11 Must-Read Books for Fans of Daisy Jones & The Six

Break out your baby tees: Isabel Banta’s buzzy debut novel Honey takes you right back to the Y2K era when pop divas reigned supreme. The lively and insightful coming-of-age story centers on Amber Young, a singer and dancer who in 1997 receives the call of a lifetime to join the girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles. She rubs elbows with fellow up-and-comers — boy band heartthrob Wes Kingston and ambitious singer–dancer Gwen Morris — and soon goes solo. But as Amber’s star power grows, so too do the pressures of fame, especially for a young woman determined to achieve success on her own terms in the cutthroat world of pop music. Honey brilliantly skewers the trappings of celebrity and the vile way women artists were treated by the media and the public in the early aughts. It’s a shimmering narrative suffused with pop delights that Daisy Jones & The Six fans are sure to love.

If the very cool book cover didn’t tip you off, Dawnie Walton’s acclaimed The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a novel about rock stars. In this case, we’re talking about Detroit native Opal, a Black woman fighting against racism and sexism in the late ’60s and early ’70s to make her artistic dreams a reality. Opal meets Neville Charles, a British singer/songwriter, and the pair soon start making music. But their trajectory is forever changed when Opal stands up against the racist marketing campaign of a rival band on their label. Cut to 2016: Opal is considering reuniting with Nev, and a music journalist has decided to do an oral history on the pair — but not without complications.

David Mitchell’s swirling Utopia Avenue offers a wild ride to readers searching for books like Daisy Jones & The Six. The novel centers on Utopia Avenue, a psychedelic rock band in London’s late-’60s music scene. It follows the band members — lead singer Elf Holloway, bassist Dean Moss, and guitarist Jasper de Zoet — through their rise from the clubs of Soho to performing on BBC’s Top of the Pops. Plenty of trippy drama ensues, including a good time in Amsterdam, a not-so-good time in Rome, and a stopover in 1968 San Francisco at the height of peace and love. Entertainment Weekly calls the book “Daisy Jones & The Six on acid,” so get ready for tons of fun.

The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes boasts many endorsements, including one from Taylor Jenkins Reid, who calls it “a page-turning peek inside the glamor and brutality of life as a pop star.” Like other books on our list, Elissa R. Sloan’s novel radiates glitz and glamor while offering a sharp social commentary on the dark side of success. Cassidy Holmes was known to the world as “Sassy Gloss,” one member of a girl group that was famous around the turn of the millennium. Fifteen years after the group’s sudden 2002 implosion, Cassidy dies from suicide, shocking the public and compelling her former bandmates to revisit their time together in search of understanding.

Emma Brodie’s Songs in Ursa Major is another great book like Daisy Jones & The Six that readers will enjoy. Similar to Reid’s novel, Songs in Ursa Major is set in the past — 1969, to be exact — and centers on a complex and compelling female singer. Jane Quinn was raised on a Massachusetts island, where her songwriter mother passed down a deep love of music. As a performer, she catches the attention of folk singer Jesse Reid, who hears about Jane after she fills in for him at a festival. Soon Jane’s band joins Jesse’s group on tour, and Jane and Jesse fall into a passionate affair. But a dark secret looms on the horizon and is about to throw everything into jeopardy.

Here’s a book like Daisy Jones & The Six for all our country fans. The Farewell Tour by Stephanie Clifford vividly chronicles the life of country singer Lillian Waters across different phases of her career, from her Depression-era upbringing to her Nashville ascendency and her farewell performances. She arranges her final tour after a career-ending vocal diagnosis and with the jadedness of a hardened road warrior performer, and it reunites Lillian with her old friends from her early days. The last stop on the tour is her childhood farm, where Lillian plans to make amends with the sister she wronged long ago. Stephanie Clifford does a wonderful job at capturing the joys, hardships, sacrifices, and successes of a life in music.

The Bird Has Flown is a funky little book about a singer looking for her second chance at success, and it’s written by an actual rock star — Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs. It turns out that the musician who cowrote “Eternal Flame” is also a good novelist, and we think Daisy Jones & The Six fans will enjoy Hoff’s lyrical redemption story. The novel focuses on Jane Start, a recently single and very broke one-hit-wonder living with her parents 10 years after her brush with fame. On a flight to London, Jane meets an Oxford professor of literature named Tom Hardy, and the two soon become smitten. But is this other Tom Hardy as lovely as he seems? A sexy and funny novel, The Bird Has Flown is an easy read you won’t want to put down.

Jessica Anya Blau’s Mary Jane is billed as “Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones & The Six,” making it the perfect addition to our list. Both novels are set in the 1970s and explore the wild world of rock and roll, but Mary Jane adds a delightful coming-of-age twist. Fourteen-year-old Mary Jane is a straightlaced kid in Baltimore who just secured a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. It looks like a respectable gig — at first. Turns out, the doctor’s domestic situation is a mess. Moreover, the doctor’s sole patient for the summer is a famous rock star and his movie star wife, who have moved into the doctor’s home to dry out. While Mary Jane reintroduces order to the chaos, she’s also drawn into the musician’s freewheeling lifestyle, shaking up her narrow worldview and her dreams for the future.

Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments is the first book in the author’s Barrytown Trilogy, and it focuses on the dramatic career of an Irish band. When Jimmy Rabbitte is recruited by school friends Derek Scully and “Outspan” Foster as their manager, he changes the group’s name, fires a member, and places an ad for new personnel. Out of this comes the Commitments, a young and hungry group determined to bring soul music to Dublin. As the band gets better and better, their egos enlarge, and jealousy, greed, and resentment soon threaten the group’s future — just as Jimmy is about to get them a record deal. Filled with quirky characters and enhanced by a strong sense of place, The Commitments is sure to entertain.

From Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic, Velvet Was the Night is a delicious historical fiction novel with a rock and roll spirit. It’s darker than most of the other books on our list, and a true thriller in every sense of the word. The novel introduces us to Maite, a secretary in politically fraught 1970s Mexico. Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, is a beautiful art student. When Leonora vanishes under mysterious circumstances, Maite starts looking for her, and she’s soon drawn into Leonora’s secretive world of political radicalism. At the same time, Elvis, a goon who loves rock music, is also on the hunt for Leonora and will stop at nothing to find her. “Moreno-Garcia mashes up Anglocentric genres with midcentury Mexican history, resulting in a brew flavored with love, heartbreak, violence, music, and unsettling dread” (The New York Times Book Review).

We wrap up our list of books like Daisy Jones & The Six with a treat for the ’80s kids in the audience. The Music Shop is a gem of a novel from New York Times bestselling author Rachel Joyce. Set in 1988, it focuses on record store owner Frank, an emotionally thorny individual who nevertheless knows how to relate with others over music. When Ilse Brauchmann comes into the shop and asks Frank to teach her about music, Frank fights his instinct to run and instead forges a bond with the mysterious young woman. The Music Shop is a heartwarming tale enriched by charming characters and a vivid sense of place. It’s ultimately a story about hope, community, and friendship, and how the restorative power of music can draw us closer together.