If You Liked Daisy Jones & The Six: 10 Books to Read Next
Bookdot Team • •
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If you finished Daisy Jones & The Six and want more, this list has 10 books, each matched to one thing Taylor Jenkins Reid did well: the oral-history format, the 1970s music world, the cost of fame, or a love story that never quite resolves. I note which element each book shares, so you can skip the ones that match the wrong thing.
Daisy Jones & The Six (2019) follows a fictional band at the top of the rock charts in the 1970s. Daisy is a gifted, self-destructive singer and songwriter. Billy Dunne is the frontman who wants to protect his band and his marriage. Together they write the songs that make the band famous, and the story is told as a set of interviews with everyone who was there.
What Made Daisy Jones & The Six Hard to Put Down
Readers who loved this book usually loved different parts of it, so it helps to name what you are chasing.
The format. The book has no narrator. Each character gets a turn to speak, and they contradict each other, so you have to decide who to believe. If that is what hooked you, look for books built from interviews, documents, or shifting voices.
The music. Songs, recording sessions, tours and the creative friction between two writers. If you wanted to hear the album, look for stories where making music is the plot and not the backdrop.
The fame and what it costs. Addiction, ego, and the strain on marriages and friendships. Look for novels about people who got what they wanted and paid for it.
The unresolved love story. Daisy and Billy have a connection that is never simple or neatly named. If this is your lane, you will want slow-burning, complicated pairings, not tidy romance.
For More Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The obvious next step, and for good reason. A reclusive Hollywood icon chooses an unknown young journalist to write her life story, and the interview frame lets Evelyn reveal her secrets one husband at a time. Shared element: the confessional structure and a glamorous woman who is not as simple as her public image. It is told as a conventional narrative rather than a chorus of voices, but it gives the same sense of an insider finally talking. For more along these lines, see our Evelyn Hugo readalike list.
What carries over is the sense of being let into a locked room. Both books treat fame as a performance, and both let the performer finally step out from behind it. If you read Daisy Jones mostly for Daisy, Evelyn is the closest thing to her in Reid’s catalogue: just as hungry, and just as careful about what she lets you see.
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Four famous siblings throw a legendary party, and the book moves between that single night and the history of the family behind it. Shared element: a famous, fractured family and the long shadow of an absent parent. There is no oral-history trick here, but the same ear for glamour with something rotten under it.
The pleasure is in the structure. Because the whole story is built around a single night, every flashback arrives with a deadline attached, and you read faster as the party gets closer. Heat is low and the focus is family, so it suits readers who liked the band-as-family side of Daisy Jones more than the romance.
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
A retired tennis champion returns to the sport for one last push. It is a sports novel on the surface, but the real subject is the same as in Daisy Jones: ambition, reputation, and what it costs to be the best. Shared element: a prickly woman the world finds hard to like, who refuses to apologize for wanting to win.
The tennis scenes are written so you do not need to know the sport. What matters is the father-daughter bond at the center and the way public opinion turns on a woman who is too good at something. Daisy never apologized either, and readers who admired that will find the same backbone here.
For Fiction About Making Music
Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie
A young folk singer’s career takes off when she joins a tour with a charismatic rock star, and the relationship that forms between them is as combustible as the music. This is the closest match for the “two gifted people and a dangerous creative bond” part of the book. Shared element: a woman with real talent being pulled into the orbit of a more famous man, and the fame that follows. If you want more in this vein, our rockstar romance list collects the best of the trope.
Brodie writes music well. The songs, the rehearsals and the nerves before a show feel lived in, and the book has the same slightly melancholy look back on a time that could not last. It is the pick to make if the chemistry between Daisy and Billy at the microphone was your favorite part.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
A different mood: funnier, smaller and set in a record shop. Rob, the owner, ranks his all-time top five breakups and tries to work out why he keeps failing at love. Shared element: music as a way of understanding a relationship. It is not a rock-and-roll fantasy, but it is for readers who loved the sense that songs hold an entire love affair.
