. I don’t think you’ll enjoy this review. If you disliked this book and feel in the minority, maybe you’ll find this review a little cathartic. It’s going to get a little ranty in here. You have been warned. There are also spoilers.
I did not like Daisy Jones. I didn’t like The Six, except for maybe Karen. I flat-out do not understand the hype around this book. I wouldn’t go as far as to say Reid is a bad writer, but I did find quite a lot of this to be a bit smug and maybe a touch self-indulgent.
Let’s start with the format. The format didn’t work for me. The transcript style made the whole thing feel a little forced, and the result was the whole book is people telling us stuff. There are conflicting accounts of the same thing, which is perfectly fine, but this style would have been much better utilized if this had been written like an actual biography of an actual band. I’ve read a handful of these, and I was left wondering if this was supposed to be like an in-universe book, or podcast, or documentary. Then at the end the ‘character’ comes in as the ‘author’ – authors typically write books. So, presumably, this is supposed to be an in-universe biography of the band. There’s no way that kind of book would get released formatted like this. The wonderful thing about band biographies: they pull together a lot of different voices and turn it into a narrative. We don’t get that here. And yes, in those books you can have conflicting accounts, but usually there’s some sense of journalism in the way these are presented. You also get the opportunity to infer what’s really happened, either through body language (in the way a journalist might describe an interviewee’s mannerisms) or some sort of collaboration, where what’s been said might be supported by evidence of some sort.
Instead, we don’t really get any of that. We don’t get to see any of the characters, and we sure as hell don’t get to know them. There are moments that rely on imagery and sound and these don’t translate to the page in this format. As a reader, I felt removed from these characters, and I didn’t particularly care for them. If you’ve seen the TV show, you’ll know the ‘twist’ is that it’s Billy and Camilla’s daughter interviewing these people. In the book, she’s presented later as the ‘author’. It felt shoehorned in, especially in the way the characters had been talking about both her parents. Yes, okay, she might have asked for them to be frank and honest, but that doesn’t mean you actually have to be.
The characters themselves are insufferable, in a way smoothed over in the TV show by the charisma of the actors. None of that comes through here, and often the narrative becomes repetitive – Daisy is selfish and high, Billy is sanctimonious and struggling to stay sober (and in love with Camilla), Camilla is the hard-done-by wife, self-sacrificing to support Billy and raise their kids. Billy’s brother Graham’s only defining traits are that he lives in Billy’s shadow and is in love with Karen. Eddie is a dick and we don’t hear from Pete, Warren is a drummer, and Karen is a woman who just wants to be taken seriously in the band. The problem is…that’s it. There’s no real character development, there’s no real progression, and even where it does exist, it doesn’t really land because we’re being told all this after the fact.
On top of that, it just all feels so…bland. We’re told repeatedly how successful this band were and how Daisy and Billy are such incredible songwriters, and examples of the lyrics are dropped in to demonstrate this. “Like, who comes up with a lyric like [insert standard bland lyric here]?” Oh, yeah, the writer of the book. This is where it felt a little smug, and that’s not totally Reid’s fault, but then we see Daisy go to Europe for a bit and be a little less ‘known’, and later on a character tells her ‘everyone in the world cares about you’. Do they, though? Because their success is in North America and we don’t really get a worldwide glimpse of them, at a time when, let’s face it, in other countries there were plenty of other successful bands who weren’t one album and done, and other countries with their own music scenes. American success doesn’t always translate to global. It’s petty, yes, to be annoyed by this kind of thing, but it came so late in the book it just felt like another thing to add to a long list.
If you have made it this far through this rant review then honestly, thank you. I’ll finish with the fact that I think this book could have been so much better. I gave it 2 stars (more 1.5), because I think there was a real missed opportunity here to have something that read more like a band biography and have that engaging, journalistic element come into play. Plenty of people loved this book, and that’s completely fair, but for me, the flaws hugely outweighed the positives lurking under the surface.
Reading Challenge
Musicals Reading Challenge 2025
Prompt: Phantom of the Opera – Angel of Music – Toxic relationships
Progress: 7/24
Netflix Movies & TV Shows
Prompt: Julie and the Phantoms – has a band/musicians
Progress: 15/24
Unwrapping Words 