It is also a book about taste, and about how people use their favorite records to sort other people into the right and wrong camps. That snobbery is a gentler cousin of the band rivalries in Daisy Jones, and the humor makes it a good palate cleanser after something heavy.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
A Pulitzer Prize winner built from linked stories about people on the edges of the music industry, each told in a different style. Shared element: the format experiment. No two chapters sound alike, and the book is as interested in time passing as in any single character. It is a harder, more literary read than Reid, but it rewards the same readers who liked piecing the story together.
If you pick it up, go in knowing that it asks for patience. Characters recur in unexpected places, sometimes years apart, and the payoff comes from noticing who has changed and who has not. One chapter is even told in slides. It is a book to read slowly and then talk about.
For the Glamour and the Cost of Fame
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
A small Italian village and a young actress who arrives with a secret, with the story later moving to Hollywood. Shared element: the shine of show business and the people it leaves behind. It has a long timeline and a wry voice, and it is a good choice if you liked the “what happened to them afterwards” feeling.
The book is warmer than it first looks. Walter is fond of his characters, even when they behave badly, and the glimpses of a film shoot in Rome give it a pleasing old-Hollywood sheen. Readers who liked the retrospective sections of Daisy Jones, where everyone looks back and makes peace or doesn’t, will recognize the mood.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
A young painter and an older advertising executive marry fast in New York, and the book follows what happens to them and their friends. Shared element: a love story that is intense, flawed and at times destructive, with an ensemble of friends who all have their own agendas.
This is a less glamorous book than Reid’s, set among young people who are broke, impulsive and a little too fond of drinking. The pairing at its center is not meant to be a model for anything, and that is the point: like Daisy and Billy, the couple is better at the dramatic start than at the daily work. Content notes: addiction and mental health struggles feature heavily. For books about the friendships behind these stories, see best books about female friendship.
For the Era and the Real Thing
Just Kids by Patti Smith
A memoir, and the only nonfiction pick here. Patti Smith writes about her friendship and creative partnership with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in 1960s and 70s New York, before either was famous. Shared element: two artists making each other better, and the era’s grit.
It reads like a novel, partly because Smith is a poet, and it is as much a portrait of a city as of a friendship. There is no tour bus here. There is a cheap hotel, a borrowed guitar and two people who believe they are going to be artists. If you wanted the origin story behind a band like Daisy’s, this is what that first stage looks like in real life. If Daisy Jones made you curious about the real musicians of the time, this is the place to start.
The Girls by Emma Cline
A 1960s California novel about a lonely teenager drawn into a cult. It is not about music, but it shares the period setting and the feeling of a girl wanting desperately to belong somewhere. Shared element: a vividly drawn late-60s California, and a young woman trying to find her place. It is much darker than Reid, so read the content notes first.
For a wider selection of music-themed books, our best books about music list goes further, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow readalikes cover another story of a creative partnership.
How to Choose
If you want the same format, read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo first and A Visit from the Goon Squad second. If you want the music and the romance, start with Songs in Ursa Major. If you want the world of the 1970s without the fiction, read Just Kids. And if you want something lighter, High Fidelity is the easiest read of the group.
Keep track of what you pick up in a TBR so you do not lose the thread. Which of these is first on yours?
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What should I read after Daisy Jones & The Six?
- Start with Taylor Jenkins Reid's own The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo or Malibu Rising for the same glamorous, dysfunctional-family feel. For music fiction by another author, try Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie.
- Are there other books written as oral histories or interviews?
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo uses an interview frame, though it is told as a conventional narrative. A Visit from the Goon Squad shifts voice and form from chapter to chapter, and Just Kids is a memoir, so it is not fiction at all.
- Is Daisy Jones & The Six based on a true story?
- No. The band and the characters are invented, but Taylor Jenkins Reid has said the book was inspired by the dynamics of 1970s bands such as Fleetwood Mac. Reading about that era is the closest you can get to the real thing.